A snowflake is beautiful, yes, but it also lacks function and contains no information or purposeful arrangement of parts.
Who says it lacks function?
It’s not comparable to the specified complexity found in even a single living cell.
I dispute the concept of specified complexity. Specified by whom?
The kind of complexity we observe in life goes beyond symmetry or shape. It involves coordinated systems performing tasks, guided by instructions encoded in language-like structures. That’s not the kind of thing we see arising from unguided physical laws alone.
When a human being is conceived and born, are you saying that supernatural forces are involved? At what point? Conception, or during pregnancy?
You're describing a theoretical model, not an observation of nothing. You're borrowing mathematical language (like negative energy) to make 'nothing' sound like a physical something. But a vacuum with fluctuating energy, governed by laws like gravity and quantum mechanics, is not nothing; it’s a highly structured something.
I was explaining the difference between a pure vacuum (absolute nothing, not even empty space) and the vacuum of space. A pure vacuum would be inherently unstable.
True 'nothing' has no properties, no potential, no laws, no vacuum, and no time, it can’t ‘borrow’ anything.
See my prior descriptions of a pure vacuum.
So, when we say the universe came from ‘nothing,’ but then smuggle in gravity, quantum fields, and physical laws, we’re not explaining the origin, we’re just moving the question back a step.
The same goes for those who claim "God did it and that settles it."
Where did those laws and conditions come from?
That question is outside the scope of evolution, as I've stated earlier.
So it's something then. Not nothing? That is funny.
You're confusing empty space with a pure vacuum.
But that’s exactly the point. If what you're calling 'nothing' has structure, weight, instability, and can fluctuate, then it isn’t nothing.
Again, you're confusing empty space with a pure vacuum.
That’s something. You’re talking about quantum vacuums or fields governed by physical laws, not the absence of reality, but a specific state of physical existence. The idea that a universe can arise from 'nothing' only works if we redefine 'nothing' to mean 'a low-energy quantum field governed by the laws of physics', which is misleading.
I'm not the one doing the redefining here. I'm saying (or rather, physicists are saying) that a pure vacuum is inherently unstable and gives rise to conditions from which the Big Bang can result. As for mass and energy, I'm saying they add up to zero, but I'm not saying that 'zero' is the same as a pure vacuum.
So, let’s just be honest about what’s being claimed: not creation from nothing, but you believe from a very real, structured something, one that still demands explanation.
I'm not saying I believe anything of the sort. You're confusing a pure vacuum with empty space. Empty space has structure and weight, from which virtual particles can form and then vanish. A pure vacuum (assuming it actually existed) is inherently unstable, and gives rise to conditions from which the Big Bang or empty space or mass/energy, can result.
(To be honest, this part of the discussion feels circular and unproductive. When 'nothing' is redefined to include structure, weight, and physical laws, it’s no longer nothing; it’s something.
I never defined it as such, see above.
'Fully formed' means it's not a partial or transitional structure. It's a complete, functional organism. The term doesn't mean 'not evolved', it means that what we find in the fossil record are fully developed creatures, not creatures with half-formed limbs or halfway gills and lungs.
You still haven't defined half-formed in any meaningful way. A partially-functioning eye is better than total blindness.
With Tiktaalik, we see an animal well-adapted to its environment, but we don’t see clear, step-by-step anatomical transitions from fish fins to tetrapod limbs.
If you compare a Tiktaalik 'limb' compared to a cheetah's leg, I don't think you can call it fully-formed. It's better than nothing, but it's not nearly as good as what would come along later.
So yes, it's interesting, but calling it a slam-dunk for evolution overlooks the fact that it appears suddenly, fully functional
What does fully-functional mean? It's limbs don't function as well as a cheetah's, do they?
, and without the detailed series of gradual modifications Darwin himself said would be needed if his theory were true.
You misunderstand Darwin.
Because there are massive, massive gaps. Evolutionists fill the gaps with speculation.
Completely false. Science continues to make correct predictions, and creationists continue to claim they're irrelevant.
Natural selection may act as a filter, but it doesn’t create; it can only select from what already exists.
Mutations do the creating.
That’s why I said blind processes. Because random mutations, which supposedly generate the raw material for evolution, have no foresight or direction. Selection doesn’t explain how entirely new, coordinated structures arise in the first place.
Mutations do the creating, and natural selection does the selecting.
As for the fossil record, what we see are distinct, fully functional organisms, not a continuous record of step-by-step transformations. Saying 'legs lengthen' or 'brains grow' across epochs sounds neat in hindsight
It's not about sounding neat, but about observing the actual facts.
That’s a convenient line, but it’s not entirely honest. The theory of evolution may technically begin after life already exists, but the broader naturalistic framework, which evolution is built upon, absolutely depends on life arising from non-living matter. If unguided processes are claimed to account for all of life’s diversity, then how life began is relevant.
That's a different discussion. I'm still waiting for an example of how this 'intelligence' actually interfered. When did it interfere? Just once? Or many times along the way? Was it in the womb or egg? Can you make any testable statement about it?
You can’t isolate evolution from abiogenesis when both are used together to explain the full naturalistic story, from chemicals to conscious beings. So yes, ‘molecules-to-man’ still applies.
Nobody's claiming molecules turned into man. You're deliberately using a dishonest phrase, like the crocoduck.
You’re assuming that evolving parts separately with different functions can somehow, by chance,
Never said that. Natural selection is not chance.
coordinate into an interdependent, life-sustaining system and that this happens repeatedly across biology. That’s not evidence; that’s storytelling.
And yet, the eye evolved dozens of times independently in nature.
The ice fish doesn’t solve the problem. It’s still a fully functioning organism with an integrated system. It didn’t evolve half a heart or half a blood system.
Of course it did. It went from red blood to clear liquid. If that's not "less than blood", I don't know what is.
Its example shows loss of function (haemoglobin), not the origin of new complex systems from scratch.
And it developed a system that functions without hemoglobin, which is a new function.
Irreducible complexity asks how multiple parts, none functional on their own in a given role, come together all at once in the right arrangement. That’s the real issue, and so far, evolutionary theory hasn’t demonstrated how that leap is made.
IC makes a claim that 'it's absolutely impossible; it can't happen.' It's not necessary to demonstrate in detail how it happened in every case; it's only necessary to come up with a plausible explanation in order to refute the false claim that 'it's absolutely impossible; it can't happen.' It is, after all, simply the Argument from Incredulity. "I don't understand it; therefore it couldn't have happened."
Please provide clear, detailed transitional sequences that show gradual changes, not just isolated fossils put side by side. Which ones do you consider the best examples?
A series of fossils is a transitional sequence.
Thanks for the example. But notice what you just admitted, that we won’t find the actual common ancestor, and that every fossil is before or after the split. That’s exactly the challenge: interpretation fills the gap where direct evidence is missing. The fossils may suggest something, but they don’t prove a direct line of descent, just shared features.
We have hundreds of examples from the sequence, which paint a clear picture. Given that the common ancestor of chimps and humans was about 200,000 to 300,000 generations ago, you're not going to have an example from each generation. Do you know each of ancestors going back 10,000 years? No? Can you prove then that you even had an ancestor that far back? No? Does that mean you had an ancestor created by magic? Of course not. There is enough data to make correct predictions and draw intelligent conclusions.
But similarity alone isn’t enough to prove ancestry. Humans share a significant percentage of DNA with bananas too — yet no one suggests we descended from bananas.
But we do share a common ancestor with bananas.
It just shows that genetic overlap doesn’t always mean common descent.
Actually, it does. You might read The Ancestors Tale, by Richard Dawkins. You can pick any two organisms, and if you go back far enough, they have a common ancestor.
If shared DNA proves ancestry, then I guess my great-great-grandfather was a banana too?
Your great great grandfather and a banana share a common ancestor, without question.
Not at all. I’m not asking for every fossil, just enough clear, well-supported transitions to justify the sweeping claims of gradual evolution. As for creation, the appearance of distinct, fully formed organisms in the fossil record, without clear predecessors, is exactly what a creation model would predict.
But that's not what we see.
So no, I’m not admitting defeat; I’m pointing out that the evidence fits my view just as well, if not better.
Your view does not make testable predictions.
That’s not the issue. The problem isn’t that there are always 'more gaps'. It’s that the supposed steps between major body plans remain missing or ambiguous. Finding soft-bodied organisms before the Cambrian doesn’t automatically explain how complex structures like eyes, nervous systems, or articulated limbs arose. The gap isn’t just in time; it’s in functional complexity.
Given that eyes can evolve from a single light-sensitive cell in a couple hundred thousand years, that's a pretty quick process.