Christianity and Evolution???

[Bushido216]

You don't listen to us when we do the same for you.

 

[Karl - Liberal Backslider]

how can you misinterpret those chapters. It specifficly says night and day which means it was a 24hr period, not billions of years.

The days are literal. Correct. It is the narrative that is figurative, not the individual elements within it. Are the coins the Samaritan gives the innkeeper literal coins? How can you tell from the word used?

you can not say that you are christian and accept evolution

If you look at the Rule Change thread I posted below you will see that I have a disagreement with Lucaspa and the board moderators about the rule you have just broken. It is purely for consistency with the view I express there that I haven't reported your unpleasant, ad hom insults.

cuase it complettly contradicts christian belief that we were created.

No it doesn't. If you'd taken a blind bit of notice of anything we'd posted here you'd know that. Evolution is how God created. How does that contradict the statement that we were created? How can something be an explanation of something that didn't happen?

The christian also believes the 2300 day prophecy in the book of Daniel. therfore if you believe in evolution(which takes billions of years) you dont believe in the above 2 things.

There's a non-sequitur.

and i wasnt shouting. i just had the caps lock on.

Ask yourself how careful and thoughtful it makes your posts look.

Listen, Mirror - I've been a Christian longer than you've been on God's clean earth (assuming you've entered your date of birth correctly). Don't try to teach your grandmother to suck eggs.

 

[lucaspa]

But "Selection", i.e. natural selection, can not be the cause of evolution simply because selection can only select existing allele's. What Evolution requires is the accumulation of new alleles, something which selection can not provide.

Natural selection or Darwinian evolution is a two-step process.
1. Variation. This is where new designs/alleles are added. Now, remember that an allele is a form of a gene. So, when you have a point mutation you create a new allele. Whole new DNA can also happen by copying mistakes. Genes can be duplicated, so where you had one copy of a gene now you have two. Whole chromosomes can also be duplicated. Translocation is making an extra copy of part of a chromosome and having it moved to a different chromosome and added to it. Transposons are added bits of DNA inserted into chromosomes. About 10% of human DNA is the transposon repeat Alu sequence.
2. Selection. Selection sorts thru all the variations and picks the best designs for that particular environment.

Natural Selection is a Creationists idea! Even before Darwin creationists described 'natural selection' as a conservative force for preserving each created 'kind', i.e. a baramin. It does this in two ways: the first by allowng adaptation to different and varying environments (via change in allele frequency) and by eliminating many genetic defects caused by mutations, thus causing lineages to maintain their fitness.

Can you document that? The closest I've found is the work of Edward Blythe, who did come across what is called "purifying" or "stabilizing" selection. This is a conservative type of natural selection. But no creationist had ever hit on the idea of selection adapting a population to a changing environment.

Natural selection comes in 3 flavors.
1. Directional selection. This is the one we mean most often when referring to natural selection. This happens in response to an environment that changes in a particular direction, and shifts the characteristics of the population to a new mean.
2. Stabilizing or purifying selection. This happens when a population is already well-adapted to a stable environment. Almost any change is going to be for the worse, and therefore the individual will be less fit. So stabilizing selection removes those variations and keeps just one or a few that are at the fitness peak.
3. Disruptive selection. This happens when a population has a geographical range such that subpopulations face different envirohments in different parts of the range. Those environments are directional selection and tend to pull the population into two or more separate populations. Gene flow of interbreeding between the populations tends to stop that. Humans right now are under disruptive selection.

Natural selection works with an organisms ability to change, within genetic limits,

Unfortunately, there are no genetic limits. No creationist has ever been able to point to one and phylogenetic studies have falsified the idea of limits. If such limits did indeed exist, then comparison of DNA sequences from many species would find clusters of sequences that are independent from other clusters. However, instead we find the opposite, that units of biology, from genes to genomes, are all related thru historical connections. You have a nice idea, but it is shown to be wrong by the data.

To help me out, could you define the word "species".

Species has different meanings depending on the area of biology you are working in. And none of the definitions are precise. You can always find populations that are between species. This, of course, is exactly what you should find if evolution is true and species do transform to other species. If creationism is correct, OTOH, we should be able to find a precise definition of baramin. The failure of creationists to do so is another falsification of creationism.

OK, here are some species concepts:
Biological species: "Species are formed when a once actually or potentially interbreeding array of Mendelian populations becomes segregated in two or more reproductively isolated arrays. Species are, accordingly, groups of populations the gene exchange between which is limited or prevented in nature by one, or a combination of several reproductive isolating mechanisms". Dobzhansky in 'Genetics and the Origin of Species" (3rd ed, revised, 1951, p. 262-3) So, species are populations who don't interbreed with other populations. This applies, of course, only to sexually reproducing populations.

Morphological species: These are populations that are so different in appearance (morphology) that they could not interbreed with other populations. This concept is applied to species in the fossil record and underestimates the true number of species, since organisms can differ in soft body parts that don't show up as hard body parts. But that is all the fossil record has.

Genetic species: These are populations that have clustering of DNA sequences that do not, or minimally, overlap the DNA sequence clustering of other populations. This is used for microorganisms that do not reproduce sexually.

Phylogenetic species: This is a cluster of organisms that is diagnostically distinct from other clusters and within which there is a pattern of ancestor and descendent.

Evolutionary species concept: This is similar to the phylogenetic concept and is a single lineage (an ancestral-descendant sequence) of populations or organisms that maintains its identity from other such lineages and which has its own evolutionary tendencies and historical fate. H.erectus and H. sapiens fall into this concept since they are chronospecies: the same species separated by time but which we have transitionals showing the transformation of H. erectus into H. sapiens over time. The different species of HIV are also chronospecies since we have tracked the genetic changes over time.

 

[lucaspa]

how can you misinterpret those chapters. It specifficly says night and day which means it was a 24hr period, not billions of years.

And then right after it tells us it took 6 days in Genesis 1 Genesis 2:4 says "in the day God created the heavens and the earth." This contradiction, among others, between the two creation stories is a huge hint by God that neither are to be read literally.

Creation is depicted in 6 days in Genesis 1 because the authors are making a (wholly unnecessary) justification for having the Sabbath on the seventh day. Remember, the Exodus happened before Genesis was written. So God in Exodus 20:10 had already commanded that the 7th day should be the Sabbath. Some Hebrews felt that it wasn't enough that God had commanded them to keep the Sabbath; they had to invent a reason God had commanded it. And the "reason" they came up with is that they then had God create in 6 days and rest on the seventh. Just like God commanded the Hebrews to work 6 days and rest on the 7th. Now, God didn't give justifications for any of the other Commandments. He didn't tell us why we were to honor our father and mother, or why we weren't to give false witness. We were just told to obey. So I don't see why He has to have a reason for commanding the Sabbath, but the authors of Genesis 1 thought so.

you can not say that you are christian and accept evolution cuase it complettly contradicts christian belief that we were created.

How does evolution do that? See the second quote in my signature. Evolution is simply the method God used to create us. Just like gravity is the method God uses to keep the planets in orbit.

It appears to me that you have god-of-the-gaps theology here. God had to create by a mechanism not explained by science. If science explains it, then you think God is absent. You do realize that this is an atheistic viewpoint, don't you?

The christian also believes the 2300 day prophecy in the book of Daniel. therfore if you believe in evolution(which takes billions of years) you dont believe in the above 2 things.

The prophecy in Daniel is not mentioned in either the Apostle's or Nicean Creeds. So when Christians decided what they needed to be in order to be a Christian, this wasn't included. Come to think of it, can you point to any verse in Paul's letters where he says that belief in this prophecy is necessary to be a Christian?

It looks to me like you have just invented a criteria that doesn't exist.

and i wasnt shouting. i just had the caps lock on.

Using caps is how you "shout" on the Internet. If you don't know this bit of etiquette, you do now. Wouldn't it have been better to apologize and say you didn't mean to shout and didn't realize that caps meant shouting?

 

[ur32212451]

Sorry, but you are wrong about the fossil record. There are lots of transitional species. But even worse for you, there are transitional individuals linking one species to another, and even series linking species to species across higher taxa, even to linking Casses (birds and mammals are examples of Classes). I've put together a partial list:
http://www.christianforums.com/t43227

Hello Lucaspa

I checked out your lists of alleged transitions. I have bad news for you lucaspa, none of your alleged transition series have any scientific merit.

It appears Lucaspa, that you are a victim of the teaching of evolution in our schools,or perhaps combined with those mis-informative PBS/Discover channel pro-evolution programs on television, or yet worse, those anti-creationist propaganda books and articles put out by dogmatic evolutionists who get the science all wrong in their efforts to ridicule, and insult Creationists and to browbeat the general public into accepting evolution as fact.

To show you why you have been badly misled, I picked the alleged Pelycosaurs-Therapsidia- Mammal Evolution because the therapsids are, by far, the closest evolutionist have ever come to finding a transitional series in the fossil record. As one commentator has said, the reptile to mammal series is the crown jewel of the fossil evidence for Darwinism. However, there are real problems associated with concluding that a transitional series has been found linking the therapsid Dimetrodon to the mammal Morganucodon.

The Pelycosauria and the Therapsida are classified as Synapsida because they share one common feature: the presence of a single lateral opening in the temporal region. The Pelycosauria have been found only in west texas and a few in Europe. The Therapsids have been found in South America, South Africa, and Russia. Evolutionists assume that the synapsida evolved from an undiscovered common reptilian ancestor.

Did the Pelycosaurs precede the Therapsids as evolutionists often state?Such sequencing is critical to the reptile-mammal transition and this is also implied by Mr. Marksberry in hisstatement "we see the sequenced appearance of: ...".

So, just how did evolutionists determine that the Pelycosaurs appeared before the therapsids?

Were the Pelycosaurs found in lower geological strata than Therapsids? NO!, as given above, the Pelycosaurs were found mostly in Texas and a few in Europe, while the Therpasids were found in South America, South Africa, and Russia.

Was the time period the Pelycosaurs supposedly appeared determined by index fossils found in the same strata which they appeared? NO!

Evolutionist A.S. Romer writes of the pelycosaurs: "... correlation with marine stages is impossible in most cases." (Bulletin of the Indian Geological Association, 1969).

And, Reptile-Mammal expert, evolutionist Thomas Kemp writes of the Pelycosaurs and the Therapsids:

"The [fossil] record is also geologically patchy, no locality yielding more than a relatively short segment of history of the mammal like reptiles, and in many cases a region contains fossils of a single age. Similarly, no single taxonomic group of synapsid occurs worldwide even though there is little doubt that at least some of them had wide a very extensive distribution in life." (Mammal Like Reptiles. p. 3, 1983).

Was the time periods the Pelycosaurs and Therapsids supposedly appeared determined by radioactive dating? NO! it is not.

Evolutionists Derek Ager states: "Ever since William Smith at the beginning of the 19th century, fossils have been and still are the best and most accurate method of dating and correlating the rocks in which they occur. ... As for having the credit pass to the physicist and the measurement of isotopic decay, the blood boils! Certainly, such studies give dates in terms of millions of years with huge margins of errors. ... I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils. (New Scientist, 100:425, 1983).

THEN WHAT WAS USED BY EVOLUTIONISTS TO DETERMINE THAT PELYCOSAURS PRECEDED THERAPSIDS ON THE GEOLOGIC TIME SCALE?

Romer answers this question in the citation given above. "... the general evolutionary story of therapsids and other contained forms suggest that the Pelycosaur-bearing beds should be regarded as early Permian, the Tapinocephalus zones of the Beaufort and the early Russian horizons as middle Permian, the Endothiodon and Cistecephalus Zones of the Beaufort and their equivalents as late Permian. Olson has proposed that any middle term be eliminated, and that the whole sweep of Russian and African beds ( and his double mountains and Pease River American finds) be called late
Permian. This appear to me to be the most uneven dichotomy, and the customary early-middle-late Permian terminology more in accord with a broad view of the Permian evolutionary picture."

Thus we can see that the time sequence assigned by evolutionists to the pelycosaurs was determined by the "general evolutionary story of therapsids" and by "a broad view of the Permian evolutionary picture." Thus the time sequence of the origin of key players in the reptile mammal transition was arranged to fit preconceived evolutionary notions of macroevolution.

Then we have other evolutionists telling us how the sequence of fossils in the fossil record demonstrates Evolution.One evolutionists points out this circularity of data being interpreted according to evolutionary theory and then using this interpretation of the data as support for the idea that Evolution is an observed"fact" in the fossil record. Nonsense!

"Any reasonable graded series of forms can be thought to have a legitimacy. In fact, there is circularity in the approach that
first assumes some sort of evolutionary relatedness and then assembles a pattern of relations from which to argue that
relatedness must be true. This interplay of data and interpretation is the achilles heel of the second meaning of evolution." Evolutionist L. Thomson,Marginalia: The Meanings of Evolution, 70 Am. Scientists, 1982.

There are many real problems associated with concluding that a reptile-mammal transitional series exist.

To begin with, there is a major gap between the Pelycosaurs and the therapsids.

Second, as can be seen from the above, the order of the alleged transitions given above is not necessarily the correct order they appear in time. The arrangement of the order is based on evolutionary relationships and different taxonomists have provided different arrangements of entire geological periods based on their personal evolutionary biases.

Third, as can be seen from any transitional list of therapsids, the arrangement is that of different groups of interbreeding Therapsida arranged in an evolutionary order, yet, evolution can take place only at the level of a single interbreeding group.

Fourth, All therapsida fossils clearly point to the fact that they are truly not mammals, not only by their jaw structure, but by their craniums, which are clearly not mammalian, but reptilian in nature.

Unfortunately for evolutionists, no one has managed to find, among the scores of therapsid types, a single line of descent leading to a mammal. Evolutionist Roger Lewin stated that: "The Transition to the first mammal, which probably happened in just one, or at most, two lineages, is still an enigma."

There is no clear lineage between the reptiles and mammals. The most convincing transitions presented in textbooks are lineages that combine more than one order of therapsida, with several species in the lineage which were contemporaries of each other and therefore cannot and do not form a progressive ancestry. In addition, one of the critical links is commonly shown out of order, as it appears earlier in the fossil record than the link that ought to be it's ancestor. However, evolutionists can at least argue that this may suggest a lineage.

A bigger problem in ever determining whether or not the therapsids can ever even be a true transition between reptile and mammals is in the very nature of what reptiles and mammals actually are. Reptiles are cold blooded, they lay eggs with hard shells, they have scales on their skin, multiple bones in the jaw, and a single bone in the ear. Mammals are warm blooded, they give birth to their young, have mammary glands, hair, and other significant soft body differences, besides a single lower jaw hinged with a single joint on each side, and three ear bones. The fossils do not tell us if these all important changes ever occurred even though it could have since many soft bodied fossils are recorded in the fossil record. There are no known living therapsida, so we are not at all certain as to their nature. Some evolutionary scientists have speculated that they may have been neither reptile nor mammalian, but perhaps entitled to a grouping of their own. They just don't know.

It should be pointed out that the so-called movement of the therapsid's two jaw bones, migrating toward the ear to become the other two ear bones in mammals, is highly speculative and improbable. I personally observed this alleged ear transition at the Museum of Natural History in New York. It was very unimpressive. All the therapsid skulls did show some movement of jaw bones moving further back in the jaw, but these creatures were so diverse in form, size and shape from one to the next. the next to last one was small like a squirrel while the last one was huge.

The transition of the ear is simply of those 'just-so' stories of evolution. There are no fossil transitions which actually show these bones becoming the ear of the mammal. There is not even a plausible scenario on how these bones would cross the Jaw joint to form the middle ear of a mammal, much less, how this creature will eat and hear while this happens.

Evolutionist Gerald Fleischer wrote a book entitled 'Evolutionary Principles of the Mammalian Ear" (1978, Berlin, Springer Velag), an authoritative treatment on the transition of the reptile to mammal transition of these bones to the ear. This book was reviewed by the magazine 'Evolution' (Vol. 33, #4, 1980) which reported: "These general statements about evolution of the mammalian middle ear that appear are in the nature of proclamations. No methods are described which allows the reader to arrive with Fleischer at his "ancestral" middle ear, nor is the basis for the transformation series illustrated for the middle ear bones explained. ... Those searching for specific information useful in constructing phylogenies of mammalian taxa will be disappointed." Scientists do not know how it could have happen!

`Just so' stories (plausibility arguments) are told by evolutionists to students and to the public to convince them, and perhaps themselves too, that Evolution did indeed occur. And no one tells such stories better than Stephen J. Gould, as he does in his book; `The Eight Little Piggies.'

Nevertheless, it is still just a story filled with speculation and far from falling under the category of science, much less surviving the rigors of `hard science' for the following reasons:

1. A clear species to species lineage linking therapsids to mammals has not been established. Rather, the paraphyletic groups we call therapsids is very diverse in all of their characteristics, and some paleontologists pick and choose fossils from these paraphyletic groups to fit in with their Darwinian scenario of reptile to mammal evolution (While ignoring the fossil data that does not fit into this Darwinian scheme). However, Darwinian evolution can only take place at the species level!

This appeal to the mammal-like characteristics found in paraphyletic groups gives the illusion of an established lineage, but it should not be mistaken for one. Gould takes it one step further and appeals not only to the characteristics of the extinct paraphyletic group of mammal like reptiles, but to the characteristics of the modern paraphyletic group: reptiles (e.g the hearing of modern snakes). This is Ok to do when painting a scenario of `how it might have happened', as Gould does, but such scenarios should never be mistaken for `what could or did happen'.

2. This alleged transition involves creatures which are extinct and and have left little indication that they traversed from cold blooded, scaled reptiles to warm blooded hairy soft skinned mammals. In fact, it seems highly unlikely.

3. This alleged transition creates another problem for evolutionists. Since the fossil record is so rich for this alleged ancient transition, why is the fossil record so sparse for all other alleged transitions, even those much more recent.

4. How the jaw bone to ear bone transition occurred remains uncertain, contrary to Gould's assertion that each part of this transition served some useful function, this is wild speculation. The demonstration of `how' must include the step by step change that must take place in the DNA code. The therapsids have many species which are concurrent to, and even outlived, those unrelated species that are used in the textbooks to create the illusion of this alleged reptile to mammal transition. All therapsida have jaws and skulls which we associate with reptiles. No therapsid fossil has ever been found showing the two jaw bones actually becoming ear bones (Why didn't some therapsids obtain 3-bone hearing without becoming mammals?)

Creationist Luther Sunderland, working on behalf of the NY Board of Regents, inquired of Dr. Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History; Dr. Raup- Curator of Chicago's Field Museum, and Dr. Dr. Colin Patterson Senior Paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, concerning fossil evidence for the reptile-mammal transition, they each in turn admitted that they were not aware of evidence for this transition.

Evolutionist Dr. Tom Kemp, curator of Zoological collections at Oxford University Museum, England, in his report on 'The Reptiles that Became Mammals' (New Scientist, Vol. 92, March 4, 1982) writes:
"Each species of Mammal-like reptile that has been found appears suddenly in the fossil record and is not preceded by any species
that is directly ancestral to it. It disappears some time later equally abruptly, without a directly descending species."

For the above reasons it can be seen that the Reptile-Mammal series often presented in school text books is not all evidence that Evolution (i.e. common ancestry of all species) is anyway a "fact". It is a diservice to students and teachers that such examples are offered in textbooks as examples of Evolution, They are not!

Lucaspa, If you believe any of your other transitional series demonstating a major morphological transformation in an established lineage, please specifically point it/them out and I will gladly review it for you.

 

[lucaspa]

Hello Lucaspa

I checked out your lists of alleged transitions. I have bad news for you lucaspa, none of your alleged transition series have any scientific merit.

To show you why you have been badly misled, I picked the alleged Pelycosaurs-Therapsidia- Mammal Evolution because the therapsids are, by far, the closest evolutionist have ever come to finding a transitional series in the fossil record.

First, this is not the closest they have come. My picture of transitionals between 2 species of snail is better. The books I listed showing transitional individuals between classes are also better. This transitional series is one of transitional species, not of transitional individuals, altho there are transitional individuals between some of the species.

So what you have made is a strawman. It's also an example of synecdoche, where you take a part to stand for the whole. And pick that part that you think you can attack. That won't work here. You have to take all the data, not just a part of it. So go look at the other transitional series.

I'll get to the specifics of your criticism in a bit, because there are some problems with it.

Lucaspa, If you believe any of your other transitional series demonstating a major morphological transformation in an established lineage, please specifically point it/them out and I will gladly review it for you.

Transitional individuals from one class to another
1. Principles of Paleontology by DM Raup and SM Stanley, 1971, there are transitional series between classes. (mammals and reptiles are examples of a class)
2. HK Erben, Uber den Ursprung der Ammonoidea. Biol. Rev. 41: 641-658, 1966.

Transitional individuals from one order to another
1. C Teichert "Nautiloidea-Discorsorida" and "Actinoceratoidea" in Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology ed RC Moore, 1964
2. PR Sheldon, Parallel gradualistic evolution of Ordovician trilobites. Nature 330: 561-563, 1987. Rigourous biometric study of the pygidial ribs of 3458 specimens of 8 generic lineages in 7 stratgraphic layers covering about 3 million years. Gradual evolution where at any given time the population was intermediate between the samples before it and after it.

Transitionals across genera:
1. Williamson, PG, Paleontological documentation of speciation in cenozoic molluscs from Turkana basin. Nature 293:437-443, 1981. Excellent study of "gradual" evolution is an extremely fine fossil record.

Speciation in the fossil record
1. McNamara KJ, Heterochrony and the evolution of echinoids. In CRC Paul and AB Smith (eds) Echinoderm Phylogeny and Evolutionary Biology, pp149-163, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988 pg 140 of Futuyma.
2. Kellogg DE and Hays JD Microevolutionary patterns in Late Cenozoic Radiolara. Paleobiology 1: 150-160, 1975.

Those were the references to transitional individuals. Review the papers.

BTW, I presume you read the full papers you quoted above. I want the full paragraphs from those quotes, please. If you didn't read them, then honesty demands that you quote the creationist website you got them from. IOW, I doubt you "reviewed" the lineage yourself, but instead found a creationist website that you cut and pasted from, but didn't tell us that. Please prove me wrong by giving paragraph quotes from the sources you cited.

 

[Dominus Fidelis]

BTW, I presume you read the full papers you quoted above. I want the full paragraphs from those quotes, please. If you didn't read them, then honesty demands that you quote the creationist website you got them from. IOW, I doubt you "reviewed" the lineage yourself, but instead found a creationist website that you cut and pasted from, but didn't tell us that. Please prove me wrong by giving paragraph quotes from the sources you cited.

That wasn't necessary. Just argue the facts.

 

[Bushido216]

How is citing not necessary?

 

[lucaspa]

Hello Lucaspa

I checked out your lists of alleged transitions. I have bad news for you lucaspa, none of your alleged transition series have any scientific merit.

Then you need to show all of them. I have real doubts that you checked anything but the reptile to mammal transition. Correction. From your later comments it is clear that you never even went to the webpage I gave you.

It appears Lucaspa, that you are a victim of the teaching of evolution in our schools,or perhaps combined with those mis-informative PBS/Discover channel pro-evolution programs on television, or yet worse, those anti-creationist propaganda books and articles put out by dogmatic evolutionists who get the science all wrong in their efforts to ridicule, and insult Creationists and to browbeat the general public into accepting evolution as fact.

I took the time to check all the paper references I listed. I went to the library at SUNY Albany to find the more obscure references so I could look at the data myself. That's hardly being influenced by a TV show. Since some of the references are obscure, this is why I have doubts that you have checked them all out.

To show you why you have been badly misled, I picked the alleged Pelycosaurs-Therapsidia- Mammal Evolution because the therapsids are, by far, the closest evolutionist have ever come to finding a transitional series in the fossil record. As one commentator has said, the reptile to mammal series is the crown jewel of the fossil evidence for Darwinism. However, there are real problems associated with concluding that a transitional series has been found linking the therapsid Dimetrodon to the mammal Morganucodon.

And this is a direct quote from a post by Bart007 at http://www.evcforum.net/ubb/Forum13/HTML/000015-2.html

Now, the question is whether you bothered to read Cuffey's website at all.

The Pelycosauria and the Therapsida are classified as Synapsida because they share one common feature: the presence of a single lateral opening in the temporal region.

I've left out the references to make it easier to read the relevant information:
"One group of reptiles, the synapsids (Subclass Synapsida), share with the mammals an additional homologous structure: the lateral temporal fenestra, which is an opening in the skull behind the eye socket at the triple junction between the squamosal, jugal , and post orbital bones. A band of bone composed of the jugal and the squamosal is adjacent to the lateral temporal fenestra. This is the cheek arch so characteristic of mammal skulls. Therefore, synapsids are commonly named the “mammal-like reptiles.” "

Notice that there is far more there than "a single lateral opening in the temporal region" to get classed as Synapsid. If you look in Table 1, you find 5 different catagories where pelycosaurs and therapsids share features.

"When placed in proper geochronologic succession, the synapsids naturally form a succession of taxa (genera and families) that progressively become more mammal-like and less reptile-like. Morphologic changes, summarized in Table 1 and Figure 1, affect the entire skeletal anatomy of these animals, but are most clearly displayed in their skulls. "

The Pelycosauria have been found only in west texas and a few in Europe. The Therapsids have been found in South America, South Africa, and Russia. Evolutionists assume that the synapsida evolved from an undiscovered common reptilian ancestor.

Not assume. Cuffey gives the common reptilian ancestor. It is Hylonomus, a protothryrid. See bottom of Table 1. Your source (I suspect it is Barnes) is out of date. This is hinted at by the fact than none of your sources is more recent than 1983. Gotta keep up with new data. Cuffey, for instance, has references as recent as 1998.

Now remember, at the time this happened, there was just one supercontinent, so Texas and Russia and S. Africa were not separated by oceans. I've kept in the references past the date of any reference you have.

"[font=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Synapsid reptiles inhabited Pangea from the Middle Pennsylvanian through the Early Jurassic (Kemp, 1982, 1985; Sloan, 1983; Carroll, 1988; Hopson, 1987, 1994; Hotton, et al., 1986; Sidor & Hopson, 1998; Tchudinov, 1983; ). From the Early Permian through the Early Triassic, they were the largest and most abundant land animals. Though much less well known to the general public than dinosaurs, one of the “cereal box dinosaurs,” Dimetrodon (the sail-backed reptile), is a synapsid, not a dinosaur (Carroll, 1988). The oldest mammals are Late Triassic (Kemp, 1982; Carroll, 1988). Below is a discussion of the geochronologic succession linking synapsids and mammals. The oldest reptiles (named protorothyrids; Carroll,1988, p. 192-199) are from the lower Middle Pennsylvanian, and the oldest synapsids are from the upper Middle Pennsylvanian, both of Nova Scotia. Upper Pennsylvanian and Lower Permian forms are known primarily from the midcontinent and Permian Basin region of the United States (Sloan, 1983). The basal Upper Permian forms are known from Russia (Tchudinov, 1983; Ivakhnenko et al., 1997). Most of the Upper Permian and Lower Triassic succession is known from southern Africa, especially the Great Karoo of South Africa (Sloan, 1983). The Middle Triassic forms are from South America, and the Upper Triassic and Lower Jurassic mammals are known from Eurasia. Subsequent Mesozoic mammals are known from all over the world." [/font]

Did the Pelycosaurs precede the Therapsids as evolutionists often state? Were the Pelycosaurs found in lower geological strata than Therapsids?

Yes. See the sequence above. The classification of strata is done where those strata overlap. Upper Permian is always below lower Triassic, no matter where in the world it is found.

[uqote]Was the time period the Pelycosaurs supposedly appeared determined by index fossils found in the same strata which they appeared? NO![/quote]Yes. Not all index fossils are marine fossils.

Evolutionist A.S. Romer writes of the pelycosaurs: "... correlation with marine stages is impossible in most cases." (Bulletin of the Indian Geological Association, 1969).

This is where we have a misleading quote out of context. The implication is that all index fossils are marine animals. This is not the case. Land snails and other land dwelling invertebrates are also index fossils.

"The [fossil] record is also geologically patchy, no locality yielding more than a relatively short segment of history of the mammal like reptiles, and in many cases a region contains fossils of a single age. Similarly, no single taxonomic group of synapsid occurs worldwide even though there is little doubt that at least some of them had wide a very extensive distribution in life." (Mammal Like Reptiles. p. 3, 1983).

Another misleading quote, and I suspect one out of context. I'd like to see the next paragraph, please. However, even looking at the quote shows that it is being misused here. We don't need worldwide distribution since we are looking at successive species. Erosion is going to have wiped out some of the strata in some regions. We are not looking for a transitional series in one location here. Those are given in my other references of transitional individuals. We are looking at transitional species, and species have wide geological distributions. As long as distributions overlapped during the course of the lineage, we are fine. And such overlap is hinted in the last sentence of "very extensive distribution".

Was the time periods the Pelycosaurs and Therapsids supposedly appeared determined by radioactive dating? NO! it is not.

Evolutionists Derek Ager states: "Ever since William Smith at the beginning of the 19th century, fossils have been and still are the best and most accurate method of dating and correlating the rocks in which they occur. ... As for having the credit pass to the physicist and the measurement of isotopic decay, the blood boils! Certainly, such studies give dates in terms of millions of years with huge margins of errors. ... I can think of no cases of radioactive decay being used to date fossils. (New Scientist, 100:425, 1983).

Another misuse of quote. Note that "fossils have been and still are the best and most accurate method of dating and correlating the rocks in which they occur." The bolded part is critical. Radiometric dating does not date the rock in which fossils occur. Since such rocks are sedimentary, they are composed of pieces of rocks that are much older. What is dated instead are igneous intrusions above and below the sedimentary rocks where the fossils are. That's where you get the range of millions of years. And why the last sentence is there: fossils themselves are never dated by radiometric dating. They can't be.

However, were the rocks in which the pelycosaur and therapsid fossils found dated by radiometric dating of intrusions in, above, and below them? YES!

"... the general evolutionary story of therapsids and other contained forms suggest that the Pelycosaur-bearing beds should be regarded as early Permian, the Tapinocephalus zones of the Beaufort and the early Russian horizons as middle Permian, the Endothiodon and Cistecephalus Zones of the Beaufort and their equivalents as late Permian. Olson has proposed that any middle term be eliminated, and that the whole sweep of Russian and African beds ( and his double mountains and Pease River American finds) be called late
Permian. This appear to me to be the most uneven dichotomy, and the customary early-middle-late Permian terminology more in accord with a broad view of the Permian evolutionary picture."

Thus we can see that the time sequence assigned by evolutionists to the pelycosaurs was determined by the "general evolutionary story of therapsids" and by "a broad view of the Permian evolutionary picture." [/quote]Again, misquote. If you go here http://geowords.com/histbooknetscape/i12.htm you find that there are a broad range of fossils of the Beaufort strata. "Beaufort Series is famous for is its abundance of land-vertebrate fossils. Its beds are mostly felspathic, yellow weathering sandstones with interlayered thin bands of bright colored (red, purple and greenish) mudstones and shales. The higher horizons have amphibians Capitosaurus and some beds have yielded fish remains. Reptiles of various varieties occur throughout the thickness (3,000 meters in the south-east) of the series. Glossopteris (seed ferns) species are found fossilized sparingly throughout."

Now, want to know how the Beaufort was dated? Go to http://www.museums.org.za/sam/resource/palaeo/cluver/time.htm and you find that it is not on the sequence of mammal-like reptiles.

But wait! The time span of the Karoo is dated by radioactivity!
"In the case of the Karoo, the Drakensberg mountains, which are a very thick basalt or lava cap over the Karoo rocks, can be dated by using the radioactivity clock, and their age of about 190 million years is the date of the volcanic activity which ended the Karoo period. A more indirect dating method gives an approximate age of 240 million years for the lowest, and therefore oldest, Karoo rocks, so that all the zones of the Karoo represent a time span of about 50 million years."
The rest of the dating was done based on the common-sense principle that the lowest layers were laid down first and that layers on them were laid down later. But read the page for yourself.

To begin with, there is a major gap between the Pelycosaurs and the therapsids.

Not any more. Read the webpage I gave you. Look at Table 1 and tell me where the "major gap" is, please.

Second, as can be seen from the above, the order of the alleged transitions given above is not necessarily the correct order they appear in time.

Well, that argument has been blown away.

Third, as can be seen from any transitional list of therapsids, the arrangement is that of different groups of interbreeding Therapsida arranged in an evolutionary order, yet, evolution can take place only at the level of a single interbreeding group.

This is a sequence of transitional species, yes. It was never claimed to be anything else. In my list it was clearly labeled as such. I gave other examples of transitional individuals. In creationism, how do you account for all these species intermediate between reptiles and mammals? If they are truly different kinds, then there should be no intermediates with features of both. Was the Creator so incompetent that He had to make hundreds of trial runs before He could make a mammal?

Fourth, All therapsida fossils clearly point to the fact that they are truly not mammals, not only by their jaw structure, but by their craniums, which are clearly not mammalian, but reptilian in nature.

And that is the whole point of "transitional". Of course they are not "true mammals". That's why they are called mammal-like reptiles!

Unfortunately for evolutionists, no one has managed to find, among the scores of therapsid types, a single line of descent leading to a mammal.

At that remove of time, we wouldn't expect to. Evolution is a branching bush, and we are not going to be able to track thru the twigs and trace the line of species to species. However, that has been done for some invertebrate sequences. See the references of transitional individuals from class to class. Strawman.

There is no clear lineage between the reptiles and mammals.

On the contrary, there is a very clear lineage at the genera level!

The most convincing transitions presented in textbooks are lineages that combine more than one order of therapsida,

Uh, the therapsids are an order. Therefore there are not "more than one order of therapsida".

 

[lucaspa]

That wasn't necessary. Just argue the facts.

It is necessary because he is using the quotes as facts. Therefore the question is whether those facts are accurate or not. Since Kemp has published in, and supported the reptile-to-mammal transitional species series, any quote saying that Kemp says such a series doesn't exist is automatically suspect, wouldn't you think?

After all, if you were given a quote reportedly from the Pope that Jesus never existed, wouldn't you think it was either made-up, misquoted, or out-of-context?

Also, the poster has claimed that he has checked out the situation. That would mean reading the material he quotes, since that material supposedly contradicts the data I have posted. I am simply asking for the following paragraph. Also, those journals are very old and some of them are very obscure. From someone who supposedly only checks out websites, how did he get ahold of those journals?

 

[lucaspa]

A bigger problem in ever determining whether or not the therapsids can ever even be a true transition between reptile and mammals is in the very nature of what reptiles and mammals actually are. Reptiles are cold blooded, they lay eggs with hard shells, they have scales on their skin, multiple bones in the jaw, and a single bone in the ear. Mammals are warm blooded, they give birth to their young, have mammary glands, hair, and other significant soft body differences, besides a single lower jaw hinged with a single joint on each side, and three ear bones. The fossils do not tell us if these all important changes ever occurred even though it could have since many soft bodied fossils are recorded in the fossil record.

Please document that last sentence. Soft body parts are not fossilized except under extraordinary circumstances. There are only 5 fossils of feather impressions for Archie, and none of the soft body parts. So saying the fossil record "could have" is very misleading. There are no "many soft bodied fossils" recorded in the fossil record. Certainly not for vertebrates.

There are no known living therapsida, so we are not at all certain as to their nature. Some evolutionary scientists have speculated that they may have been neither reptile nor mammalian, but perhaps entitled to a grouping of their own.

We already know that therapsids were neither. They were transitional between, sharing some features with reptiles and some with mammals! Talk about trying to obfuscate!

It should be pointed out that the so-called movement of the therapsid's two jaw bones, migrating toward the ear to become the other two ear bones in mammals, is highly speculative and improbable. I personally observed this alleged ear transition at the Museum of Natural History in New York. It was very unimpressive. All the therapsid skulls did show some movement of jaw bones moving further back in the jaw, but these creatures were so diverse in form, size and shape from one to the next. the next to last one was small like a squirrel while the last one was huge.

And yet the movement of the bones were there, weren't they? The rest of the animal is immaterial since you are getting different species, and these can range in size depending on what genera they belonged to. Evolution predicts this sequence of intermediates in terms of the bones of the jaw and middle ear. Creationism predicts either pure jaw or pure middle ear with no intermediates.

The transition of the ear is simply of those 'just-so' stories of evolution. There are no fossil transitions which actually show these bones becoming the ear of the mammal.

See Table 1 of the website.

There is not even a plausible scenario on how these bones would cross the Jaw joint to form the middle ear of a mammal, much less, how this creature will eat and hear while this happens.

You didn't even read the website I posted, because the sequence of intermediates in this sequence is listed in references!
"As the quadrate and articular became smaller, they were relieved of their solid suture to the dentary and skull (Crompton, 1972; Allin, 1975, 1986; Allin & Hopson, 1992; Hopson, 1987, 1994; Crompton & Parker, 1978; Kemp, 1982; Sloan, 1983; Carroll, 1988). A projection of the dentary extended posteriorly and made contact with the squamosal. Morganucodon possessed the mammalian dentary-squamosal jaw joint adjacent to the reptilian articular-quadrate jaw joint (Kermack, Mussett, & Rigney, 1973, 1981; Carroll, 1988). It is classified as the first mammal, but it is a perfect intermediate. Now that a new jaw joint was established, the quadrate and articular were subsequently relieved of that function (Crompton, 1972; Allin, 1975, 1986; Allin & Hopson, 1992; Hopson, 1987, 1994; Crompton & Parker, 1978; Kemp, 1982; Sloan, 1983; Carroll, 1988). Ultimately, in Middle and Upper Jurassic mammals, the tiny quadrate, articular, and ring-like angular migrated as a unit to the middle ear where they joined the stapes and became the incus, malleus, and tympanic bones (Allin, 197 5, 1986; Allin & Hopson, 1992; Hopson, 1987, 1994; Kemp, 1982; Sloan, 1983; Carroll, 1988). "

Look, if you are not even going to look at the data and respond to it, you can't come back and try to tell us "I checked out your lists of alleged transitions. I have bad news for you lucaspa, none of your alleged transition series have any scientific merit"

Evolutionist Gerald Fleischer wrote a book entitled 'Evolutionary Principles of the Mammalian Ear" (1978, Berlin, Springer Velag), an authoritative treatment on the transition of the reptile to mammal transition of these bones to the ear. This book was reviewed by the magazine 'Evolution' (Vol. 33, #4, 1980)

But new fossils found since 1980 remove this problem. We now have the species with a double jointed jaw!

This is Ok to do when painting a scenario of `how it might have happened', as Gould does, but such scenarios should never be mistaken for `what could or did happen'.

However, your contention is that it could not have happened. To that, as you admit, all you need is the how it might. However, the fossil sequence in the website, having much more data than was available in 1980, now has the "how it did happen." You simply didn't look at the website.

3. This alleged transition creates another problem for evolutionists. Since the fossil record is so rich for this alleged ancient transition, why is the fossil record so sparse for all other alleged transitions, even those much more recent.

1. There are other transitions. You haven't looked at any of the others on my list.
2. Species to species transitions are rare because most speciation is by allopatric speciation. And we are not going to be lucky enough to have the location and time of the very limited geographical area and population at the surface so we can find them. I posted a few of the species to species transitions -- which is why I call it transitional individuals. The picture of the snails was a species to species transition.

4. How the jaw bone to ear bone transition occurred remains uncertain,

Not any more. Most of the references in the paragraph from the website come after Gould wrote.

contrary to Gould's assertion that each part of this transition served some useful function, this is wild speculation. The demonstration of `how' must include the step by step change that must take place in the DNA code.

Strawman. This is not necessary. Because "useful function", which is what you are concerned about, can be determined at the organismal level. That isn't at the DNA level.

The therapsids have many species which are concurrent to, and even outlived, those unrelated species that are used in the textbooks to create the illusion of this alleged reptile to mammal transition.

The "outlived" is another strawman. Your grandfather may outlive you. That doesn't change the fact that he is your ancestor. Notice that in Table 1 the more primitive forms always come before the more derived forms. That's all you need. That some primitive forms found and survived in an ecological niche after the derived forms evolved has nothing to do with anything.

All therapsida have jaws and skulls which we associate with reptiles. No therapsid fossil has ever been found showing the two jaw bones actually becoming ear bones

If you had read the website, you would have known this is false. Thank you for exposing your own untruths so well!

Creationist Luther Sunderland, working on behalf of the NY Board of Regents, inquired of Dr. Eldredge of the American Museum of Natural History; Dr. Raup- Curator of Chicago's Field Museum, and Dr. Dr. Colin Patterson Senior Paleontologist of the British Museum of Natural History, concerning fossil evidence for the reptile-mammal transition, they each in turn admitted that they were not aware of evidence for this transition.

This is a variation of the famous Sunderland lie. That lie had it that Raup stated there were no transitional forms. It has been refuted many times. This appears to be a variation on it that I have never seen before: that Sunderland specifically asked about this transitional species series. Can you please point to your source for this activity of Sunderland?

So, we can now see who has been duped. It is not me.

 

[ur32212451]

Natural selection or Darwinian evolution is a two-step process.
1. Variation. This is where new designs/alleles are added. Now, remember that an allele is a form of a gene. So, when you have a point mutation you create a new allele. Whole new DNA can also happen by copying mistakes. Genes can be duplicated, so where you had one copy of a gene now you have two. Whole chromosomes can also be duplicated. Translocation is making an extra copy of part of a chromosome and having it moved to a different chromosome and added to it. Transposons are added bits of DNA inserted into chromosomes. About 10% of human DNA is the transposon repeat Alu sequence.
2. Selection. Selection sorts thru all the variations and picks the best designs for that particular environment.

It is just as I said, Selection, be it artificial or natural, can only chose from among alleles that already exist. It can not be a cause of Evolution.

Your statement: "when you have a point mutation you create a new allele." is false. Most such point mutations are neutral and do not cause new alleles, e.g. ambiguity of amino acids of a protein. Some point mutations are very deleterious to the host creature and are quickly eliminated by natural selection, thereby preserving the integrity of the creature type. Other point mutations are slightly deleterious and may remain and even spread in a population as a genetic defect. Some neutral point mutations may produce beneficial effects to a population, e.g. neutral point mutations is how bacteria obtain variation, and certain mutated strands may prove beneficial to the host bacteria of a bacterial population by allowing it to resist an anti-bacterial agent.

Science does not know of any accumulation of point mutations in a population's lineage that ever produced a major Evolutionary change such as the morphological transformations that are required to occur if Evolution be true.

As Pierre Grasse stated (and many scientists agree):

"the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect. ... No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."
Dr. Pierre Grasse writes ('Evolution of Living Organisms', Academic Press, NY, 1977, p. 88)

Applied mathematics to the problem of mutations as the cause of Evolution seals the fate of Evolution as a materialistic process:

I welcome you to the debate and appeciate your input. Yes, lets have some fun. Here is more science facts that refute Evolution"

Dr. Edmund J. Ambrose, Emeritus Professor of Cell Biology at the University of London, took a careful look at the fossil evidence for evolution and, as many other scientists who take the time to look into the fine details have also, came to the following conclusion:

"At the present stage of geological research, we have to admit that there is nothing in the geological record that runs contrary to the view of conservative creationists, that God created each species separately, presumably from the dust of the earth."

Dr. E.J. Ambrose is an evolutionist. He has also examined the prospect of Evolution happening within own field of scientific endeavor, Cell Biology. He offers the following "Hard Science":

"The frequency with which a single non-harmful mutation is known to occur is 1 in 1000.The probability that two favorable mutations will occur is 1x10e3 x 10e3 = 1x10e6, 1 in a million. Studies of Drosophila have revealed that large numbers of genes are involved in the formation of separate structural elements. There are as many as 30 - 40 genes involved in a single wing structure. It is most unlikely that fewer than five genes could ever be involved in the formation of even the simplest new structure, previously unknown to the organism. The probability now becomes one in one thousand million million. We already know that mutations in living cells appear once in ten million to once in one hundred thousand million. It is evident that the probability of five favorable mutations occurring within the a single life cycle of an organism is effectively zero.

Let us consider the alternative possibility that five mutations occur spontaneously within a large population of interbreeding organisms. They will have to be brought together eventually in a single organism, if they are to generate the structure of a new level of complexity, favorable for natural selection.

According to our definition, each of the genes we are considering is due to a mutation which will give rise to hitherto unknown structure of additional complexity once it meets the other four genes in the fertilized egg cell. It would be indeed be surprising of any [one alone] of these mutations could, at the same time, modulate an existing structure in the manner that it would be selected favour ably by natural selection. It is only when the five genes find themselves together that a selective advantage will emerge. They are more likely to be present independently, within the population, as so called neutral genes. ... In the absence of selective advantage, the probability of the five genes coming together simultaneously within a single organism is extremely small." [about 1 in 1x10e15].

"Improbability increases at an enormous rate as the number of genes increases."

Evolutionist and cell biologist E.J. Ambrose, "The Nature and Origin of the Biological World", Ellis Horwood, 1982, pp 120-121, 123.

In light of the above, I conclude science has again soundly disproven Evolution. Only intellgent design can account for life as we know it becuase intelligence and know how can impose boundary conditions on the laws of physics and chemistry, matter and energy, to achieve a very specific purposeful goal. Nature has no such mind.

Postnote:

A. The Teleological Argument.
1. Every intelligent design has an intelligent designer.
2. The world manifests intelligent design.
3. Therefore, the world had an intelligent designer.

The most famous form of this argument is William Paley's watchmaker. Just as every watch has a watchmaker, even so, the world has a world maker. Famed scientists, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramashinge, on wether or not Darwinism has replaced Paley's design argument, noted:

"The speculations of 'The Origin of Species' turned out to be wrong, as we have seen in this chapter. It is ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out, but leave William Paley ... still in the tournament with a chance to be the ultimate winner."
(Evolution From Space,1982, P. 96).

 

[Mirror]

since when did proving evolution become a part this forum. i posted to show you are wrong. my coments are to be taken as constructive and not as insultive. if you choose to take it as insultive .do as you please.

 

[lucaspa]

two-step [/b]process.
1. Variation. This is where new designs/alleles are added. Now, remember that an allele is a form of a gene. So, when you have a point mutation you create a new allele. Whole new DNA can also happen by copying mistakes. Genes can be duplicated, so where you had one copy of a gene now you have two. Whole chromosomes can also be duplicated. Translocation is making an extra copy of part of a chromosome and having it moved to a different chromosome and added to it. Transposons are added bits of DNA inserted into chromosomes. About 10% of human DNA is the transposon repeat Alu sequence.
2. Selection. Selection sorts thru all the variations and picks the best designs for that particular environment.

It is just as I said, Selection, be it artificial or natural, can only chose from among alleles that already exist. It can not be a cause of Evolution.

That's a little disingenuous. Remember, evolution is the change in characteristics of a population over time. So, the cause of that change in characteristics of the population is indeed selection. By selecting only one or a few characteristics, selection changes the mean of the bell-shaped curve and shifts the curve to a new position.

Now, not all variation is mutation; much of variation in sexually reproducing organisms is due to combinations of alleles, since most characteristics are polygenic -- needing more than one gene. Selection tends to pick those combinations of genes, again shifting the characteristics of the population.

Evolution is not defined as "novelty". To get new alleles introduced into a population, you do indeed need copying mistakes. However, without selection Mendelian genetics tells us those alleles will simply remain at low frequency in the population - frequency being the proportion of individuals with that allele.

Your statement: "when you have a point mutation you create a new allele." is false. Most such point mutations are neutral and do not cause new alleles, e.g. ambiguity of amino acids of a protein.

It's still a new allele. It's just that the new allele doesn't have any effect on fitness. There is no ambiguity of the amino acids in the protein in the individual. What neutral mutations do is increase the variation in the population. What this means is that you can't say "the amino acid sequence of hemoglobin is identical in all individuals in the population."

Some point mutations are very deleterious to the host creature and are quickly eliminated by natural selection, thereby preserving the integrity of the creature type. Other point mutations are slightly deleterious and may remain and even spread in a population as a genetic defect.

These are very rare. The first is only some 2.6 per thousand mutations. The second depends on the size of the population. Spreading thru the population by chance depends on genetic drift, and this can only happen in small (< 50 individuals) populations. I can share those calculations if you like.

Some neutral point mutations may produce beneficial effects to a population, e.g. neutral point mutations is how bacteria obtain variation, and certain mutated strands may prove beneficial to the host bacteria of a bacterial population by allowing it to resist an anti-bacterial agent.

"neutral" and "beneficial" are contradictory in this context. Neutral and beneficial refers to the effect on the fitness coefficient. Neutral mutations have an s = 0. Beneficial mutations have s > 0. Not the same. If a mutation is beneficial, selection guarantees that the mutation will be "fixed" in the population in time. "Fixed" means that every individual in the population will h have that allele.

Science does not know of any accumulation of point mutations in a population's lineage that ever produced a major Evolutionary change such as the morphological transformations that are required to occur if Evolution be true.

Since we have only had the structure of DNA for 50 years and only recently have the technology to sequence DNA cheaply, and since the evolutionary changes you refer to are represented by fossils whose DNA has degraded, this is true but irrelevant. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Also, no one says that major evolutionary changes had to occur by point mutations. Point mutations are only one type of copying error. For instance, one major evolutionary transition was accomplished by gene duplication of the Hox cluster of genes.

What we do have is a growing body of work linking mutations to specific traits and features. I've listed just 3 examples at the end of the post: multilegged to 6 legs, gain of a tail, and the ability for fine speech in humans.

As Pierre Grasse stated (and many scientists agree):

"the mutations of bacteria and viruses are merely hereditary fluctuations around a median position; a swing to the right, a swing to the left, but no final evolutionary effect. ... No matter how numerous they may be, mutations do not produce any kind of evolution."
Dr. Pierre Grasse writes ('Evolution of Living Organisms', Academic Press, NY, 1977, p. 88)

Shell game. I already said evolution is a two-step process, remember? Variation and selection. Yes, without selection, mutations are fluctuations around a median position. Selection, by choosing one side of the median, shifts the median.

Here is more science facts that refute Evolution"

There are no facts in your next example. Just a quote from an individual, without even a citation. That's not "fact". I'll give the scientific paper with the facts that refute Ambrose:

"At the present stage of geological research, we have to admit that there is nothing in the geological record that runs contrary to the view of conservative creationists, that God created each species separately, presumably from the dust of the earth."

1. Williamson, PG, Paleontological documentation of speciation in cenozoic molluscs from Turkana basin. Nature 293:437-443, 1981.
3. "Unscrambling Time in the Fossil Record" Science vol 274, pg 1842, Dec 13, 1996. The primary article is by GA Goodfriend and SJ Gould "Paleontolgy and Chronolgy of Two evolutionary Transitions by Hybridization in the Bahamian Land Snail Cerion", pgs 1894-1897.
5. PR Sheldon, Parallel gradualistic evolution of Ordovician trilobites. Nature 330: 561-563, 1987. Rigourous biometric study of the pygidial ribs of 3458 specimens of 8 generic lineages in 7 stratgraphic layers covering about 3 million years. Gradual evolution where at any given time the population was intermediate between the samples before it and after it.
6. PD Gingerich, Paleontology and phylogeny: patterns of evolution of the species level in early Tertiary mammals. American J. of Science, 276: 407-424, 1980.
1. McNamara KJ, Heterochrony and the evolution of echinoids. In CRC Paul and AB Smith (eds) Echinoderm Phylogeny and Evolutionary Biology, pp149-163, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988 pg 140 of Futuyma.
2. Kellogg DE and Hays JD Microevolutionary patterns in Late Cenozoic Radiolara. Paleobiology 1: 150-160, 1975.

"The frequency with which a single non-harmful mutation is known to occur is 1 in 1000.

Fact, the harmful mutation rate is 2.6 per 1,000. That means the non-harmful rate is 997.4 per thousand.
PD Keightley and A Caballero, Genomic mutation rates for lifetime reproductive output and lifespan in Caenorhabditis elegans. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 94: 3823-3827, 1997

The probability that two favorable mutations will occur is 1x10e3 x 10e3 = 1x10e6, 1 in a million.

The problem here is that this ignores selection. It assumes that mutations must appear in the same animal. Instead, remember that selection fixes beneficial mutations such that every animal has the mutation. Thus when the second one appears, the odds that the two favorable mutations will be together is 1. Virtual certainty.

According to our definition, each of the genes we are considering is due to a mutation which will give rise to hitherto unknown structure of additional complexity once it meets the other four genes in the fertilized egg cell.

Considering this isn't how evolution works, we can ignore it. Strawman. No wonder I can't find Ambrose listed in PubMed.

It would be indeed be surprising of any [one alone] of these mutations could, at the same time, modulate an existing structure in the manner that it would be selected favour ably by natural selection.

Not surprising at all. Examples are known. Below is just a small list of favorable point mutations that moderated an existing structure such that it is favored by natural selection. Do a PubMed search and you will find literally hundreds more. BTW, this is in addition to the 3 for major structures listed later.
5: J Bacteriol 1999 Jun;181(11):3341-50. Isolation and characterization of mutations in Bacillus subtilis that allow spore germination in the novel germinant D-alanine. Paidhungat M, Setlow P
"Bacillus subtilis spores break their metabolic dormancy through a process called germination. Spore germination is triggered by specific molecules called germinants, which are thought to act by binding to and stimulating spore receptors. Three homologous operons, gerA, gerB, and gerK, were previously proposed to encode germinant receptors because inactivating mutations in those genes confer a germinant-specific defect in germination. To more definitely identify genes that encode germinant receptors, we isolated mutants whose spores germinated in the novel germinant D-alanine, because such mutants would likely contain gain-of-function mutations in genes that encoded preexisting germinant receptors. Three independent mutants were isolated, and in each case the mutant phenotype was shown to result from a single dominant mutation in the gerB operon."

7: EMBO J 1999 May 4;18(9):2352-63. The specificity of polygalacturonase-inhibiting protein (PGIP): a single amino acid substitution in the solvent-exposed beta-strand/beta-turn region of the leucine-rich repeats (LRRs) confers a new recognition capability. Leckie F, Mattei B, Capodicasa C, Hemmings A, Nuss L, Aracri B, De Lorenzo G,
Cervone F

9: Genetics 1998 Aug;149(4):1809-22. Gain-of-function mutations in the Caenorhabditis elegans lin-1 ETS gene identify a C-terminal regulatory domain phosphorylated by ERK MAP kinase. Jacobs D, Beitel GJ, Clark SG, Horvitz HR, Kornfeld K
"We identified and characterized six gain-of-function mutations that define a new class of lin-1 allele. These lin-1 alleles appeared to be constitutively active and unresponsive to negative regulation. Each allele has a single-base change "

1. BG Hall,Evolution on a petri dish. The evolved beta-galactosidase system as a model for studying evolution in the laboratory. Evolutionary Biology 15: 85-150,1982.
2. BG Hall, Evolution of new metabolic functions in laboratory organisms. in Evolution of Genes and Proteins ed. by M Nei and RK Koehn, Sinhouer Associates,Sunderland, MA, 1983. Also described at http://biocrs.biomed.brown.edu/Darwin/DI/AcidTest.html

If you are really interested in facts, and not just rhetoric, you should be searching thru the scientific literature instead of looking for quotes by anti-evolutionists. Your tactic is one of the reasons Christians are held in such poor repute: false witness doesn't help Christianity.

Evolutionist and cell biologist E.J. Ambrose, "The Nature and Origin of the Biological World", Ellis Horwood, 1982, pp 120-121, 123.

I always get tickled by creationists trying to label their sources as "evolutionist". It's the old Argument from Authority. On the one hand they tell us they want to discuss "facts". Then on the other they trot out a person as authority.

Only intellgent design can account for life as we know it becuase intelligence and know how can impose boundary conditions on the laws of physics and chemistry, matter and energy, to achieve a very specific purposeful goal. Nature has no such mind.

1. Since when is God absent from nature?
2. Natural selection is an unintelligent algorithm to get design. The goal is set by the environment. That natural (Darwinian) selection is such an algorithm is conclusively demonstrated by the fact that humans use natural selection to design when the problem is too tough for their intelligence.

 

[lucaspa]

Postnote:

A. The Teleological Argument.
1. Every intelligent design has an intelligent designer.
2. The world manifests intelligent design.
3. Therefore, the world had an intelligent designer.

The most famous form of this argument is William Paley's watchmaker. Just as every watch has a watchmaker, even so, the world has a world maker.
Famed scientists, Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramashinge, on wether or not Darwinism has replaced Paley's design argument, noted:

"The speculations of 'The Origin of Species' turned out to be wrong, as we have seen in this chapter. It is ironic that the scientific facts throw Darwin out, but leave William Paley ... still in the tournament with a chance to be the ultimate winner."
(Evolution From Space,1982, P. 96).

As good astronomers and physicists that Hoyle and Wickramashinge were (altho in Hoyle's case that's debatable, since he never admitted his Steady State theory was falsified), they are terrible biologists. Their "chapter" has all the GIGO calculations of how to get life.

Again, humans use Darwinian selection to design, and the kicker that the humans did not do the designing is that Darwinian selection gives designs that the humans do not know how they work! What watchmaker ever failed to know how the watch worked?

Anyway, here are those references about point mutations yielding changes of form:
1a. http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature716_fs.html Hox protein mutation and macroevolution of the insect body plan. Ronshaugen M, McGinnis N, McGinnis W. Nature 2002 Feb 21;415(6874):914-7 Mutate one serine to alanine and change limb # from multiple limbs of crustaceans to 6 limbs of insects. "To test this, we generated mutant versions of Artemia Ubx in which C-terminal Ser/Thr residues were mutated to Ala. In the first such mutant (Art Ubx S/T to A 1–5), the first five Ser and Thr residues in the C-terminus are changed to Ala. This mutant Ubx has little limb-repression function, similar to wild-type Artemia Ubx (Fig. 3). However, the mutation of one additional Ser in a CKII consensus site (Art Ubx S/T to A 1–5 and 7) results in a Ubx that strongly represses embryonic limbs (Fig. 3)."
11 Zhang J, Webb DM, Podlaha O. Genetics. 2002 Dec;162(4):1825-35. Accelerated protein evolution and origins of human-specific features: Foxp2 as an example.
31. Molecular evolution of FOXP2, a gene involved in speech and language. Wolfgang Enard, Molly Przeworski, Simon E. Fisher, Cecilia S. L. Lai, Victor Wiebe, Takashi Kitano, Anthony P. Monaco, Svante Pääbo Nature 418, 869 - 872 (22 Aug 2002)
"Tracing a Backbone's Evolution Through a Tunicate's Lost Tail" Science vol. 274, pp 1082-1083, Nov. 15, 1996' Primary article is "Requirement of the Manx Gene for Expression of Chordate Freatures in a Tailless Ascidian Larvae" pp 1205-1208.

Have fun reading some real science for a change. Should be quite refreshing after that creationist drek you've been wading thru.

 

[lucaspa]

since when did proving evolution become a part this forum. i posted to show you are wrong. my coments are to be taken as constructive and not as insultive. if you choose to take it as insultive .do as you please.

Mirror, who are you addressing? Oh, must be me.
1. You shouted. Now, most people, when they have been rude, apologize. Even when the rudeness was accidental. Perhaps even more when the rudeness was accidental. I guess that isn't part of your makeup.
2. When the comments are completely negative, it's a little difficult to take them as constructive. If you want us to take them as constructive, you should consider changing how you word them. Half the responsibility for communicating in these discussions is yours.
3. Ur originally wanted some answers to some questions and posted some comments about evolution. I obliged with answers. Now he has decided to launch a full frontal assault on evolution in this thread. Perhaps you might want to ask him to start a new thread for his attack on evolution.

 

[ur32212451]

Can you document that? The closest I've found is the work of Edward Blythe, who did come across what is called "purifying" or "stabilizing" selection. This is a conservative type of natural selection. But no creationist had ever hit on the idea of selection adapting a population to a changing environment.

Yes Edward Blyth wrote several articles on natural selection ('Magazine of Natural History', 1836), a periodical to which Darwin subscribed, one year before Darwin 'thought' of the idea of 'natural selection'. Darwin biographer, and evolutionists, Loren Eisely, has stated that Darwin failed to give Blyth the credit due him for his ideas on natural selection.

In the late 18th century, Creationist James Hutton’s gave a description of what we today call ‘natural selection’, acting as a conservative force that helps preserve the continued existence of creature type:

“If an organized body is not in the situation and circumstances best adapted to its sustenance and propagation, then, in conceiving an indefinite variety among the individuals of that species, we must be assured, that, on the one hand, those which depart most from the best adapted constitution, will be most liable to perish, while, on the other hand, those organized bodies, which most approach to the best constitution for the present circumstances, will be best adapted to continue, in preserving themselves and multiplying the individuals of their race.”

Creationist William Paley published argument for selection processes as a natural conservative force by which nature removes unfit individuals from populations, thereby preserving the integrity of a species by limiting any sustained drift toward increasingly inferior offspring (William Paley, 'Natural Theology', 1803). Darwin had read Paley's book and was very impressed by it. Others made mention of natural selection also (two papers before the Royal Society in 1813, and another one in 1831).

Stephen Jay Gould points out in his article 'Darwinism and the Expansion of the Evolution Theory' (Science, 216, April 13, 1982, page 380):
"Darwinians cannot simply claim that natural selection operates since everyone, including Paley and the natural theologians, advocated
selection as a device for removing unfit individuals at both extremes and preserving intact and forever, the created type. ... The Reverend
William Paley's classic work 'Natural Theology', published in 1803, also contain many references to selective elimination."

Natural selection comes in 3 flavors.
1. Directional selection. This is the one we mean most often when referring to natural selection. This happens in response to an environment that changes in a particular direction, and shifts the characteristics of the population to a new mean.
2. Stabilizing or purifying selection. This happens when a population is already well-adapted to a stable environment. Almost any change is going to be for the worse, and therefore the individual will be less fit. So stabilizing selection removes those variations and keeps just one or a few that are at the fitness peak.
3. Disruptive selection. This happens when a population has a geographical range such that subpopulations face different envirohments in different parts of the range. Those environments are directional selection and tend to pull the population into two or more separate populations. Gene flow of interbreeding between the populations tends to stop that. Humans right now are under disruptive selection.

Well stated. Also very consistent with Creation by an intelligent Creator (God). Again, as I previously stated, these variations of selection can only select existing alleles, therefore Natural Selection can not be a cause of Evolution.

However, I am interested as to why you say humans are undergoing disruptive selection. Could you elaborate on this a little more. It sounds interesting.

 

[Bushido216]

Natural Selection wasn't Darwin's idea. The idea that Natural Selection acting alone could be a positive force for change was Darwin's idea.

 

[ur32212451]

Mirror, who are you addressing? Oh, must be me.
1. You shouted. Now, most people, when they have been rude, apologize. Even when the rudeness was accidental. Perhaps even more when the rudeness was accidental. I guess that isn't part of your makeup.
2. When the comments are completely negative, it's a little difficult to take them as constructive. If you want us to take them as constructive, you should consider changing how you word them. Half the responsibility for communicating in these discussions is yours.
3. Ur originally wanted some answers to some questions and posted some comments about evolution. I obliged with answers. Now he has decided to launch a full frontal assault on evolution in this thread. Perhaps you might want to ask him to start a new thread for his attack on evolution.

I believe I'm responding to issues you have raised here on this thread. Yes, before I came here I was already quite familiar with the Fossil record. It does not support the Neo-Darwinian phyletic gradualism that you allude to in the alleged Therapsida ear movement.

The therapsida is a huge collection of diverse creature types, just as the reptiles and mammals are. As Thomas Kemp, a leading expert on Therapsids, pointed out, each type of Therapsida appear abruptly in the fossil record and disappear abruptly some time later, without any ancestral or descendant relationship to any other member of the Therapsida type. At the American Museum of Natural History, I've seen the Therapsida types that were used to show the alleged Evolution of ear bone movement. None of the specimens shared the same morphology, there were huge differnces between of them in size shape and structure. They clearly did not share an ancestral-descendant relationship with each other. They were simply picked to show how evolution of the ear might look if it were to be found in the fossil record. It's circular reasoning to arrange a few specimens from a large mostly contemporaneous group

You also quoted David Raup and Steven Stanley as supporting evolutionary transitions in their 1971 book:

Dr.David Raup, curator of geology at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago,"Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology," Bulletin, Field Museum of Natural History, January 1979 has stated:

"Darwin's theory of natural selection has always been closely linked to evidence from fossils, and probably most people assume that the fossils
provide a very important part of the the general argument that is made in favor of Darwinian interpretations of the history of life.
Unfortunately this is not strictly true. ... The evidence we find in the geologic record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural
selection as we would like it to be. Darwin was completely aware of this. He was embarrassed by the fossil record, because it didn't look
the way he predicted it would, and, as a result, he devoted a long section of the 'Origin of the Species' to an attempt to explain and
rationalize the differences. ... Darwin's general solution to the incompatibility of fossil evidence and his theory was to say the fossil
record was a very incomplete one. ... Well, we are now about 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly
expanded. We now have a quarter million fossil species, but the situation has not changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly
jerky, and, ironically, we have fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time. By this I mean that some of
the classic cases of Darwinian change in the fossil record, such as the evolution of the horse, in North America, have had to be discarded or
modified as a result of more detailed information - that what appeared to be a nice simple progression when relatively few data were available
now appears to be much more complex and much less gradualistic. So Darwin's problem has not been alleviated. ..."

Steven Stanley (1979) points out:
"In part, the role of paleontology in evolutionary research has been defined narrowly because of a false belief, tracing back to Darwin
and his early followers, that the fossil record is woefully incomplete. Actually, the record is of sufficiently high quality to
allow us to undertake certain kinds of meaningful analysis at the level of the species."

In his book ('Macro-evolution: Pattern and Process', 1979, p.39),
Stanley points out evidence #5 for Punctuated Equilibrium:
"The known fossil record fails to document a single example of phyletic evolution accomplishing a major morphologic transition and hence offers no evidence that the gradualistic model can be valid."

He also writes:

"Since the time of Darwin, paleontologists have found themselves confronted with evidence that conflicts with gradualism, yet the
message of the Fossil record has been ignored. This strange circumstance constitutes a remarkable chapter in the history of
science, and one that gives students of the fossil record cause for concern,." Dr. Steven Stanley, "The New Evolutionary Timetable" (1981)



The fossil record is a record that looks like Creation: It is a record of the abrupt appearance of Creature types followed by stasis. With regard to types of creatures the fossil record shows bushiness which one would expect from creatures richly endowed with variation from the onset. I've read all those books by Romer, Colby, Kemp, Carrol et. al. They reveal that the fossil record provides only the leaves ar the end of the evolutionists alleged phylogenetic tree, and not ancestor-descendant relationships. This is a well known scientific fact.

 

[ur32212451]

Natural Selection wasn't Darwin's idea. The idea that Natural Selection acting alone could be a positive force for change was Darwin's idea.

You are correct. That was what Darwin believed. Darwin was wrong. Natural Selection acting alone can not be the cause of Evolution (i.e. All creatures extant and extinct share a common ancestry). Darwin did not understand genetics at all, therefore he did not understand the causes of variation. In 1865, Mendel sent Darwin his paper detailing Mendellian genetics. Darwin never commented on it. Alfred Russel Wallace, cofounder of what became known as Darwin's theory believed that Mendel's paper was very damaging to his and Darwin's theory.