Common ground Creationists and Atheists "can" agree with - without too much effort

BobRyan said:

declaring "victory" over your own statements that are of the form "somewhere some place there exists a text that has the right answer to what you posted" regarding abiogenesis is not the compelling everyone-goes-for-that solution you may have at first supposed.

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There are a few that oppose it. But most of them are not in a position where their opinion has any credibility.

If one cannot argue honestly against the idea their opinion is worthless. Worse yet people that do this are almost always wrong. If one is right an honest argument will do the job. No need to play silly games.

BobRyan said:

There is no "ecosystem" that will turn rocks into a horse or into bacteria.

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The difficulty here is that you are arguing against two different processes. Evolution requires the existence of creatures which reproduce with randomly distributed heritable variation. Once such creatures exist then, yes, there is an "ecosystem" which will allow a bacteria to become a horse. You may want to argue that this cannot be a natural process, but it will be a different argument than one you might make against the possibility that such creatures came to be by natural causes in the first place.

BobRyan said:

I played that game for a day in pre-school -- now we look for facts.

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All of the facts are against you. That is why you are admitting that you are wrong when you use an old refuted argument.

You seem to think that there is a goal to evolution. Here is a hint, the evolution of the horse was not a goal. It was a result.

BobRyan said:

Hint... first two posts of this thread.

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The ones with the failed arguments? Yeah, those were refuted a long time ago if you paid any attention.

Since you do not know what evidence is either would you like to discuss that?

BobRyan said:

On the contrary - I point to real life observations of over 50,000 generations.. you point to "I hope" arguments about some text book that you hope might have an answer... (an answer which you don't post).

So then "blind assertions" hmmm...

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Yes, I saw your claims about the long-term E.coli experiment.

I'm not sure why you think that helps your case, because it should be evident to anyone that the scale and scope of a handful of bacteria cultures in beakers in a lab for a couple dozen years is *not* the same thing in scale and scope to an entire ecosystem evolving for 4 billion years.

All you're doing is reinforcing that you don't understand the difference between a beaker and the entire planet.

BobRyan said:

The Taj Mahal can be had - when basic materials are "arranged".

Creationists have no argument with God forming an animal from the dust of the ground.

The "point of debate" is when the claim is made that the dust of the ground will do that by itself.

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The point of my post was that emergent properties exist that aren't intrinsic to the sub-components. (See other posts about the wetness property of water, etc.)

The first of my listed emergent properties is absolutely natural, and the second is arguably so (it's just "contamination"). Only after that do we get to the intentionally created emergent properties. The difference with biological systems is that those emergent properties are all natural.

pitabread said:

Yes, I saw your claims about the long-running E.coli experiment.

I'm not sure why you think that helps your case, because it should be evident to anyone that the scale and scope of a handful of bacteria cultures in beakers in a lab for a couple dozen years is *not* the same thing in scale and scope to an entire ecosystem evolving for 4 billion years.

All you're doing is reinforcing that you don't understand the difference between a beaker and the entire planet.

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It is also likely that the event that produced eukaryotes has been repeated. What creationists so often forget is that life evolves and fills available niches. The first eukaryote was likely not much of an upgrade. But after millions of years of evolution it would have improved and filled available niches. If the event happened again it would likely run into competition that it could not handle. Much like when the first life arose it would have driven out other competitors out through evolution the same would apply to any Johnny come lately eukaryotes.

BobRyan said:

And is "observed" over 50,000 generations (more than all of human evolution) - to NOT even make it to eukaryote

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50,000 generations is approximately the number of generations since we split from the other great apes. Was that a greater feat then the first eukaryotes? Let's see.

The first eukaryote had to learn to live with an undigested lunch inside of it that was absorbing stuff from inside of it. It learned to live with this parasite and eventually let it have virtually all of its lowest level food stuff in return from receiving secretions that it can use for fuel directly. That's quite a leap, but also quite advantageous.

What about humans? I'll compare humans to chimps only because we don't know exactly what the common ancestor was like, though it was more chimp-like. I'll bracket with two "key" features about humans -- upright walking and intelligence.

Walking upright.

Other great apes do walk upright somewhat, but it is not their primary model of motion. To walk upright more required our bones to change shapes. Some got longer, others shorter. Some got thinner, others thicker. Some "bumps" got bigger, others smaller. The dominant muscle groups changed and the shape of the hips and certain joints changed, but all of the same muscles and bones are found in each. The growth of the bones (how thick or thin, how long, how large the bump) is controlled by various genes during fetal development and childhood. Altering these genes can happen by standard forms of mutation and changes that make life better and be preserved in the next generations.

Internal organs and biochemistry.

Certainly humans have whole new organs, right? None that I can name. The intestines and digestive tract got shorter after cooking developed and less resources were needed for digestion. (Cooking also lowered the need for strong jaws and allowed the skull to get thinner and larger and accommodate even more brain.) Other similar structural changes can be seen, but no new organs. The same four-chambered heart, etc. What about the biochemistry? Chimps and humans have different blood surely? Nope, we have the same ABO blood-types.

Brains, certainly our brains are very different, right?

Chimp brains (and those of the common ancestor) are already large compared to most non-apes and especially non-primates. They exhibit nearly all of the basal components of our self-recognized intelligence. We just have these in spades. Their vocal communications are much simpler because their voice boxes are higher up in the throat. This allowed our ancestors to develop more sophisticated communications and drove a need for the larger brain to handle them.

Really, its just the sophistication of the brain and the upright walking that make us seem all that different from our chimp cousins. Mostly it's superficial.

Danthemailman said:

The Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel.

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Danthemailman said:

I recommend that you read "The Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel. He is a former atheist who is now a devout Christian.

"My road to atheism was paved by science...but, ironically, so was my later journey to God." - Lee Strobel

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Isn’t a big part of the end of that book about having to take a leap of faith?

Having to take a leap of faith is not compelling evidence of God’s existence.

BobRyan said:

Indeed brown hair vs white hair distribution changes in rabbits that remain rabbits... not evolution because a bazillion brown-hair white-hair ratio changes in phenotype over billions of years of time -- that leave you with "rabbits still" is NOT the salient point proven for evolutionism... it is the "salient point refuted"

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What are you talking about? What exactly are you credentials in biology? I find it hard to believe anyone who knows what alleles are would state what you have stated.

Larnievc said:

What are you talking about? What exactly are you credentials in biology? I find it hard to believe anyone who knows what alleles are would state what you have stated.

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Looks like he fell into the old "evolution is speciation" trap, sorry rabbit hole. (It's not of course.)

BobRyan said:

1. The "claim" is that those prokaryotes did not turn into eukaryotes not even over 50,000 generations with "direct observation".
2. The "claim" was that in less than 50,000 generations the human race supposedly evolved.
3. The "claim" was that bacteria are by design farrrrr more genetically adaptive to their environment than are humans.

Did you actually refute any of those "claims"? IF so I have not seen that post of yours on this thread ... feel free to link to it

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The issue here is you're trying to draw (or at least suggest) equivalencies between clearly non-equivalent scenarios.

Come to think of it, didn't you try to make similar claims comparing the Cambrian explosion to the long-term E.coli experiment awhile back?

BobRyan said:

read the OP ... first two posts.

But if it is your clam that bacteria never advance up the taxonomy ladder to get to horse... I am not one of those that complain about that.. I too state the very same thing.

Pick a lane.

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You write too much to say too little.

Your first post list 3 things (ABC) that certainly are true. The third is silly (C) and the other two are very basic (The earth was not always inhabited with life and current life is diverse.)

The rest of it is so muddled that it is hard to make anything of it. Various posters have replied to parts of it and the conversation has evolved. Deal with it.

BobRyan said:

1. The "claim" is that those prokaryotes did not turn into eukaryotes not even over 50,000 generations with "direct observation".
2. The "claim" was that in less than 50,000 generations the human race supposedly evolved.
3. The "claim" was that bacteria are by design farrrrr more genetically adaptive to their environment than are humans.

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You never did tell us what the environment was, what the selection criteria were like.