Creationist have problems with evolution because evolution makes sense.

[Hespera]

thaumaturgy or any evolutionist:

Please tell me when exactly did all the plantlife begin, in as specific time frame as possible and then how we went from zoo plankton to a Redwood, etc...

See as much as evolutionist cannot wrap their minds around a creator creating life, and the heavens and earth in six days - which you and I cannot understand, for we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what is possible, and before we do, history, mathematics, science will be rewritten a few more times (to adapt to our new understanding). Nevertheless, I cannot wrap my mind around all the varieties of plant life, insects, reptiles, animals, and man all evolving from one cell creatures.

We think we are so smart... and God looks at us, like we look at a dog or a cat... with amusement and love. "They are so smart... but in reality, they have not a clue... It is the reason I have to take care of them."

Can any of you super brains figure out how a billion years of development take place in a precieved time frame of 24-hours? Is it possible? ABSOLUTELY - it all about percieved time and actual speed, right? Are we moving at roughly 25,000 MPH, yet what is our preception... I know this is simple... but it a simple example...

Hi Craig! I cannot tell you EXACTLY when plant life began, but if you want to look up the approximate date you can. I'm not a paleobotanist.

As for how zoo plankton (sic) evolved into redwoods, well, first off you got the name totally wrong, its phytoplankton that are the single cell plants drifting about in the sea.

If you want to know the story on plant evolution there are good sources that can address that far better than I. In getting your mind to grasp it though, start with a single cell that can divide to form two identical cells.

Then let it change ever so little so that the two cells stay joined,,, and can form into long filaments this way each cell dividing into identical daughter cells. Its not a true multicellular plant because each cell is fully capable of living independently. But its a start. There are colonial plants with more complex structure, there are ones with cells that have different functions.

There are no huge jumps, just the same sort of little steps that take you from wolf to toy poodle.

I think if you care to study your biology you will find it easier and easier to wrap your mind around these concepts. Calculus looks hard at first too, and its a struggle to internalize some of the ways it works. But its real!

Calculus, or the incremental steps in an evolutionary sequence seem to me far far easier to grasp than a spirit that lives outside of time and space, can be every where at once doing anything it wishes. Try to figure how THAT came to be, and how it does things.

Simple life forms just following the principles of chemistry and physics to their logical ends is a snap to grasp compared to trying to figure what God would be.

if there is a God and he bothers with amusement i think it would be with people who would do any kind of triple back flip to avoid seeing the obvious about how he went about letting His creation unfold.

 

[Split Rock]

thaumaturgy or any evolutionist:

Hi Craig

Please tell me when exactly did all the plantlife begin, in as specific time frame as possible and then how we went from zoo plankton to a Redwood, etc...

Plants evolved from green algae, possibly at the end of the Ordovician period, but certainly by the Silurian Period. There are fossil spores, membraneous sheets and banded tubes found in the Ordovician, which infers the existance of terrestrial plants, but this is still controversial. Silurian fossils feature desiccation resistant spores, plant cuticles and tracheids. These are without serious question from terrestrial plants. The earliest well described vascular plant is a primitive type called Cooksonia (they lacked leaves, flowers and roots); the earliest specimen was found in the middle Silurian Period. The earliest known tree is Archaeopteris, from the Devonian. We do not know all the details of how plants evolved from green algae, but the evolution of desiccation resistant spores and a waxy cuticle were paramount.

See as much as evolutionist cannot wrap their minds around a creator creating life, and the heavens and earth in six days - which you and I cannot understand, for we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what is possible, and before we do, history, mathematics, science will be rewritten a few more times (to adapt to our new understanding). Nevertheless, I cannot wrap my mind around all the varieties of plant life, insects, reptiles, animals, and man all evolving from one cell creatures.

Since all life continually evolves, and has been doing so for billions of years, I fail to see why you should have a problem understanding the variety of life. On the other hand, one might wonder why an omnipotent creator-God created such a large number of species of beetles (about 350,000). Is He found of them?

We think we are so smart... and God looks at us, like we look at a dog or a cat... with amusement and love. "They are so smart... but in reality, they have not a clue... It is the reason I have to take care of them."

Really? I thought we were made in "God's image," with the most superior brain on the planet. Why is it then that you creationists embrace the idea that we should all be innocent, child-like puppies who do not think for themselves and are obidient to God's every whim?

Can any of you super brains figure out how a billion years of development take place in a precieved time frame of 24-hours? Is it possible? ABSOLUTELY - it all about percieved time and actual speed, right? Are we moving at roughly 25,000 MPH, yet what is our preception... I know this is simple... but it a simple example...

The question is not. "Is it possible," but "is it likely?"

 

[thaumaturgy]

thaumaturgy or any evolutionist:

Please tell me when exactly did all the plantlife begin, in as specific time frame as possible and then how we went from zoo plankton to a Redwood, etc...

Plant life is really a great place to start. If you go back to stromatolites we are looking at some of the oldest known life on the planet. These were likely microbial colonies going back some 3.5 billion years ago (LINK).

These bacteria didn't utilize photosynthesis initially (there are bacteria still today that carry this anaerobic lifestyle).

About 3.4 billion years ago photosynthetic bacteria started pumping oxygen into the atmosphere. Two types of photosynthetic process are known:

PSI and PSII.

PSI uses sunlight to convert CO2 and H2S into glucose, while PSII is the one we are more familiar with in which CO2+H2O are used to make glucose and has oxygen as a biproduct (SOURCE)

Interestingly enough we see evidence of the rise of this oxygen in the form of BANDED IRON FORMATIONS. The oxygen producing algae greatly increased the oxygen content in the oceans and atmosphere causing what is often called the Oxygen Holocaust (those anaerobic bacterial which thrived before were really hit hard.)

The banded iron formations are still somewhat controversial (last I heard, it's been years since I've studied this stuff and I'm not up on the latest). But it is thought they represent the "rusting" of the previously reduced Fe in sea water. Most of them were formed about 2.5 to 3 billion years ago (SOURCE, SOURCE, SOURCE)

We have a reasonable idea of when "plants" started in the form of where their ancestors started using photosynthesis. They may not have left the smoking gun, but they left the shell casings.

Again, scientists don't know anything perfectly. There's still controversy and investigations. We have come a long way and the science is really pretty involved.

Nevertheless, I cannot wrap my mind around all the varieties of plant life, insects, reptiles, animals, and man all evolving from one cell creatures.

Personal incredulity is not necessarily a valid debate against the science.

We think we are so smart

Actually part of being a good scientist is to realize that we don't know as much as we'd like to. We're pretty impressive in what we do know, but any scientist will tell you it's not enough and it's only the beginning of what we can learn.

... and God looks at us, like we look at a dog or a cat... with amusement and love.

That's a nice image.

"They are so smart... but in reality, they have not a clue... It is the reason I have to take care of them."

If that makes you feel safer then by all means enjoy the image.

Can any of you super brains

Who would you now be addressing?

figure out how a billion years of development take place in a precieved time frame of 24-hours?

Uh oh, now we're getting off into "relativistic" stuff aren't we?

Is it possible? ABSOLUTELY - it all about percieved time and actual speed, right? Are we moving at roughly 25,000 MPH, yet what is our preception... I know this is simple... but it a simple example...

Yup, sounds like Relativity. And the point being? If the Bible was written by people in the same time frame as us then indeed 4.5 billion years have passed. If it was written by God then whatever you wish to impute to God's "Inertial Frame" is in effect I suppose. But I would think God would have written something that didn't look like it was written by humans. But that's just me.

In reality Creationists, IDists, Theistic Evolutionists can believe whatever it is they wish. Science is merely taking the pieces and using as clean a set of logical systems as possible, coming up with a parsimonious explanation that will not involve the use of unevidence, supernatural hypotheses.

This doesn't say those hypotheses (be they God, angels, trans-dimensional superbeings, whatever) don't exist, just that there is no reason to invoke unevidenced factors to explain the data as it exists. The inclusion of those factors don't make the explanation more clear.

Science isn't in the business of telling you NOT to believe in God. Science is in the business of telling you what is in evidence and what the most reasonable explanation is.

You can pile all additional hypotheses on it as you wish. However it really doesn't change what science sees and reports.

 

[USincognito]

Please tell me when exactly did all the plantlife begin, in as specific time frame as possible and then how we went from zoo plankton to a Redwood, etc...

First off, Zooplankton are, as the name indicates, animals and thus a plant like a Redwood tree would not have evolved from it. Second Plankton is just a name for aquatic and marine organizisms that basically go with the flow. Thirdly, you could easily plug "Plant evolution" into a search engine and get the answer for you question. In this wiki entry for Archaeplastida the section for Fossil Record notes:

Perhaps the most ancient remains of Archaeplastida are microfossils from the Roper group in northern Australia. The structure of these single-celled fossils resemble that of modern green algae. These date to the Mesoproterozoic Era, about 1500 to 1300 Ma (million years ago) [8] These fossils are consistent with a molecular clock study that calculated that this clade diverged about 1500 Ma. [9] The oldest fossil that can be assigned to a specific modern group is the red alga Bangiomorpha, from 1200 Ma. [10]

In the late Neoproterozoic Era, algal fossils became more numerous and diverse. Eventually, in the Paleozoic Era, plants emerged onto land, and have continued to flourish up to the present.

You could also have gone to the Tree of Life page and clicked on the plant option. That takes you to Angiosperms or flowering plants and you can work from there.
Going up the tree:
Spermatopsida - Seed plants
Embryophytes - Land plants
Green plants which includes green algae.
The page for Eurkaryotes notes how green plants evolved from Archeaplastida.

But what about Redwoods you ask? Go back to Angiosperms, up to Spermatopsida, then click on Conifers. The tolw doesn't have a page for Cupressaceae (Cypresses), which is the group Redwoods are under, but Wikipedia does. Redwood is a term for three species so I'll guess, because you're trying to make the point how could something giant evolve from something tiny, that you're referring to the Giant Sequoia.

And there you go.

 

[Athrond]

Oh, my SCREEN NAME! Ah ha! I get it.

No, you see I chose Thaumaturgy because I like WORDS. Because I use the term doesn't mean I believe in miracles.

I allways thought your sn was derived from Terry Pratchetts Discworld books:

Thaum
Further information: Discworld magic, Fictional particles, and Thaumaturgy

The Thaum is a measuring unit used in quantifying magic on the disk, First described as equals the amount of mystical energy required to conjure up one small white pigeon, or three normal-sized billiard balls.

Several SI-modifiers have been applied to it(e.g. millithaum, kilothaum) in the books. Magic can be measured with a thaumometer, which looks like a black cube with a dial on one side. A standard thaumometer is good for up to a million thaums - if there is more magic than that around, measuring it is not going to do any good, as this level of magic will have broken a hole in reality.

An alternate measurement is the "Prime." It measures the amount of mystical energy required to move one pound of lead one foot. An attempt to put magic measurement into a logical framework never really caught on as wizards are natural traditionalists.

Confusingly, the thaum also appears to be a particle; the magical equivalent of the atom. "Splitting the thaum" revealed that it was in fact composed of numerous sub-particles, called resons ("thingies") which in turn are created from a combination of up to five "flavours": up, down, sideways, sex appeal, and peppermint (see quarks). Note that since even before this discovery magical fields of less than one thaum were described (The Light Fantastic), the particle known as the thaum must either represent less magic than one thaum on the measuring scale, or the measuring unit of the thaum must consist of one particle-thaum in a given unit of space.

From This Wiki page.

 

[Oncedeceived]

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have been trying to find Biology textbooks prior to the 1980's but I only have time to research this online and I am not finding any. I don't have time unfortunately to go to the library.

I am still going to try to get this done. I found a paper that was researched by someone else on textbooks but I find that those don't have the references readily available and without that I will not use them as examples for my argument.

 

[Chalnoth]

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have been trying to find Biology textbooks prior to the 1980's but I only have time to research this online and I am not finding any. I don't have time unfortunately to go to the library.

I am still going to try to get this done. I found a paper that was researched by someone else on textbooks but I find that those don't have the references readily available and without that I will not use them as examples for my argument.

May I ask why you would think that old biology texts would be relevant?

 

[Oncedeceived]

May I ask why you would think that old biology texts would be relevant?

May I ask you exactly why you do not understand how they would not?

 

[Chalnoth]

May I ask you exactly why you do not understand how they would not?

Because I expect that older texts will naturally have more errors than more recent texts, errors that will have since been corrected. Furthermore, if we're talking about arguments as to why evolution is true or not, textbooks in general have nothing whatsoever to say in that regard. Since textbooks are a teaching aid, the only argument that they should be used for is an argument for correcting them or for changing their focus within the subject. That is to say, it is perfectly within reason to argue that because some textbook states some things inaccurately or uses some poor evidence, it should be corrected and updated. It is not within reason to conclude anything about the veracity of the scientific field from which said text is derived.

 

[thaumaturgy]

I allways thought your sn was derived from Terry Pratchetts Discworld books:

From This Wiki page.

Wow! I was not familiar with the Discworld books. Perhaps I would be better off renaming myself
YOCTOTHAUM (10[sup]-24[/sup] Thaums), only capable of conjuring up 1X10[sup]-24[/sup] of a small white pigeon (or alternately capable of conjuring up a pigeon that is 1X10[sup]-24[/sup][sup]th[/sup] the size of a regular pigeon.

I like to think of these as "Vacuum Pigeons" that normally pop into and out of existence as a function of normal "Uncertainty Principle" concepts. I'm working on harnessing these to create a Casimir Pigeon Effect Engine.

I'll use it to move billiard balls.

 

[Split Rock]

May I ask you exactly why you do not understand how they would not?

Because I expect that older texts will naturally have more errors than more recent texts, errors that will have since been corrected. Furthermore, if we're talking about arguments as to why evolution is true or not, textbooks in general have nothing whatsoever to say in that regard. Since textbooks are a teaching aid, the only argument that they should be used for is an argument for correcting them or for changing their focus within the subject. That is to say, it is perfectly within reason to argue that because some textbook states some things inaccurately or uses some poor evidence, it should be corrected and updated. It is not within reason to conclude anything about the veracity of the scientific field from which said text is derived.

What he said.

 

[tanzanos]

thaumaturgy or any evolutionist:

Please tell me when exactly did all the plantlife begin, in as specific time frame as possible and then how we went from zoo plankton to a Redwood, etc...

See as much as evolutionist cannot wrap their minds around a creator creating life, and the heavens and earth in six days - which you and I cannot understand, for we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what is possible, and before we do, history, mathematics, science will be rewritten a few more times (to adapt to our new understanding). Nevertheless, I cannot wrap my mind around all the varieties of plant life, insects, reptiles, animals, and man all evolving from one cell creatures.


We think we are so smart... and God looks at us, like we look at a dog or a cat... with amusement and love. "They are so smart... but in reality, they have not a clue... It is the reason I have to take care of them."

Can any of you super brains figure out how a billion years of development take place in a precieved time frame of 24-hours? Is it possible? ABSOLUTELY - it all about percieved time and actual speed, right? Are we moving at roughly 25,000 MPH, yet what is our preception... I know this is simple... but it a simple example...

According to you then a human cannot be created from a single cell?So how did you come to be in your mothers womb? It all boils down to instructions. But forget it. You will need to study genetics for years before you grasp what it is all about. Let us all pretend that God did it and leave it at that. Which God? FSM of course

 

[Hespera]

Because I expect that older texts will naturally have more errors than more recent texts, errors that will have since been corrected. Furthermore, if we're talking about arguments as to why evolution is true or not, textbooks in general have nothing whatsoever to say in that regard. Since textbooks are a teaching aid, the only argument that they should be used for is an argument for correcting them or for changing their focus within the subject. That is to say, it is perfectly within reason to argue that because some textbook states some things inaccurately or uses some poor evidence, it should be corrected and updated. It is not within reason to conclude anything about the veracity of the scientific field from which said text is derived.

Every now and then there will be a newspaper article about some child genius who... WOW.... discovered an ERROR in the school SCIENCE TEXT!!!

Anyone who actually looks at high school text books knows they tend to be a bunch of crap. I was looking thru one used in the local high school, the biology text coz I was tutoring a student. What a pile of overpriced junk.
Lots of pictures, and a few lines ot text here and there. Every page or so I'd find something to make me want to throw the book.

For those who havent read it, "Surely You're JOKING, Mr Feynman" is a spectacularly good book by one of our Nobel physicists.

In it he describes the textbook selection process in California. At one point the board (he was the only one of the board who actually read the books they were to choose among)... anyway, the board votes to accept biology text A, which turned out to have blank pages. He held up his copy and asked them why they voted for that. ..........(hint: incompetance and bribery?)

The crap quality of science education in public schools is not a problem with science, the problem lies elsewhere.

 

[AV1611VET]

The crap quality of science education in public schools is not a problem with science, the problem lies elsewhere.

Can you believe when I was in school, I was taught that there were only 90-some elements on the Periodic Table, and that Pluto was a planet?

Can you believe that?

Something must have changed since then.

 

[Cabal]

Can you believe when I was in school, I was taught that there were only 90-some elements on the Periodic Table, and that Pluto was a planet?

Can you believe that?

Something must have changed since then.

And it's going to be so traumatic to simply accept new data/definitions, isn't it?

 

[Hespera]

My.... you ARE old!

 

[Oncedeceived]

Because I expect that older texts will naturally have more errors than more recent texts, errors that will have since been corrected. Furthermore, if we're talking about arguments as to why evolution is true or not, textbooks in general have nothing whatsoever to say in that regard. Since textbooks are a teaching aid, the only argument that they should be used for is an argument for correcting them or for changing their focus within the subject. That is to say, it is perfectly within reason to argue that because some textbook states some things inaccurately or uses some poor evidence, it should be corrected and updated. It is not within reason to conclude anything about the veracity of the scientific field from which said text is derived.

1. We were not discussing whether or not evolution is true.
2. When debating in a forum and discussing arguments, one should ultimately understand or at least be aware of the other sides point.

It might be a good thing to go back and find out what my original point was...ya think?

 

[CraigBaugher]

Ok boys & girls...

How many of you believe in UFOs & USOs?
How many believe in superior life forms?

Just a silly question, but if you do believe in UFOs & USOs, and that there is superior life forms to us, and these beings have the ability to warp, worm, slide into and out of parallel universes or travel a minimum of 4.2-5.8 light years faster than or equal to the speed of light. Well, if all this is true, doesn't that mean that everything we hold as true scientifically and mathematically wrong... And did they just evolve too, and they just evolved quicker? Or is their a superior spirit, like God... creating all these beings?

 

[thaumaturgy]

Can you believe when I was in school, I was taught that there were only 90-some elements on the Periodic Table, and that Pluto was a planet?

Can you believe that?

Something must have changed since then.

Just a couple points:

By about 1913 or so scientists knew the periodic table should be arranged by atomic number. Prior to this the periodic table was arranged by atomic mass, but the newer (post 1913) version lined up better (Source)

In 1870 it was known that uranium was one of the heaviest of the naturally occuring elements. (Source)

So it is reasonable to assume that scientists knew as early as about the turn of the 19th to 20th century that uranium was pretty high up there.

Now in 1940 Glenn Seaborg "discovered/synthesized/isolated" Plutonium, element #94. There is reason to believe that plutonium exists naturally as well (SOURCE), so by 1940 we knew there were up to 94 elements. (there are a few strange ones, like Technitium which is questionably "natural" in that is no longer found in nature but owing to a short half-life, may have been around at one time, so it's a toss up as to whether there's 94 "Naturally occuring" elements or, as you said, "around 90".

But to my knowledge this information you stated has not changed since about 1940 ,although it wasn't published until 1946.

What you might be confused about is that we, humans, have been able to make elements with higher atomic numbers or synthesize the "missing ones", as we advance and grow.

Interestingly enough we use the information gleaned from about 1913 to understand the science behind the Periodic Table.

The periodic table (other than a subtle "accounting issue" explained below) hasn't really changed since your school days in what I assume from this discussion to be about 1946, what has happened is the periodic table has expanded.

That's like saying you are a completely different person if you put on a different set of clothes or you put on a little weight.

So, unless you were learning the Periodic Table in 1945 (technically 1939) we've known that there should be upwards of 92 + elements, even if we hadn't found them all (we didn't synthesize promethium until 1945 and then it wasn't announced until 1947, but people knew there was a "missing" element at atomic number = 61 since about 1902.)

(NOTE: Even scientists themselves leave open the possibility that "92" isn't necessarily the only number of naturally occuring elements. That wouldn't be science, we can't prove a negative. Who knows...we may discover an "island of stability" in higher numbers --which has been hypothesized, but we've not seen those elements in nature yet.)

SUBTLE "ACCOUNTING CHANGE" TO THE PERIODIC TABLE:
Chemistry did undergo a very sublte change in the early 1960's. In 1961 the "Standard" for expressing the atomic mass unit was switched to carbon-12, which is, just slightly different from the original atomic mass unit which relied on oxygen (taken as atomic mass= 16). The results are only slightly different from the old method. The reason for the change as I understand it was owing to differences in whether to use one isotope of oxygen ([sup]16[/sup]O) over a "naturally occuring ratio of oxygen isotopes" (the latter was popular among chemists, the former physicists) versus settling on one isotope of carbon (SOURCE) By settling on one isotope of carbon it settled the dispute in terminology and satisfied both the physicists and chemists.

This did not result in the discovery of new elements to my knowledge or otherwise change our general understanding of the Periodic Trends which effectively define the Periodic Table

A couple other sources of information:
(Source)
(Source)

 

[Hespera]

thaumaturgy or any evolutionist:

Please tell me when exactly did all the plantlife begin, in as specific time frame as possible and then how we went from zoo plankton to a Redwood, etc...

See as much as evolutionist cannot wrap their minds around a creator creating life, and the heavens and earth in six days - which you and I cannot understand, for we haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what is possible, and before we do, history, mathematics, science will be rewritten a few more times (to adapt to our new understanding). Nevertheless, I cannot wrap my mind around all the varieties of plant life, insects, reptiles, animals, and man all evolving from one cell creatures.

We think we are so smart... and God looks at us, like we look at a dog or a cat... with amusement and love. "They are so smart... but in reality, they have not a clue... It is the reason I have to take care of them."

Can any of you super brains figure out how a billion years of development take place in a precieved time frame of 24-hours? Is it possible? ABSOLUTELY - it all about percieved time and actual speed, right? Are we moving at roughly 25,000 MPH, yet what is our preception... I know this is simple... but it a simple example...

What is with the drive-by posting? you ask some questions, several people took their time to give you reasoned answers to some not entirely sensible questions.

No response from you

Next you are saying that flying saucers could prove the 2 plus 2 will no longer be 4.