ICR Acts and Facts

[Yttrium]

So, I was reading a post by nolidad in a place I can't post.

Incredible - a single cell
(By the way, if you haven't seen the video at the beginning of that thread, take a look, it's amazing.)

I challenge you to take one article from a recent acts and facts from ICR and disprove it using the scientific method! I won't hold my breath.

Okay! I haven't looked at Acts and Facts before. This could be fun.

This Month's Issue | The Institute for Creation Research

Oooh, look, a tardigrade article. I like tardigrades. Lemme check that out. Read read read.

Engineered Adaptability: Engineered Features Determine Design Success or Failure

Huh. I don't think I need the scientific method for this one.

"1. It is an entity’s traits—not its exposures—that determine its design success or failure."
"2. Engineered solutions to problems must precede the problem. The existence of a solution is not “due to” the problem."

This is apparently meant to show that things don't happen the way evolution theories say they do. You hit tardigrades with all kinds of nastiness, and they shrug it off. Like they were designed that way.

Well, here's the thing. The quotes are exactly right! But that actually supports evolution. I'm not sure how the author got confused about that. Evolution doesn't say an entity changes because of the problem. It says the population changes.

An entity's traits determine its success or failure. A problem comes along. The critters with the traits that allow them to survive the problem tend to survive. The critters with the traits that don't survive so good tend to die. The problem, whatever it is, changes the population as a whole. The more survivable traits win out.

Why are the tardigrades so tough? The ones that weren't tough enough died out. One wonders what kind of environmental pressures they faced. Must have been nasty. Am I wrong about this?

I'm going to have to check out more of these articles.

 

[Brightmoon]

I stopped reading ICR stuff decades ago. My eyes got tired of rolling and my face got sore from the amount of facepalming I did

 

[nolidad]

So, I was reading a post by nolidad in a place I can't post.

Incredible - a single cell
(By the way, if you haven't seen the video at the beginning of that thread, take a look, it's amazing.)



Okay! I haven't looked at Acts and Facts before. This could be fun.

This Month's Issue | The Institute for Creation Research

Oooh, look, a tardigrade article. I like tardigrades. Lemme check that out. Read read read.

Engineered Adaptability: Engineered Features Determine Design Success or Failure

Huh. I don't think I need the scientific method for this one.

"1. It is an entity’s traits—not its exposures—that determine its design success or failure."
"2. Engineered solutions to problems must precede the problem. The existence of a solution is not “due to” the problem."

This is apparently meant to show that things don't happen the way evolution theories say they do. You hit tardigrades with all kinds of nastiness, and they shrug it off. Like they were designed that way.

Well, here's the thing. The quotes are exactly right! But that actually supports evolution. I'm not sure how the author got confused about that. Evolution doesn't say an entity changes because of the problem. It says the population changes.

An entity's traits determine its success or failure. A problem comes along. The critters with the traits that allow them to survive the problem tend to survive. The critters with the traits that don't survive so good tend to die. The problem, whatever it is, changes the population as a whole. The more survivable traits win out.

Why are the tardigrades so tough? The ones that weren't tough enough died out. One wonders what kind of environmental pressures they faced. Must have been nasty. Am I wrong about this?

I'm going to have to check out more of these articles.

So let us take a look again at your final summation!

YEC scientists show by empirical research and the scientific method that tardigrades survive all known conditions! near zero, high temps, they have learned to shut down nearly all biological functions in order to survive.

What is your response???

"
"An entity's traits determine its success or failure. A problem comes along. The critters with the traits that allow them to survive the problem tend to survive. The critters with the traits that don't survive so good tend to die. The problem, whatever it is, changes the population as a whole. The more survivable traits win out.

Why are the tardigrades so tough? The ones that weren't tough enough died out. One wonders what kind of environmental pressures they faced. Must have been nasty. Am I wrong about this?"

So ICR shows empirical research- you wonder what kind of pressures they faced.

We see the survival of the fit, but you do not show any methodology that got the tardigrades to go from not surviving to surviving!

We can take chihuahuas! and throw them into Canada without homes. How many do you think will evolve?

tardigrades are everywhere. "They have been found everywhere: from mountaintops to the deep sea and mud volcanoes;[8] from tropical rain forests to the Antarctic.[9] Tardigrades are among the most resilient known animals,[10][11] with individual species able to survive extreme conditions that would be rapidly fatal to nearly all other known life forms, such as exposure to extreme temperatures, extreme pressures (both high and low), air deprivation, radiation, dehydration, and starvation. Tardigrades have even survived after exposure to outer space"

They have fossils from the evolutionary time frame of 530 million years and they are unchanged!!! They have survived all these and a supposed 6 extinction events on earth! They were designed to survive!

 

[nolidad]

I stopped reading ICR stuff decades ago. My eyes got tired of rolling and my face got sore from the amount of facepalming I did

Well that is your problem not ours!

But seeing as you think that ICR scientists are so inferior- then let me pose this challenge to you which has remain unanswered now in four discussion sites and 2 threads here!

believers in evolutionism hold that feathers came from scales.

So simply demonstrate the mutations that took a scale which is very anatomically different and is coded so different than a feather, and show how it evolved?

I thought this would be easy for the holders of the dogma os of evolution as it has been declared a fact!

 

[Yttrium]

We see the survival of the fit, but you do not show any methodology that got the tardigrades to go from not surviving to surviving!

The methodology for evolution is mutation and selection. [Okay, it's a bit more complicated than that.]

We can take chihuahuas! and throw them into Canada without homes. How many do you think will evolve?

If any do survive, then that population of chihuahuas will overall become more durable to the Canada cold.

They have fossils from the evolutionary time frame of 530 million years and they are unchanged!!! They have survived all these and a supposed 6 extinction events on earth! They were designed to survive!

Unchanged? We know of over a thousand species of tardigrades. Sounds like some change to me, even if a supreme being poofed the first ones into existence hundreds of millions of years ago. And mind you, I would have no problem if a supreme being did just that. It just seems unnecessary, since we do clearly have a lot of evolution taking place here, resulting in all these different species. There's no reason a lot of evolution couldn't also have taken place before all those different populations started branching off, making them plenty hardy over a great length of time.

 

[nolidad]

The methodology for evolution is mutation and selection. [Okay, it's a bit more complicated than that.]

Yeah it is a little bit more, but that is the crux of evolution in a nutshell. Random, undesigned, unplanned mutations are preserved by natural selection, taking life from that initial organic self replicating goo- and through supposed hundreds of millions of years it went from goo to you by way of the zoo!

The only 2 problems:

1. we have never observed mutations take one family, order, phyla, or genus and mutate it to another family, order, phyla or genus. We have seen variation within a species and even speciation (though by ranmdom undesigned unplanned random mutations is still in question). The whole evolutionary tree is by inference as far as fossils go.

2. there is no demonstrable or empirical evidence to demonstrate how things like flippers became limbs, scales to feathers, limbs to wings cold blooded to warm blooded, etc.etc.etc. IOW we have seen no rewriting of a genome nor can we deomonstrate it! We have seen enhancing of already existing genetic coding- but that is small m mutation> (y this I mean a guy who works out and builds muscle mass has undergone a mutation) But big M mutation means adding new and previously uncoded information to teh genome!

Over 99.9% of all mutations fall on the harmful or negative side of Kimeras distribution Granted most are nearly benign, but as even evolutionary geneticists have declared, that even the nearly benign mutations reduce the overall viability of a population over the long run due to genetic load!

No one has empirically shown otherwise. It is all conjecture, opinion, might bes could bes suggests could have..... that is not science but opinion.

 

[nolidad]

If any do survive, then that population of chihuahuas will overall become more durable to the Canada cold.

and all that ever has been observed is that they would stay chihuahuas! And even if they undergo speciation- they still remain a dog! We cannot verify anything beyond that! It is all a belief system accepted by evolutionists. they reject YEC science and they reject theistic evolutionists as well. God is an irrelavency to them.

Unchanged? We know of over a thousand species of tardigrades. Sounds like some change to me, even if a supreme being poofed the first ones into existence hundreds of millions of years ago. And mind you, I would have no problem if a supreme being did just that. It just seems unnecessary, since we do clearly have a lot of evolution taking place here, resulting in all these different species. There's no reason a lot of evolution couldn't also have taken place before all those different populations started branching off, making them plenty hardy over a great length of time.

Well document the speciation happening over time! But they are still all tardigrades! In 500 million years of being affected by unplanned, undesigned random mutations as the hypothesis of evolution says, they have remained tardigrades! Not a lot of evolution happening there.

No if you could show a bacteria evolving ot say a virus or some other microbial life form- then you would pique my interest. But once again as far as provable science goes- everything has remaind the same "kind" for all observable history!

 

[Yttrium]

Yeah it is a little bit more, but that is the crux of evolution in a nutshell. Random, undesigned, unplanned mutations are preserved by natural selection, taking life from that initial organic self replicating goo- and through supposed hundreds of millions of years it went from goo to you by way of the zoo!

That's the idea. And that's where the article gets debunked. With evolution, the survivable traits are preserved, resulting in a population that's hardier to the current environmental pressures. Saying that the current hardiness of an organism can't be explained by evolution is nonsensical, since that's what evolution is mostly about.

The only 2 problems:

Which really have nothing to do with the article.

But I'll look at them anyway, having debunked the article.

1. we have never observed mutations take one family, order, phyla, or genus and mutate it to another family, order, phyla or genus. We have seen variation within a species and even speciation (though by ranmdom undesigned unplanned random mutations is still in question). The whole evolutionary tree is by inference as far as fossils go.

True. Yes, there's a lot of inference. Biologists are still trying to sort out the tardigrade's ancestors, for example. Large scale changes would have to take place over great lengths of time that we can't observe.

2. there is no demonstrable or empirical evidence to demonstrate how things like flippers became limbs, scales to feathers, limbs to wings cold blooded to warm blooded, etc.etc.etc. IOW we have seen no rewriting of a genome nor can we deomonstrate it! We have seen enhancing of already existing genetic coding- but that is small m mutation> (y this I mean a guy who works out and builds muscle mass has undergone a mutation) But big M mutation means adding new and previously uncoded information to teh genome!

True again. You can always pick a change big enough that we can't demonstrate it. Adding up all those little changes to make the big change can take a very, very long time.

Over 99.9% of all mutations fall on the harmful or negative side of Kimeras distribution Granted most are nearly benign, but as even evolutionary geneticists have declared, that even the nearly benign mutations reduce the overall viability of a population over the long run due to genetic load!

One thing you need to consider is that the terms "benign", "harmful", etc, are relative to the environment at the time. The environment changes. Things that were benign before might become harmful (for example, a thick coat of fur is nice when it's cold, not so nice if it warms up a lot), and vice versa. Many mutations might be neutral until certain environmental changes kick in (for example, a longer neck in a leaf-eating mammal might be useless until the population runs out of leaves to eat in the lower branches). My impression is that you're taking an excessively pessimistic view of mutations.

No one has empirically shown otherwise. It is all conjecture, opinion, might bes could bes suggests could have..... that is not science but opinion.

A lot of the details are certainly conjectural. However, to get the scientific theory, you don't even need all those fossils. All you need is the DNA, the process of evolution (which we can observe in nature and test in laboratory conditions), and the similarities between the various existing species. The fossils help fill in the details, allowing us to better sort out where things could have branched out when.

The theory is made to fit the evidence we find in nature. There will always be details to fill in, and things that could be wrong. But as long as it fits the evidence, it's a valid scientific theory. Newtonian mechanics was a great theory that fit the known evidence, until new evidence proved it wrong, and it had to be replaced by a better theory (relativity). That could happen to the theory of evolution too.

 

[grasping the after wind]

So, I was reading a post by nolidad in a place I can't post.

Incredible - a single cell
(By the way, if you haven't seen the video at the beginning of that thread, take a look, it's amazing.)



Okay! I haven't looked at Acts and Facts before. This could be fun.

This Month's Issue | The Institute for Creation Research

Oooh, look, a tardigrade article. I like tardigrades. Lemme check that out. Read read read.

Engineered Adaptability: Engineered Features Determine Design Success or Failure

Huh. I don't think I need the scientific method for this one.

"1. It is an entity’s traits—not its exposures—that determine its design success or failure."
"2. Engineered solutions to problems must precede the problem. The existence of a solution is not “due to” the problem."

This is apparently meant to show that things don't happen the way evolution theories say they do. You hit tardigrades with all kinds of nastiness, and they shrug it off. Like they were designed that way.

Well, here's the thing. The quotes are exactly right! But that actually supports evolution. I'm not sure how the author got confused about that. Evolution doesn't say an entity changes because of the problem. It says the population changes.

An entity's traits determine its success or failure. A problem comes along. The critters with the traits that allow them to survive the problem tend to survive. The critters with the traits that don't survive so good tend to die. The problem, whatever it is, changes the population as a whole. The more survivable traits win out.

Why are the tardigrades so tough? The ones that weren't tough enough died out. One wonders what kind of environmental pressures they faced. Must have been nasty. Am I wrong about this?

I'm going to have to check out more of these articles.

That is the theory as Darwin expressed it. However, the idea that organisms adapt to environmental changes is not a strictly creationist invention, it has been implied or even stated categorically by many an evolutionist. Perhaps those evolutionists I have heard do this are ill informed on evolution or they are not facile in conversational skills and cannot elucidate a concept correctly. But they have managed to confuse people about how evolution works i.e. that mutations are random and that it is purely coincidence when a trait becomes a factor in survivability and not a cause and effect thing where a change in the environment causes beneficial genetic mutations to happen thereby allowing a species to either survive or a new species to come into existence. IMO it was things said by evolutionists along the lines of species genetically adapting to environments that first caused people to wonder about the possibility of Intelligent Design.

 

[Sanoy]

I think, in general, a telelological hypothesis will be empirically equivalent to a natural hypothesis. Our cars for example are completely natural but their arrangement is not, cars are designed. A case could be made from the "car" alone for either hypothesis, as you have done with the points in the article. That is generally the situation in a lot of this sort of debate, each side is trying to own the same parts.

 

[Ophiolite]

Two Asides, incidental to your central argument, but perhaps interesting:

Adding up all those little changes to make the big change can take a very, very long time.

I wonder if we (evolutionists) might not be better talking in terms of lots of generations, rather than lots of time. That would also implicitly remind us that populations evolve, not individuals.

Newtonian mechanics was a great theory that fit the known evidence, until new evidence proved it wrong, and it had to be replaced by a better theory (relativity).

I've seen heated debates between physicists on this point. An alternate view, and one that I lean to, is that Newton's theory was a very good approximation. So, not wrong, just not exactly right in some circumstances.

 

[Yttrium]

I think, in general, a telelological hypothesis will be empirically equivalent to a natural hypothesis.

I would like this to be the case, but there has to be more to an empirical case besides "I dunno how this structure could have formed naturally, therefore ID." The teleological conjectures so far are lacking in processes that can be tested, like evolutionary processes. They would be much better off if they could find some mechanism that would prevent populations of organisms from evolving past a certain limit.

 

[Yttrium]

Two Asides, incidental to your central argument, but perhaps interesting:
I wonder if we (evolutionists) might not be better talking in terms of lots of generations, rather than lots of time. That would also implicitly remind us that populations evolve, not individuals.

Good point.

I've seen heated debates between physicists on this point. An alternate view, and one that I lean to, is that Newton's theory was a very good approximation. So, not wrong, just not exactly right in some circumstances.

It's only a good approximation for things moving relative to each other at very small fractions of the speed of light. As you get closer to the speed of light, things can blow up badly.

 

[Sanoy]

I would like this to be the case, but there has to be more to an empirical case besides "I dunno how this structure could have formed naturally, therefore ID." The teleological conjectures so far are lacking in processes that can be tested, like evolutionary processes. They would be much better off if they could find some mechanism that would prevent organisms from evolving past a certain limit.

I don't really think that represents a creationists reasons for believing something is designed. The appearance of design is generally ostensible, and that is why people believe something is designed. The testing methods in which things could evolve is different from the testing that something has arrived at it's condition naturally. I'm not sure we can test the conclusion, only the method in which it could have happened.

 

[Yttrium]

I don't really think that represents a creationists reasons for believing something is designed. The appearance of design is generally ostensible, and that is why people believe something is designed. The testing methods in which things could evolve is different from the testing that something has arrived at it's condition naturally. I'm not sure we can test the conclusion, only the method in which it could have happened.

Yes, but we can't even test the method in which intelligent design could have happened. There's no known process to test. With evolution, we look at patterns in the evolutionary tree, and wonder how we could get from one specific point to another, without being able to directly test that entire step. We can make an educated guess, looking for likely paths in genetic development. ID doesn't bother to explain the patterns at all.

 

[Sanoy]

Yes, but we can't even test the method in which intelligent design could have happened. There's no known process to test. With evolution, we look at patterns in the evolutionary tree, and wonder how we could get from one specific point to another, without being able to directly test that entire step. We can make an educated guess, looking for likely paths in genetic development. ID doesn't bother to explain the patterns at all.

It's not proper to expect physical testability for a non physical thing. Metaphysics is the only way to lay them both on the table for a proper comparison.

 

[nolidad]

That's the idea. And that's where the article gets debunked. With evolution, the survivable traits are preserved, resulting in a population that's hardier to the current environmental pressures. Saying that the current hardiness of an organism can't be explained by evolution is nonsensical, since that's what evolution is mostly about.

That is a prediction of creation science as well! If species are hardier to the current enviornmental pressures why are we seeing so many die offs? That is evolution in reverse!

But you forget that mutations are undesigned, unplanned and random in all creatures! Given that over 99.9% of mutations do not help with preservation and added complexity- where is the vast beds of that couldn't cut the mustard? Where are all teh raptor to bird transitions that weren't suited? remember for every supposed one "good" mutation that advanced critters along the evolutionary tree there are 9,996 that do not advance them or decline them!

Which really have nothing to do with the article.

But I'll look at them anyway, having debunked the article

Do you plan to share your debunking or is it a secret?

The 2 problems may not have anything to do with the article- but everything to do with teh credibility of the dogmas of evolution.

True. Yes, there's a lot of inference. Biologists are still trying to sort out the tardigrade's ancestors, for example. Large scale changes would have to take place over great lengths of time that we can't observe.

At least you honestly said they are unobservable, they are also untestable and so far unrepeatable (the so far is for your benefit). That makes for good science fiction, but lousy science.

True again. You can always pick a change big enough that we can't demonstrate it. Adding up all those little changes to make the big change can take a very, very long time.

But that is what evolution is. Starting from a self replicating glop of goo to producing the total biodiversity we see today! If yiou can't demonstrate it, if you cannot test it or repeat it- you cannot say it is science!

100 years of trying to change a fruit fly and they ended up with a fruit fly!

40,000 generations of e-coli under carefully controlled conditions and all they could produce was e-coli with a different appetite! They can't so anything in real time- but they can look at a bunch of bones and create this massive massive story of evolution!


And therein is the fatal dilemna of calling evolution science! Science is validated by the scientific method! test observe repeat! I would have much greater respect for evolujtionists if they were honest and called evolution their belief system instead of science!

A lot of the details are certainly conjectural. However, to get the scientific theory, you don't even need all those fossils. All you need is the DNA, the process of evolution (which we can observe in nature and test in laboratory conditions), and the similarities between the various existing species. The fossils help fill in the details, allowing us to better sort out where things could have branched out when.

The theory is made to fit the evidence we find in nature. There will always be details to fill in, and things that could be wrong. But as long as it fits the evidence, it's a valid scientific theory. Newtonian mechanics was a great theory that fit the known evidence, until new evidence proved it wrong, and it had to be replaced by a better theory (relativity). That could happen to the theory of evolution too.

Details conjectural? But evolution is all about the details, the slow micro mutations over eons of time that supposedly took a dog size land creature and turned it into a multi ton whale! It is all the changes that need documentation that would validate the hypothesis of evolution.

DNA? All Dna shows is that common purposes in different kinds share similar genetic codes. IOS and Windows are two different os but they share common traits!

Well the limit of what we can observe is speciation! We have never seen a frog turn into something other than a frog! That is what is needed. Just taking variations within species and genus and then extrapolate backwards over hundreds of millions of years is disingenuous.

I will admit that morphologically- evolution has at least one leg to stand on- but genetically- it fails!

 

[nolidad]

Yes, but we can't even test the method in which intelligent design could have happened. There's no known process to test. With evolution, we look at patterns in the evolutionary tree, and wonder how we could get from one specific point to another, without being able to directly test that entire step. We can make an educated guess, looking for likely paths in genetic development. ID doesn't bother to explain the patterns at all.

And so far all tests to test evolutionary hypothesis in the big picture have not yet turned up anything viable.

 

[nolidad]

For Yttrium:

A little blurb for you to debunk the prevailing hypothesis that YEC scientists are either not real scientists or inferior scientists. From Acts and Facts:

Skeptics often claim creation scientists aren’t really scientists, supposing they don’t conduct actual research or publish in scientific journals. Dr. Vernon Cupps earned his Ph.D. in nuclear physics from Indiana University and has 73 publications in secular scientific journals. In addition to working at Fermilab for 23 years, where he managed the operation of the Radioisotope Analysis Facility, Dr. Cupps also researched at Los Alamos National Laboratory and Canada’s TRIUMF Accelerator.

ICR scientists conduct scientific research to show the abundance of evidence that confirms the accuracy and authority of the Bible.

ICR scientists like Dr. Cupps conduct scientific research to show the abundance of evidence that confirms the accuracy and authority of the Bible. Our ministry has published numerous resources that explain why evolution is scientifically untenable, how most of Earth’s rock layers formed during the Genesis Flood, and why soft tissue in dinosaur fossils couldn’t possibly be millions of years old. Now we offer Rethinking Radiometric Dating to challenge the dating methods undergirding secular science’s deep-time ages, to help Christian believers confidently defend their faith, and to invite skeptics to reevaluate their deep-time beliefs

 

[Yttrium]

That is a prediction of creation science as well! If species are hardier to the current enviornmental pressures why are we seeing so many die offs? That is evolution in reverse!

Species are hardier to the current environmental pressures? No one ever said that. Many populations of species are facing new and crushing environmental pressures.

But you forget that mutations are undesigned, unplanned and random in all creatures! Given that over 99.9% of mutations do not help with preservation and added complexity- where is the vast beds of that couldn't cut the mustard? Where are all teh raptor to bird transitions that weren't suited? remember for every supposed one "good" mutation that advanced critters along the evolutionary tree there are 9,996 that do not advance them or decline them!

I'm not sure what you're asking here. Most species that ever lived are extinct. Where did the ones who weren't suited go? They kinda died.

Do you plan to share your debunking or is it a secret?

It was in the original post. You must have missed it. You did get quite a bit sidetracked.

But that is what evolution is. Starting from a self replicating glop of goo to producing the total biodiversity we see today! If yiou can't demonstrate it, if you cannot test it or repeat it- you cannot say it is science!

Wow, you have tough standards. But I really don't think you've thought them through. By your standards, we really wouldn't have any science at all. I mean, the whole point to a scientific theory is that we can't prove every little detail. We create a theory to explain the known evidence. We fill in the gaps as best we can. If new evidence shows we were wrong, we fix or replace the theory.

100 years of trying to change a fruit fly and they ended up with a fruit fly!
40,000 generations of e-coli under carefully controlled conditions and all they could produce was e-coli with a different appetite!

Ah, I remember the days when creationists wouldn't admit that the process of evolution takes place at all. Congratulations! You're making progress!

They can't so anything in real time- but they can look at a bunch of bones and create this massive massive story of evolution!

It's pretty convoluted, isn't it? Yet everything seems to form a historical pattern. Coincidence? Some kind of plan? Hmm. Any ideas?

And therein is the fatal dilemna of calling evolution science! Science is validated by the scientific method! test observe repeat! I would have much greater respect for evolujtionists if they were honest and called evolution their belief system instead of science!

It's a theory that's constantly being poked and prodded and fiddled with and changed. Kind of a wimpy excuse for a belief system, if you ask me. And it only gets you from goo to zoo. And it's soooo complicated. Bleah.

Details conjectural? But evolution is all about the details, the slow micro mutations over eons of time that supposedly took a dog size land creature and turned it into a multi ton whale! It is all the changes that need documentation that would validate the hypothesis of evolution.

Well, like I said, they make a theory that fits the known evidence. They fill in the blanks as best they can.

Well the limit of what we can observe is speciation! We have never seen a frog turn into something other than a frog! That is what is needed. Just taking variations within species and genus and then extrapolate backwards over hundreds of millions of years is disingenuous.

Is it? Is it so wrong to infer that if we see a population change enough to become a new species, that the change wouldn't just keep continuing over the many generations? We still haven't found something in the DNA that would impose a genetic limit. Changes add up.