Creation or Evolution from the Creationism Section

[iambeeman]

I'm not a scientist but I build all sorts of things, and you always end up with a better product when you know what your building before you start. Evolution is (to possibly over simplify) a make-it-up-as-you-go way of doing things, and nature is too well thought out for that approach. That's my opinion, so wings keep it up!!!!

 

[matthewgar]

I'm not a scientist but I build all sorts of things, and you always end up with a better product when you know what your building before you start. Evolution is (to possibly over simplify) a make-it-up-as-you-go way of doing things, and nature is too well thought out for that approach. That's my opinion, so wings keep it up!!!!

Actually it's just as you would expect it to be if evolution is true. For every perfect design there is in the world there are flaws, or wasted mistakes, I'm still hoping someone writes the book, "Unintelligent design." and shows all the various bizzare things out there, like the rabbits digestive system, or giraffe's neck nerve, or the blind spot in our eye, among other things. So much of our bodies and in nature in general, look more like they were jurry rigged then designed perfect at any point.

 

[Papias]

Matt wrote:

Actually it's just as you would expect it to be if evolution is true. For every perfect design there is in the world there are flaws, or wasted mistakes,

very true, and to the glory of God. Saying that God designed every detail is not only saying that God is a micromanger, but also that God is an incompetent designer. The Giraffe neck nerve is terrible, and there are lots of other examples, like, who would design a fully aquatic animal to have to breathe air? That's really stupid, yet, that's what whales have to do. Or look at sea turtles that have to come on land to lay eggs, and on and on.....

God is a much more powerful creator. He's a powerful enough creator to create a creation with the ability to fill in the details itself. Wow!

Or, one can be a creationist and diminish God to an incompetent micromanager. Your choice.

Papias

 

[matthewgar]

Matt wrote:


very true, and to the glory of God. Saying that God designed every detail is not only saying that God is a micromanger, but also that God is an incompetent designer. The Giraffe neck nerve is terrible, and there are lots of other examples, like, who would design a fully aquatic animal to have to breathe air? That's really stupid, yet, that's what whales have to do. Or look at sea turtles that have to come on land to lay eggs, and on and on.....

God is a much more powerful creator. He's a powerful enough creator to create a creation with the ability to fill in the details itself. Wow!

Or, one can be a creationist and diminish God to an incompetent micromanager. Your choice.

Papias

To see just how much more complicated the problem the creationists face, go see my topic 2 down on just why same designer, same design fails to explain alot of what we see in nature, and thats just genetic, could do a nother bunch more full posts on just why it doesn't work with what we see biologically.

 

[rcorlew]

Matt wrote:


very true, and to the glory of God. Saying that God designed every detail is not only saying that God is a micromanger, but also that God is an incompetent designer. The Giraffe neck nerve is terrible, and there are lots of other examples, like, who would design a fully aquatic animal to have to breathe air? That's really stupid, yet, that's what whales have to do. Or look at sea turtles that have to come on land to lay eggs, and on and on.....

God is a much more powerful creator. He's a powerful enough creator to create a creation with the ability to fill in the details itself. Wow!

Or, one can be a creationist and diminish God to an incompetent micromanager. Your choice.

Papias

If life were only about science you may have a point, but life is much more than science, life has purpose and in order to judge the design you must first know the purpose.

 

[iambeeman]

Papias-

God is a micromanger

So let me see if I understand, doing things right the first time is micromanaging? Would it be fair of me to say that billions of years of untold genetic misfits dieing and suffering makes kind of a cruel god?

Giraffe neck nerve is terrible

“As the recurrent nerve hooks around the subclavian artery or aorta, it gives off several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives off branches, more numerous on the left than on the right side, to the mucous membrane and muscular coat of the esophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibers of the trachea; and some pharyngeal filaments to the Constrictor pharyngis inferior.” theodora.com/anatomy

who would design a fully aquatic animal to have to breathe air?

with out doing any research i gotta ask why would air breathing animal spend SO much time in the water that it would have to evolve in to a strictly aquatic animal?

I could keep going but I'm not going to, and that's just the science, never mind scripture.

 

[shernren]

with out doing any research i gotta ask

I think we may have a problem here.

 

[matthewgar]

Papias-


So let me see if I understand, doing things right the first time is micromanaging? Would it be fair of me to say that billions of years of untold genetic misfits dieing and suffering makes kind of a cruel god?



“As the recurrent nerve hooks around the subclavian artery or aorta, it gives off several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives off branches, more numerous on the left than on the right side, to the mucous membrane and muscular coat of the esophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibers of the trachea; and some pharyngeal filaments to the Constrictor pharyngis inferior.” theodora.com/anatomy



with out doing any research i gotta ask why would air breathing animal spend SO much time in the water that it would have to evolve in to a strictly aquatic animal?

I could keep going but I'm not going to, and that's just the science, never mind scripture.

The nerve yes serves some purposes now, but a more efficient way would have easily have been done if it was created from scratch rather then simply using the design of other mamals, doesn't work so well as a explanation from a designer, easy to understand from evolution.

As for whales remember there is no path or goal, so as they spent more time in the water being more adapted at being in the water would have been an advantage.

 

[Papias]

iambeeman wrote:

So let me see if I understand, doing things right the first time is micromanaging?

Insisting on doing every detail yourself in the wrong way is. It's clear from a huge number of cases in the animal kingdom that many, many details are done in unbelievably stupid ways. Human designers would be fired for the kind of idiocy we see. I choose not ot ascribe that to God. I hope you don't either.

Would it be fair of me to say that billions of years of untold genetic misfits dieing and suffering makes kind of a cruel god?

Theodicy is a whole other issue. If you want to discuss that, start a thread on it, maybe in the philosphy forum.

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Giraffe neck nerve is terrible
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“As the recurrent nerve hooks around the subclavian artery or aorta, it gives off several cardiac filaments to the deep part of the cardiac plexus. As it ascends in the neck it gives off branches, more numerous on the left than on the right side, to the mucous membrane and muscular coat of the esophagus; branches to the mucous membrane and muscular fibers of the trachea; and some pharyngeal filaments to the Constrictor pharyngis inferior.” theodora.com/anatomy

Yep, and why not run those branches directly, and thus not have the rest of the whole nerve bundle travel a whole extra 15 feet? Duh. It's not like there aren't plenty of other nerve bundles travelling the route from the head to thorax - just bundle the branches with the bundles that actually go where the branches need to go, and route the rest of the bundle correctly? I hire engineers, and if an applicant said she'd run wires all over that aren't needed (not that she'd be stupid enough to say that), she wouldn't get very far.
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with out doing any research i gotta ask why would air breathing animal spend SO much time in the water that it would have to evolve in to a strictly aquatic animal?

As shernren pointed out, your problem is obvious. One likely reason they would spend that much time in the water is that they could likely get more food there. There are plenty of other possible reasons too, like hiding from predators, temperature regulation, etc.

I could keep going but I'm not going to,

Why not keep going? You've got dozens or more of stupid designs in the animal kingdom to hand wave away! What about the beetles that have wings underneath hard carapaces that can't open, so the wings are never used for anything? Or our own tails that we each grow, then reabsorb before birth? You didn't reply about the sea turtles - some sea snakes have lay eggs on land too. What about our erector pillai - the little muscles that give us goosebumps? In our monkeylike ancestors, these raised the hair to either give more insulation if we were cold, or to make us look bigger if we were threatened. Today, we don't have enough hair to allow the resulting goosebumps to give us more insulation, and having goosebumps sure doesn't make one look bigger and stronger. The erector pillai are thus vestigial, and if one thinks of God as a micromanager, an example of poor design.

and that's just the science, never mind scripture.

Are you saying there is poor design in scripture? I wasn't saying that. Are you going to propose examples?

Papias

 

[Skaloop]

I could keep going but I'm not going to, and that's just the science, never mind scripture.

What science? You haven't presented any science.

 

[iambeeman]

I'm not sure we are answering the original question and I don't want to monopolize what someone else started, so I won't be posting here after this. Also I don't have as much time as I'd like to for the reading required to refute everything.

I'll be addressing 2 examples ya'll brought up.

The recurrent laryngeal nerve - you have to look at the way ALL the structures develop from the initial fertilization of the ovum on ward and the developmental constraints that are necessitated from the reality that certain systems HAVE to be functioning BEFORE other structures even exist. I'm not aware of any man made engineering feats that require the constraints and the resulting necessary compromises in structure that we see here, so any comparison would be oversimplification.


Whale evolution - the fist species I found was Ambulocetus. Sorry but the computer wouldn't let me put the pics on. Thecriteriausedtodetermineifit'sinthefamilytreeofwhales were:

1. All incisors parallel with the tooth row—not preserved in Ambulocetus
2. Medial lambdoidal crest semicircular—not preserved in Ambulocetus
3. Nasals retracted—rostrum (snout) not preserved in Ambulocetus
4. Protocones small (features of teeth)
5. Accessory cusps large (features of teeth)

so the remainds found where not complete enough to make the determination but it was still published as a transitional fossil in "Science" in '94.

Also no humerus, scapula or pelvic girdle where found making it impossible to determine leg positioning or function. Not to mention the fact that the femur and small proximal piece of tibia where found 15 feet above the rest, and with no pelvic girdle it can't be determined if it even belongs to the same animal.

All this together makes any findings suspect. If such flimsy findings can be touted as "good" then the ones doing the touting are simply working from the same assumptions.

who would design a fully aquatic animal to have to breathe air? That's really stupid, yet, that's what whales have to do.

I realise all that doesn't answer this but I gotta say my question is just as valid

why would air breathing animal spend SO much time in the water that it would have to evolve in to a strictly aquatic animal?

and this is the same as saying "evolution-did-it"

One likely reason they would spend that much time in the water is that they could likely get more food there. There are plenty of other possible reasons too, like hiding from predators, temperature regulation, etc.

instead of saying "we really don't know, and don't have any way of knowing"

 

[Papias]

iambeeman wrote:

The recurrent laryngeal nerve - you have to look at the way ALL the structures develop from the initial fertilization of the ovum on ward and the developmental constraints that are necessitated from the reality that certain systems HAVE to be functioning BEFORE other structures even exist.

Looking at the anatomy, the RLN runs on one side of the aorta, neccessitating the stupid design. Yet simply running it on the other side of the aorta from the start would not require the stupid design. What reason are you stating that it has to run on one side of the aorta as opposed to the other, from the start, other than evolutionary heritage?

Creationist attempts at explaining the many poor designs we see so often amount to further shrinking God's power, saying that he's impotent to create a solution to a problem that we could solve easily. It usually amounts to saying that God is not all powerful.

All this together makes any findings suspect. If such flimsy findings can be touted as "good" then the ones doing the touting are simply working from the same assumptions.

So are you complaining about what one scientist wrote when the first ambulocetus was found, or about the overall placement of ambulocetus with the many subsequent fossils found? Are you saying that you know all of the features that are transitional, and disput them all? Have you read the papers, and are you a biologist? It sounds like you are, in typical creationist fashion, complaining about the completeness of an initial find in order to cast doubt on the much larger body of evidence we have today, from a position of being outside the field and ignorant of much of the evidence.

I realise all that doesn't answer this {the question of why a competent designer would design a fully aquatic creature to need to breathe air} but I gotta say my question is just as valid.

OK, which question of yours?

instead of saying "we really don't know, and don't have any way of knowing"

No, it is fine to say "I really don't know". Scientists in the field may have some evidence one way or another. However, the main point here is that the creationist uses "why would they spend so much time in the water" to imply that they wouldn't, and hence, to cast doubt on whale evolution.

A moments reflection shows that just not knowing how it happened is not at all the same as saying it didn't happen.

For instance, I have no idea what you had for dinner yesterday. However, I know that people have dinner often, and that it is reasonable to guess that you did, in fact have dinner.

Similarly, land animals spend a lot of time in the water often, for a number of unsurprising reasons. If you are going to still tout the "we don't know why they spent time in the water" line, (even though looking for food or escaping predators or the heat or other reasons make sense), I'd like to kindly ask you to clarify if you are implying that you find that time in the water to be something that you doubt happened. Besides, what kind of fossil evidence are you looking for that would say why they spent time in the water? A chiseled tablet saying "I'm out looking for food in the water, be back at 5."?

We can get to these later, if you like:

• What about the beetles that have wings underneath hard carapaces that can't open, so the wings are never used for anything?
• Or our own tails that we each grow, then reabsorb before birth?
• You didn't reply about the sea turtles -
• some sea snakes have lay eggs on land too.
• What about our erector pillai - the little muscles that give us goosebumps? In our monkeylike ancestors, these raised the hair to either give more insulation if we were cold, or to make us look bigger if we were threatened. Today, we don't have enough hair to allow the resulting goosebumps to give us more insulation, and having goosebumps sure doesn't make one look bigger and stronger. The erector pillai are thus vestigial, and if one thinks of God as a micromanager, an example of poor design.

As with everything else, recognizing evolution doesn't diminish God, like creationism does, but instead makes God more glorious, powerful, and grand.

Papias