mark kennedy said:
I didn't say catastrophic what I was saying was directly related to evolutionary theory, specificlly, design pressure. Most of the reasons that species change is do to changes in the environment...I don't have the slightest clue why you think this is a strawman argument.
You asked what it would do to my knowledge of evolution if it were known that the environment had not changed
dramatically. My point is that no dramatic change or pressure is necessary. In fact, even when there is no change at all, there is environmental pressure. Any species that is not utterly invulnerable experiences enviromental pressure -- and if even one hundred-thousandth of a population die before childbearing age, that population is under environmental pressures that will bring about evolution.
Of
course you have no clue why I think it's a strawman argument -- you have no clue because you learned these arguments from creationists who build strawmen for a living. It's not your strawman, but someone else's; and then when you present it, you get attacked for it -- perhaps unfairly, since you honestly believed it to be a good argument, but you can hardly expect to present deceitful information, whatever the source, and not get attacked.
Mark, I think you might be astounded at what you would find if you went to the trouble of reading peer-reviewed scientific papers on the subjects that the creationist arguments you've learned address. Do you know how and why I left the creationist camp for the evolution camp (this was long before I left Christianity, by the way)?
Because I'd noticed that the arguments I used from A Beka and Kent Hovind and Bob Jones weren't getting many results. They generally got debunked pretty easily. I decided to check out all the scientific data in support of these arguments (data that I had no doubt was out there) so that I would truly understand what the arguments were saying and be able to answer objections to those arguments better. To my undying wonder, I discovered in my search that
all the data -- even the data used by creationists -- supports evolution and
none of it supports creationism. This was by doing
my own research into scientific discoveries of the past century,
not by reading creationism websites or evolution websites, or by listening to arguments for or against evolution.
So again, may I suggest that you take the same path that I did? You may not come to the same conclusion that I did (although honestly, I can't for the life of me fathom how you wouldn't, if you looked at all the data that I've seen), but at least you can say that you truly know what you're talking about. At least you can avoid saying things like what I just chewed you out for -- and you can earn or lose respect on your own merits, instead of seeing your credibility cut out from under you through no fault of your own, because you used something you learned from a self-proclaimed "creation scientist" who is out to win souls at all costs -- even if it means lying through their teeth.
mark kennedy said:
An increase in the survival capacity of a fraction of a hundredth of a percent is not macroevolution, thats microevolution, maybe. Whats more you never told me how the changes are accumulated, we have a formula for equilibrium, wheres the one for evolution?
Again, you misunderstand.
Say we have Mutation A that appears in a single individual in a population. If A gives that individual a survival advantage of a fraction of a hundredth of a percent over the other individuals in that population, then it is only a matter of time before virtually every individual in the population has the mutation. Do you see what I'm saying? Thus, no catastrophic or major environmental change is necessary for evolution to happen. As long as survival is a needed ability (that is, as long as organisms die before childbearing age), the necessary pressures exist to make evolution happen. This is so even when the environment is completely static and unchanging.