Intelligent Design - can it even be called science? (*moved thread*)

[gluadys]

Personally, one problem I’ve always had with intelligent design (obviously I believe God created everything, I just don’t believe there a very good scientific argument to show this – or at least I haven’t seen one) is the fact that there would be no point of comparison with anything not designed.

Here’s what I mean. Basically, the watch idea works because we know that there are things created by humans and there are things not created by humans. If some alien life form came to earth and really studied human things made by humans, it would theoretically be able to differentiate human made stuff like a watch, from non-human made stuff like a stone. However, since God has created everything, we can’t say a living creature looks like it was created because when you look at a non-created thing like a stone they are different. No, they’re both created. Or if for instance if we believed God only created the earth, and the rest of the universe was not created, one could create tests to see if there is an actual material difference. But since everything is created by God it is all intelligently designed material so determining what’s intelligently designed isn’t feasible – there is just nothing that is not created to compare it to.

I don’t see how one could test to see if something is intelligently designed if every single thing in the universe is intelligently designed.

This has also been my basic problem with intelligent design or rather with the intelligent design movement. I have no problem with the idea that the universe as a whole was designed by an intelligence, namely an intelligent Creator. But when one tries to find design in particular pieces of nature, the implication is that other pieces of nature were not designed by the same intelligent Creator. How can that be if there is one Creator of all?

 

[gluadys]

double post

 

[gluadys]

exactly. ID doesn't say that God did it but it does say that random chance and uphill beneficial (only, not detrimental) mutations caused everything to exist. I don't buy it myself. I have seen the odds of winning the lottery and would never bet that man could ever evolve without some intelligent force driving things, I don't believe in evolution (macro) period.

Of course evolution doesn't depend on only beneficial mutations happening. All sorts of neutral and detrimental mutations can happen too. But evolution depends on mostly beneficial (and some neutral) mutations surviving and multiplying while detrimental mutations don't. That's why good and neutral mutations can accumulate without being side-tracked by detrimental mutations.

you think God couldn't design things to genetically do what they do? ID in fact is most agreeable with adaptation within a species, some proponents of ID can even consider evolution is by design, or species are programmed to evolve against the odds of detrimental mutations which IMO should be astronomically higher than beneficial mutations.

Detrimental mutations do occur much more often than beneficial mutations, and neutral mutations way more often than both beneficial and detrimental mutations put together. But detrimental mutations are constantly weeded out of a species because the organisms affected by them either don't survive well or don't reproduce well. So the odds are stacked in favour of beneficial mutations and neutral mutations.

either evolution works on its own..... or it fails. either it has no external intelligence from start to finish or it needs intelligence IN ITS DESIGN.... so by your own words you are leaning towards ID.

That depends. I don't think any evolutionary creationists (aka theistic evolutionists) have a problem with the idea that God designed evolution and designed life to evolve. To that extent TE and ID agree. But ID (as in the ID movement) has some additional propositions that I find hard to swallow.

theistic evolution has many facets... some believe God created everything to evolve, some believe God created the universe to evolve life from a single cell and all over the place. Most people want to believe evolution on some level. I think the biggest problem is the force leap from micro to macro evolution that evolutions must have to explain away ID from the process some. I do not believe in macro evolution but I do believe species are designed to adapt or survive I do not believe by error or random chance we get cat from fishes if we just roll the random dice for a billion eons or whatever it takes to satisfy the odds against it happening.

It is a common misconception that evolution is lottery. Though, even if it were, why would that be a problem? Doesn't God get credit for determining the outcome of lotteries? Or sometimes the chance events of history--like a census being called by a Roman emperor just in time to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. Or what about the "lottery" that determines which mix of your grandparents chromosomes will be in the fertilized egg that became you?

Nevertheless, evolution is not a lottery, because it is not a random process. Or if it is a lottery, it is one in which the odds are stacked. Who gets to survive in any population and pass on their genes is a matter of probability, not free randomness.

my problem with evolution is the lack of a zillion inbetween species muddling things up enough you cannot tell an ape from a man a cat from a dog or a plant from an animal. If evolution where entirely true I would think it would be near impossible to divide anything into species at all. there would be constantly changing species of everything everywhere and there would be men with 4 legs animals with arms and legs... arachnids with 2 legs.... it would look like a random chaotic mess which is what evolution is based upon..... no intelligent driving for or design just chaos, and random luck involved. ever wonder which came first.... the bee or the flower?

The flower came first. But flowers had other insects to pollinate them before bees came along. (Still do. Bees are not the only pollinating insects.) Insects, however, came before flowers. There were insects in the great moss and fern forests of the Carboniferous period more than 200 million years before there were flowers.

You are partially right but also way off base about species. Darwin would have agreed that if evolution is true and if there had never been any extinctions species would shade into one another without clear boundaries just as varieties within a species do. It would be virtually impossible to tell where one species ended and another began. (We have enough of a problem with that even when species have been divided by the extinction of intermediate species.)

But it would not be the case that "there would be men with 4 legs animals with arms and legs... arachnids with 2 legs...." The process of evolution doesn't allow for that. Finding such chimeras would show that evolution is a false theory.


By the way---how would you prevent micro-evolution from becoming macro-evolution?

 

[gluadys]

Proving evolution theory right would mean seeing something give birth to something else,...

Actually, that would prove evolution false.

 

[Papias]

ID does not appear to be science because it's not falsifiable (in other words, any evidence of any sort can be said to be "well, that just happens to be how the designer designed it."). ID is not a way to advance our understanding of animals, but rather is a way to shut off investigation instead of looking into how it may have evolved.

Worse, ID has terrible implications for the Christian. Because there are so many really stupid "designs" in the animal kingdom, anyone who espouses ID is saying that they think God is an idiot, or worse, malicious.

In another thread here we discussed the backwards design of the human eye. There are a ton of other examples that would get a newly hired engineer fired, so I'll copy part of a post from that other thread:

Plus, how would most people know about the poor design of the eye? He just simply didn't know, just as people in general don't know that there are many, many more examples of incompetent design in the animal kingdom. Probably among plants too, but I'm no botanist.

Even in the human body, there are all kinds of other poor designs. For us males, the plumbing through the prostate causes urinary problems that could have been avoided simply by going around it instead of through it, looking at other animals, there are many other examples too, such as the idiotic "design" of the fully aquatic sea turtle to have to lay eggs on land, or the need for a whale to breathe air (why not design them with gills?). Other good examples are the many vesigial organs in the human body and other animal bodies, such as the plantaris muscle. We could go on all day with examples, but the messiness of our genome has to mentioned - it's extremely wasteful and thrown together as if there were no forethought, such as the many pseudogenes.

Without an understanding (and acceptance) of evolution, a Christian would be left with the conclusion that our glorious God is either an incompetent (or worse, malicious) designer.

Luckily, we don't have to conclude that. It can take a while to realize what a blessing evolution is to Christian thought.

Papias

 

[marlowe007]

ID does not appear to be science because it's not falsifiable

Intelligent Design, at least as interpreted by Behe (who is, after all, an actual scientist) can give us falsifiable hypotheses. One of these is his "irreducible complexity" which, if I understand it correctly, is the hypothesis that a bacterial flagellum couldn't have evolved on its own, since if you remove any protein that makes up a flagellum the flagellum doesn't work. Moreover, he hypothesises, none of the proteins in a flagellum function outside of the flagellum.

Unfortunately, that last part doesn't hold up to scrutiny. All of the proteins in the flagellum do have other, pre-existing functions.

Even in light of that revelation, you can still develop the ID hypothesis further. Okay, you say, the proteins maybe do have pre-existing functions, but it took an intelligent force to combine them into a flagellum. You can go from there to actual lab experiments - if you can prove the proteins won't spontaneously organise into something resembling a flagellum when they're physically close together, then you may be on to something.

Most people tend to assume that ID was a movement started by the religious right of America who wanted to usher young-earth creationism into the classrooms. But in reality, Intelligent Design traces its origins to the Graeco-Roman tradition - Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, Galen etc. were all ID proponents. And it was, after all, these ancient philosophers who gave us the scientific method.

 

[Papias]

marlowe wrote:

Intelligent Design, at least as interpreted by Behe (who is, after all, an actual scientist) can give us falsifiable hypotheses. One of these is his "irreducible complexity" which, if I understand it correctly, is the hypothesis that a bacterial flagellum couldn't have evolved on its own, since if you remove any protein that makes up a flagellum the flagellum doesn't work.

Hi Marlowe-

While that is the idea of “irreducible complexity” (that something is IC if removing any part makes it nonfunctional, and that IC proves that the thing was designed and could not evolve), it is worth noting that “irreducible complexity” is not evidence against evolution.

In fact, based on evolution, the scientist Hermann Muller predicted IC (he called it “interlocking complexity”) in 1939. He predicted that evolution would result in many IC systems, and that the fact that they would cease to function if one part were removed would be evidence that they evolved. The evolutionary origin of something that ceases to function if one part is removed is easy to understand. Hmmm, easy example…

Imagine a fishapod that gets it’s oxygen through gills. Now put that fishapod in low oxygen, stagnant waters, where it can get enough oxygen to live, but not enough to exercise strenuously. Then allow an internal sac to evolve into a lung, by which it can gasp air and get a little additional oxygen. The selective advantage of this is that even a poor lung gets the animal at least a little more oxygen than the gills alone supplied. As the lung evolves to be more efficient, soon the fishapod can venture onto land for short periods of time using the lung for oxygen. It (well, it’s descendants) evolve to get their oxygen from the lung, and the gills evolve away. Now its respiratory system is irreducibly complex, because removing the lung renders it unable to breathe. The simple way to remember this process is “add a part, then make that part necessary”. Because evolutionary routes can often easily be seen for interlocking complex systems, IC often provides evidence for evolution, not ID.

This works very well to explain the evolution of the blood clotting cascade or the Krebs cycle, and there are plenty of well established ways that evolution can result in something that is irreducibly complex or interlockingly complex (to use the original term). Some of these are duplication, dual use (use the same thing for two functions), the gradual perfection of a functioning part, deletion of a part, and so on. Some biological systems are indeed IC, and that does more to provide evidence for evolution than design, because after all, if one were to design a robust system, isn’t it a better design if it can survive the loss of one part (functional redundancy)? On a side note, the bacterial flagellum isn’t even an example of IC, because examples of bacterial flagellum exist with some of the parts missing, and they still work.

Even in light of that revelation, you can still develop the ID hypothesis further. Okay, you say, the proteins maybe do have pre-existing functions, but it took an intelligent force to combine them into a flagellum. You can go from there to actual lab experiments - if you can prove the proteins won't spontaneously organise into something resembling a flagellum when they're physically close together, then you may be on to something.

No, you wouldn’t be. What you are doing is disproving a competing hypothesis, which is NOT THE SAME as providing evidence FOR the ID hypothesis. To provide evidence for the ID hypothesis, look for evidence that it WAS designed, such as a little “made by god” nano-sized written stamps, or a written revelation that describes the nanoscale bacterial design dated to 3,000 years before humans could have developed that idea, or some other positive evidence. Showing evidence that a competing hypothesis (evolution) is wrong is NOT evidence for the chosen hypothesis (design by a god). Creationists mislead (intentionally or not, I don’t know) when they present evidence against evolution as evidence for creationism. Even if it is very good evidence against evolution, that’s all it is.


ID boils down to the argument from incredulity, which is “because I can’t see how (whatever) could have evolved, it must have been created". Simple reflection shows that this is the same as saying “because I don’t understand biology, you must accept that creationism is true.”.

But in reality, Intelligent Design traces its origins to the Graeco-Roman tradition - Cicero, Plato, Aristotle, Galen etc. were all ID proponents. And it was, after all, these ancient philosophers who gave us the scientific method.

Perhaps. They had some ideas right and some wrong (like Aristotle’s version of Newton’s 1st law of motion). However, when looking at their views, it is important to keep their world in mind – none of them had the ability to compare the present or past evidence with Darwin’s idea, so saying they are ID proponents is kind like saying that they favored walking over riding in an airplane, because they never rode in an airplane, and walked often.

Papias

 

[Sophrosyne]

Of course evolution doesn't depend on only beneficial mutations happening. All sorts of neutral and detrimental mutations can happen too. But evolution depends on mostly beneficial (and some neutral) mutations surviving and multiplying while detrimental mutations don't. That's why good and neutral mutations can accumulate without being side-tracked by detrimental mutations.

does DNA resist mutation or does it allow it and why? If evolution is such that it will always find a way to accumulate upwardly towards more evolved species why is DNA designed to resist evolution (mutation) in the first place?

Detrimental mutations do occur much more often than beneficial mutations, and neutral mutations way more often than both beneficial and detrimental mutations put together. But detrimental mutations are constantly weeded out of a species because the organisms affected by them either don't survive well or don't reproduce well. So the odds are stacked in favor of beneficial mutations and neutral mutations.

nonsense, if your statement was true why do some species never evolve and why is de-evolution not present in nature equally as evolution? DNA resists errors and unless it is designed to resist harmful errors more than beneficial errors evolution should be clueless to which direction to take because it has NO intelligence whatsoever. IMO evolutionists stumbling block is DNA because without it the mutations would kill everything and would go wild but with it nothing wants to evolve at all.

That depends. I don't think any evolutionary creationists (aka theistic evolutionists) have a problem with the idea that God designed evolution and designed life to evolve. To that extent TE and ID agree. But ID (as in the ID movement) has some additional propositions that I find hard to swallow.

I don't buy TE myself but at least it has more truth to it than things that get more complicated over time in a universe that everything else breaks down. The only driving force we can see the can help the complication is DNA which evolutionists cannot figure out how it evolved. Evolution is mindless yet can make things the greatest minds cannot comprehend is ironic. ID is a lot more plausable theory to explain the unexplainable than hoping in the next billion years we come up with someone with an IQ of 2000 and a computer system able to process things enough to be able to manufacture a single living cell. I often chuckle at how evolutionists mostly deny existence of ID, yet in the end IF and only IF they unlock the secrets of life they will themselves start creating their own *LIFE* and be Intelligent Designers and their new species will be born to which they will be *God* to them.

It is a common misconception that evolution is lottery. Though, even if it were, why would that be a problem? Doesn't God get credit for determining the outcome of lotteries? Or sometimes the chance events of history--like a census being called by a Roman emperor just in time to get Joseph and Mary to Bethlehem. Or what about the "lottery" that determines which mix of your grandparents chromosomes will be in the fertilized egg that became you?

Nevertheless, evolution is not a lottery, because it is not a random process. Or if it is a lottery, it is one in which the odds are stacked. Who gets to survive in any population and pass on their genes is a matter of probability, not free randomness.

if evolution isn't a random process then how does DNA resist it by design time after time then one day a mutation happens? how many times does DNA resist a mutation? a fixed number or a random one? can you prove in a lab that if you try and mutate something exactly 1000 times it will or does it happen after 10000000 one time and 10000 another? a lottery is the same idea you could play it 1 time and win or 10000000 and never win. We have species that never evolve that we know of and some that seemed to have evolved quite fast.

The flower came first. But flowers had other insects to pollinate them before bees came along. (Still do. Bees are not the only pollinating insects.) Insects, however, came before flowers. There were insects in the great moss and fern forests of the Carboniferous period more than 200 million years before there were flowers.

who said there wasn't flowers 200 million years ago and bees back then?

You are partially right but also way off base about species. Darwin would have agreed that if evolution is true and if there had never been any extinctions species would shade into one another without clear boundaries just as varieties within a species do. It would be virtually impossible to tell where one species ended and another began. (We have enough of a problem with that even when species have been divided by the extinction of intermediate species.)

But it would not be the case that "there would be men with 4 legs animals with arms and legs... arachnids with 2 legs...." The process of evolution doesn't allow for that. Finding such chimeras would show that evolution is a false theory.

actually the more mutated things would look in nature would actually strengthen evolutionists proof because it depends entirely upon mutations therefore we should see all sorts of gross mutated stuff ad nauseum unless DNA was designed to resist it.

By the way---how would you prevent micro-evolution from becoming macro-evolution?

[/quote]
have species that cannot procreate with other species, oh wait there is already that in nature. In order for a species to become a new one it would either have to have both male and female available of the new species at the same time able to procreate or have to procreate with the former old species to produce a new one.

 

[Papias]

I'll supply some numbers and such, for Sophrosyne and Gluadys.

Sophrosyne wrote:

does DNA resist mutation or does it allow it and why?

Mechanisms have evolved to reduce the error rate, because early creatures with a lower mutation rate would be less likely to have harmful mutations, and hence more kids. The measured mutation rate varies depending on the type of creature, but for mammals like us, it's around 1 mistake in 10 to 50 million (really good copying!). So with a genome of around 3,000,000,000 thats on the order of a few dozen mutations per generation.

If evolution is such that it will always find a way to accumulate upwardly towards more evolved species why is DNA designed to resist evolution (mutation) in the first place?

see above.

if your statement was true why do some species never evolve and why is de-evolution not present in nature equally as evolution?

It all depends on the environment. Some species do not evolve (much) like the coelacanth, because they happened to stay in an environment that didn't change. De-evolution is present when the environment goes back the way it was before. There are plenty of cases of this, such as the finches on the Galapagos.

DNA resists errors and unless it is designed to resist harmful errors more than beneficial errors evolution should be clueless to which direction to take because it has NO intelligence whatsoever.

Mutation are indeed random (which is what I think you are saying), but natural selection is not random. The direction will always be positive in the sense of an improvement in fitting the environment. It sounds like you aren't clear on the role of natural selection, because natural selection does provide an "intelligence" of sorts, in that creatures are selected to survive or die just as effectively as an artificial breeded selects which dog traits to select for to get the breed he or she desires.

in a universe that everything else breaks down.

I hope you are not appealing to the "2nd law of thermodynamics" creationist arguement, which is so solidly discredited that even creationists are embarrassed by creationists still using it. You aren't, right?

IMO evolutionists stumbling block is DNA because without it the mutations would kill everything and would go wild but with it nothing wants to evolve at all.

"Nothing wants to evolve"? It sounds like you are ascribing intention and forethought to genes. You do understand that a low mutation rate (say, 1 mistake in 100 million) will make occasional mutations with a pretty reliable copying otherwise, right? I mean, just because it can be hot or cold outside doesn't mean that it always has to be either broiling or freezing - there is a wide range in the happy medium. Maybe that's how God wants it - after all, the Pope has speculated that God may be the one who supplies all the beneficial mutations we see.

Darwin would have agreed that if evolution is true and if there had never been any extinctions species would shade into one another without clear boundaries just as varieties within a species do. It would be virtually impossible to tell where one species ended and another began.

You are aware, I assume, that there are cases like that, where extinctions haven't happened, and two or more species all alive today blend seamlessly into each other? They are called "ring species", and some good examples include salamanders and gulls, among others. Google it, and enjoy - it's pretty neat.

Papias

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

I don’t see how one could test to see if something is intelligently designed if every single thing in the universe is intelligently designed.

Charles Darwin and Richard Dawkins both disagree with you.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." -- Charles R. Darwin, naturalist, Novemer 24th 1859

"Well, it [Intelligent Design] could come about in the folowing way, it could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilization ... [came] to a very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility, an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe." -- Richard Dawkins, atheist preacher, 2008

Therefore, since there is no way to test intelligent design, even theoretically, it cannot be considered science.

Since random evolution and intelligent design are both answers to the same question they are both equally testable.

"Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme." -- Karl Popper, philosopher, 1976

"Intelligent design and evolutionary theory are either both testable or both untestable. Parity of reasoning requires that the testability of one entails the testability of the other. Evolutionary theory claims that certain material mechanisms are able to propel the evolutionary process, gradually transforming organisms with one set of characteristics into another (for instance, transforming bacteria without a flagellum into bacteria with one). Intelligent design, by contrast, claims that intelligence needs to supplement material mechanisms if they are to bring about organisms with certain complex features. Accordingly, testing the adequacy or inadequacy of evolutionary mechanisms constitutes a joint test of both evolutionary theory and intelligent design." -- William A. Dembski, philosopher, August 25th 2005

"Why do Darwinists claim that intelligent design is untestable, and simultaneously claim that it is wrong?" -- Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon, February 5th 2009

Is my thinking off? Am I thinking about intelligent design all wrong?

Yes. See above.

If intelligent design had some serious science supporting it, I would have no problem accepting it.

Meyer, S.C., The Origin Of Biological Information And The Higher Taxonomic Categories, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Volume 117, Number 2, Pages 213-239, May 2007

 

[gluadys]

does DNA resist mutation or does it allow it and why? If evolution is such that it will always find a way to accumulate upwardly towards more evolved species why is DNA designed to resist evolution (mutation) in the first place?

As Papias points out, DNA has developed remarkable efficiency in preventing mutations. But not 100% efficiency. Given the huge number of base nucleotides in a genome, even a very slight rate of mutation--well less that 1%-- allows for dozens to hundreds of mutations each time a cell divides. We need the stability of DNA for survival, but we also get a slight level of inefficient copying and that allows for variation. As long as we have any variation at all, then evolution is possible. Not inevitable, but possible.

nonsense, if your statement was true why do some species never evolve and why is de-evolution not present in nature equally as evolution?

There is no species that never evolves. It may not change much over time, especially in its morphology, but there will still be minor differences. There is no such thing as devolution either unless you mean something like the reversal of colour proportions in moths after industrial pollution was cleared up. But in most cases in which one gets a sort of reversal of habit, it is not de-evolution, but further evolution. So, for example, a reptile loses its legs or a mammal takes to the sea, but neither of them revert to being fish. The snake is still a reptile with evidence that its ancestors had legs and the whale is still a mammal with evidence that its ancestors once walked on land.

It may help to understand the issue if you remember that DNA mutates; it does not evolve. A rate of mutation is not the same thing as a rate of evolution, because, although the variations supplied through mutations are raw material for evolution, other factors are also needed to transform a supply of variations into evolutionary change.

DNA resists errors and unless it is designed to resist harmful errors more than beneficial errors evolution should be clueless to which direction to take because it has NO intelligence whatsoever.

DNA "resists" all mutations, and when its control and correction mechanisms fail they are just as likely to fail for harmful errors as for neutral and beneficial errors. But as noted, mutation is not evolution per se. What you are leaving out of your reckoning here is natural selection (or differential reproductive success). Indeed, you may be leaving out reproduction altogether. I don't know.

The point here is that a mutation occurs in a cell. And in complex organisms that generally doesn't mean much. (An exception would be if that cell proved cancerous as a result.) Most mutations don't have much effect on a whole organism. Evolution, on the other hand, occurs in species i.e. in a population. So to get from mutations to evolution, you have to consider how any effect of any mutation gets from one individual to others in the population. Obviously that is through reproduction.

And this is where the odds get stacked in favour of beneficial mutations. It is not that there are more beneficial mutations than harmful mutations--in fact there are fewer. But beneficial mutations are far more likely to be passed on to other individuals in the population. Harmful mutations, however, tend to get restricted to a small percentage of the population. Very harmful mutations may cause sterility or even death, so there are no children to inherit them. So beneficial changes multiply in the populations while harmful changes do not, or do so to a much smaller extent.

It is the change in the population, not the mutations in individual cells, that is evolution.

IMO evolutionists stumbling block is DNA because without it the mutations would kill everything and would go wild but with it nothing wants to evolve at all.

Well, nothing ever "wants" to evolve anyway. It is a pretty automatic process. We can no more choose to evolve or not to evolve than we can choose to make/stop our fingernails growing.

The only driving force we can see the can help the complication is DNA which evolutionists cannot figure out how it evolved.

That's because it is a different kind of evolution (chemical not biological). Scientists are certainly working on figuring out how both RNA and DNA evolved from chemical reactions.

Evolution is mindless yet can make things the greatest minds cannot comprehend is ironic.

Yes, kind of like wisdom coming from the mouths of children that outshines that of the scholars. I don't see the mindlessness of evolution as a problem, because I know the mind of the Creator can use anything to whatever purpose he proposes. When God arranged for a strong east wind to hold back the waters of the Red Sea until the Israelites were across, did the wind need a mind to do its job?

if evolution isn't a random process then how does DNA resist it by design time after time then one day a mutation happens? how many times does DNA resist a mutation? a fixed number or a random one? can you prove in a lab that if you try and mutate something exactly 1000 times it will or does it happen after 10000000 one time and 10000 another? a lottery is the same idea you could play it 1 time and win or 10000000 and never win. We have species that never evolve that we know of and some that seemed to have evolved quite fast.

DNA doesn't resist evolution. It doesn't even have a lot to do with evolution. One may say it "resists" mutation, but even that suggests too much active mentality in a chemical compound. It does achieve a very high level of fidelity in copying itself. Just not a perfect level. Mutations occur in DNA rather like a lottery. Scientists have been able to work out the probability statistics of how often certain mutations will occur, how often mutations in general will occur, just as with coin tosses or card games or a roll of dice, you can develop the probabilities for certain hands or numbers to come up. But, no, there is no way to tell when or where one particular mutation will occur.

However, there can be more confidence in saying what happens next. One can say with a high level of confidence, that if a mutation disrupts a key process in embryological development, the embryo will not survive. This is why genes that regulate development are some of the most conserved in the whole genome, showing minimal variation compared to other genes.

who said there wasn't flowers 200 million years ago and bees back then?

Fossil and genetic evidence says so. Pollen from flowers is a very common fossil. It is hardy and one of the most readily fossilizable part of a plant. But you don't get any before the Cretaceous (145-65 million years ago). No pollen means no flowers. And there are no fossils of bees that precede the first evidence of flowers. But there are plenty of fossils of other plants and of other insects long before the Cretaceous.

actually the more mutated things would look in nature would actually strengthen evolutionists proof because it depends entirely upon mutations therefore we should see all sorts of gross mutated stuff ad nauseum unless DNA was designed to resist it.

No, evolution does not depend entirely on mutations. It doesn't even depend primarily on mutations. Other essential factors are inheritance, selection and reproductive isolation. A mutation that is never inherited contributes nothing to evolution. A mutation that is not selected contributes virtually nothing to evolution even if it continues to be inherited for hundreds of generations. And reproductive isolation is needed to generate biodiversity. Very few mutations produce "gross" stuff. That is a misconception that arose during early 20th century experiments with irradiating fruit flies. At the time, those were the obvious mutations that could be studied. But now that we can see DNA directly, we have learned that most mutations have very small effects if any.


Nor would such gross mutations add anything to the evidence for evolution. It is not just any mutational change that spells evolution. Because evolution also relies on inheritance, changes have to follow a particular pattern consistent with inheritance. A six-legged mammal species (i.e. a whole species, not a deformed individual) would be strong evidence of design over-riding evolution. Everything in evolutionary theory tells us that mammals can have no more than four limbs because they inherit that pattern and no other.

By the way---how would you prevent micro-evolution from becoming macro-evolution?

have species that cannot procreate with other species, oh wait there is already that in nature.

Yes, there already is. What you would need is to find a way for micro-evolution not to allow that to happen. One you get some part of a population not procreating with another part of the population, you have macro-evolution. So that is helping micro-evolution become macro-evolution, not preventing it.

In order for a species to become a new one it would either have to have both male and female available of the new species at the same time able to procreate or have to procreate with the former old species to produce a new one.

Not in species that reproduce asexually or hermaproditically. But it's no problem in sexually reproducing species either. Males and females are part of any sexually reproducing population, and in the earlier stages of speciation, they do reproduce with the older species. No incipient species consists of just one individual. The only time you would get that is with a species on the verge of extinction.


Sounds like you are somewhat confused about what macro-evolution is. And even using whatever definition you are working with, you have no idea how to put the brake on micro-evolution so that you do not get macro-evolution.

 

[Sophrosyne]

As Papias points out, DNA has developed remarkable efficiency in preventing mutations. But not 100% efficiency. Given the huge number of base nucleotides in a genome, even a very slight rate of mutation--well less that 1%-- allows for dozens to hundreds of mutations each time a cell divides. We need the stability of DNA for survival, but we also get a slight level of inefficient copying and that allows for variation. As long as we have any variation at all, then evolution is possible. Not inevitable, but possible.

this is nonsense and exaggerated given that high of an error we would literally die before ever born if the error rate was even 1/10 of 1% and if we had 100 mutations in a cell every time things would malfunction and we would end up probably with cancer most of the time instead of a new species.
[/quote]
There is no species that never evolves. It may not change much over time, especially in its morphology, but there will still be minor differences. There is no such thing as devolution either unless you mean something like the reversal of colour proportions in moths after industrial pollution was cleared up. But in most cases in which one gets a sort of reversal of habit, it is not de-evolution, but further evolution. So, for example, a reptile loses its legs or a mammal takes to the sea, but neither of them revert to being fish. The snake is still a reptile with evidence that its ancestors had legs and the whale is still a mammal with evidence that its ancestors once walked on land. [/quote] how can a species evolve if it is born hard coded from the start to be a bird does it become a non bird before it is born? if evolution can happen it can happen in reverse because evolution is not intelligent that would be admitting ID.

It may help to understand the issue if you remember that DNA mutates; it does not evolve. A rate of mutation is not the same thing as a rate of evolution, because, although the variations supplied through mutations are raw material for evolution, other factors are also needed to transform a supply of variations into evolutionary change.

mutation=evolution because the original DNA is mutated to evolved according to evolution something *changes* it otherwise it would not change if left alone.

DNA "resists" all mutations, and when its control and correction mechanisms fail they are just as likely to fail for harmful errors as for neutral and beneficial errors. But as noted, mutation is not evolution per se. What you are leaving out of your reckoning here is natural selection (or differential reproductive success). Indeed, you may be leaving out reproduction altogether. I don't know.

natural selection is not a proof of evolution as by definition is produces members of the same species, not a new species. Natural selection or adaptation is a design perameter just as easily as anything. It is easy enough to say that certain genes could be designed to be there from beginning to have a chance of a member with ability to be better suited by environment but it has never been proven that these turn a member into a new species unable to reproduce with its former parents species.

The point here is that a mutation occurs in a cell. And in complex organisms that generally doesn't mean much. (An exception would be if that cell proved cancerous as a result.) Most mutations don't have much effect on a whole organism. Evolution, on the other hand, occurs in species i.e. in a population. So to get from mutations to evolution, you have to consider how any effect of any mutation gets from one individual to others in the population. Obviously that is through reproduction.

And this is where the odds get stacked in favour of beneficial mutations. It is not that there are more beneficial mutations than harmful mutations--in fact there are fewer. But beneficial mutations are far more likely to be passed on to other individuals in the population. Harmful mutations, however, tend to get restricted to a small percentage of the population. Very harmful mutations may cause sterility or even death, so there are no children to inherit them. So beneficial changes multiply in the populations while harmful changes do not, or do so to a much smaller extent.

you are assuming a lot here, there is little proof that other than what the species have already as limits in design of the species they will go beyond. We have seen limits on variation in every species on the planet that have been catalogged over and over so much that the scientists that watch them are not finding these *mutations* that are responsible for new species.

It is the change in the population, not the mutations in individual cells, that is evolution.

how is that change passed on? through magic?

Well, nothing ever "wants" to evolve anyway. It is a pretty automatic process. We can no more choose to evolve or not to evolve than we can choose to make/stop our fingernails growing.

adapting is automatic, evolving is unproven. I do not consider microevolution (adaptataton within a species) the *evolution* that is taught.

That's because it is a different kind of evolution (chemical not biological). Scientists are certainly working on figuring out how both RNA and DNA evolved from chemical reactions.

sure it is different but it still is evolution and this evolution denies creationism and denies outright ID while Theistic evolutionists can accept the rest of evolotion they cannot accept how the start of things comes from dead matter to what I consider DNA *adapted* life from which all the dogma of evolution relies upon for explanation.

Yes, kind of like wisdom coming from the mouths of children that outshines that of the scholars. I don't see the mindlessness of evolution as a problem, because I know the mind of the Creator can use anything to whatever purpose he proposes. When God arranged for a strong east wind to hold back the waters of the Red Sea until the Israelites were across, did the wind need a mind to do its job?

creator = ID... period. creator = designer of living things which are programmed to procreate and should be adaptable to survive (microevolution) No need for evolution to do it if God says he created animals to begin with.

DNA doesn't resist evolution. It doesn't even have a lot to do with evolution. One may say it "resists" mutation, but even that suggests too much active mentality in a chemical compound. It does achieve a very high level of fidelity in copying itself. Just not a perfect level. Mutations occur in DNA rather like a lottery. Scientists have been able to work out the probability statistics of how often certain mutations will occur, how often mutations in general will occur, just as with coin tosses or card games or a roll of dice, you can develop the probabilities for certain hands or numbers to come up. But, no, there is no way to tell when or where one particular mutation will occur.


Fossil and genetic evidence says so. Pollen from flowers is a very common fossil. It is hardy and one of the most readily fossilizable part of a plant. But you don't get any before the Cretaceous (145-65 million years ago). No pollen means no flowers. And there are no fossils of bees that precede the first evidence of flowers. But there are plenty of fossils of other plants and of other insects long before the Cretaceous.

tha only means bees were not before flowers... it is possible they came at the same time.

No, evolution does not depend entirely on mutations. It doesn't even depend primarily on mutations. Other essential factors are inheritance, selection and reproductive isolation. A mutation that is never inherited contributes nothing to evolution. A mutation that is not selected contributes virtually nothing to evolution even if it continues to be inherited for hundreds of generations. And reproductive isolation is needed to generate biodiversity. Very few mutations produce "gross" stuff. That is a misconception that arose during early 20th century experiments with irradiating fruit flies. At the time, those were the obvious mutations that could be studied. But now that we can see DNA directly, we have learned that most mutations have very small effects if any.


Nor would such gross mutations add anything to the evidence for evolution. It is not just any mutational change that spells evolution. Because evolution also relies on inheritance, changes have to follow a particular pattern consistent with inheritance. A six-legged mammal species (i.e. a whole species, not a deformed individual) would be strong evidence of design over-riding evolution. Everything in evolutionary theory tells us that mammals can have no more than four limbs because they inherit that pattern and no other.

that is because they are designed to not inherit others by default, evolution would allow any genetic anomaly while DNA is designed to resist harmful ones. There is no logic that would allow more beneficial mutations other than design

Yes, there already is. What you would need is to find a way for micro-evolution not to allow that to happen. One you get some part of a population not procreating with another part of the population, you have macro-evolution. So that is helping micro-evolution become macro-evolution, not preventing it.

wrong, macro is evolution across the boundry of a species into a new species that is no longer identified with the former, birds stay birds, cats stay cats in micro evolution a bird can breed with a bird etc. Macro evolution is when a bird is no longer a bird nor a cat is no longer a cat and it is seperate species. Macro evolution is where all the transitional fossils are missing it is where *suggested* connections between species are said to be and where we used to get from ape to man. For man to get from lesser life to where he is took macroevolution and that form before it supposedly evolved from a lower form all the way back to dead dirt.

Sounds like you are somewhat confused about what macro-evolution is. And even using whatever definition you are working with, you have no idea how to put the brake on micro-evolution so that you do not get macro-evolution.

[/quote]
changes in species do not explain new species that are no longer members and breedable amongst the old species. birds do not evolve beyond being birds nor do 4 legged animals evolve beyond 4 legged animals you said it yourself they resist doing so that is why there are not 4 legged humans because they do not evolve beyond 2 legs.

 

[Papias]

Susa wrote:

Meyer, S.C., The Origin Of Biological Information And The Higher Taxonomic Categories, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington,

Ah, some background is probably useful, on both Meyer and on that paper, which was removed.

Meyer is not a scientist, and has no scientific degree. The paper cited contains no original research, and was simply a collection of polemical arguments lifted from creationist books.

It was only published because the acting editor at the time was a stealth creationist, who put it in without proper peer review in the last issue he would be editing. It has since been withdrawn, with an apology from the journal for the mistake.

I can understand why Susa may think that this incident was relevant to the question asked because creationist organizations will often cite this paper, without telling anyone (such as Susa) anything about the story.

More can be read here:

Sternberg peer review controversy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

[Papias]

Hi Sophrosyne-

There is a lot of neat examples out there that you may be interested in. Let me help point you towards them, because God's creation is truly wonderful.

Sophrosyne wrote:

macro is evolution across the boundry of a species into a new species that is no longer identified with the former, birds stay birds, cats stay cats in micro evolution a bird can breed with a bird etc. Macro evolution is when a bird is no longer a bird nor a cat is no longer a cat and it is seperate species.

There are plenty of cases of observed macroevolution, resulting in the formation of new species. One is the evolution of Culex molestus from Culex pipiens (a mosquito), or the evolution of nereis worms into a new species, or the evolution of a new species of apple maggot fly, or chiclid fish. If you don't find more on those examples, just let me know and I'll post links.

if we had 100 mutations in a cell every time things would malfunction and we would end up probably with cancer most of the time instead of a new species.

Don't forget three things - 1. the size of the genome
and 2. the amount of non-coding DNA
3. redundancy


1. The size of the genome is around 3,000,000,000, so 100 mutations would be 0.000003% . That's pretty accurate copying!

2. Of that, over 90% is non-coding DNA (which has been called "junk" DNA). While some has some use, it's mostly has no effect, so changing it doesn't do anything.

3. redundancy. Some different genetic sequences will code for the exact same amino acid, so a mutation that changes one to the other will give the same exact protein, as if nothing changed.

I hope both those points helped. Also, did you look up and investigate "Ring Species", which I mentioned before? That will help clear up your idea of species - you seem to think they are hard and fast boundaries, while what we see in nature is one species blending into another, both over space (such as in the ring species) and over time. Understanding that will clear up most of your previous post.

Have a fun day-

Papias

 

[Sophrosyne]

Hi Sophrosyne-

There is a lot of neat examples out there that you may be interested in. Let me help point you towards them, because God's creation is truly wonderful.

Sophrosyne wrote:



There are plenty of cases of observed macroevolution, resulting in the formation of new species. One is the evolution of Culex molestus from Culex pipiens (a mosquito), or the evolution of nereis worms into a new species, or the evolution of a new species of apple maggot fly, or chiclid fish. If you don't find more on those examples, just let me know and I'll post links.

these don't impress me as macroevolution as they may be considered new species perhaps but fish turning into fish and flys and mosquitos turning into other flys and mosquitos don't make me consider any change that would explain evolution upwards they are more sideways and irrelevent IMO

Don't forget three things - 1. the size of the genome
and 2. the amount of non-coding DNA
3. redundancy

why would a random process depending on errors make itself have redundancy? that makes little sense in a random process hoping for mutations or errors to overcome redundancy in order to evolve.

1. The size of the genome is around 3,000,000,000, so 100 mutations would be 0.000003% . That's pretty accurate copying!

2. Of that, over 90% is non-coding DNA (which has been called "junk" DNA). While some has some use, it's mostly has no effect, so changing it doesn't do anything.

3. redundancy. Some different genetic sequences will code for the exact same amino acid, so a mutation that changes one to the other will give the same exact protein, as if nothing changed.

I hope both those points helped. Also, did you look up and investigate "Ring Species", which I mentioned before? That will help clear up your idea of species - you seem to think they are hard and fast boundaries, while what we see in nature is one species blending into another, both over space (such as in the ring species) and over time. Understanding that will clear up most of your previous post.

Have a fun day-

Papias

looks like ring species are still just same type of species only adapted and so much changed within species to no longer be compatible which IMO is actually a detrimental problem causing more chance of extinction but the examples I saw had birds staying as birds there was no example that would prove birds changed to anything otherwise. So far I am seeing no upwards or downwards evolution but rather sideways which IMO proves that evolution isn't getting anywhere but making a population more diverse perhaps even to the point of making it harder to survive with ring species unable to no longer breed that could be detrimental if the species were to shrink. Evolution is falling flat getting from one celled to multicelled to simple plants to simple animals to more complex and intelligent animals.

Can you explain the Cambrian Explosion? How come suddenly things were evolving like mad then stopped according to evolutionists? Does evolution go turbocharged then and run like a snail now by some random accident or was there an intelligence at that time causing the unexplained phenoma?

 

[Cabal]

Can you explain the Cambrian Explosion? How come suddenly things were evolving like mad then stopped according to evolutionists? Does evolution go turbocharged then and run like a snail now by some random accident or was there an intelligence at that time causing the unexplained phenoma?

No, not according to evolutionists - according to geologists.

They only appear to be evolving quickly because the ticks of the geological record pass by slower than the lifespans of the organisms themselves. It's like trying to compare the times of a stopwatch against a calendar - the scales don't match, so hour-long processes will look "instantaneous" relative to the calendar.

 

[Mallon]

these don't impress me as macroevolution as they may be considered new species perhaps but fish turning into fish and flys and mosquitos turning into other flys and mosquitos don't make me consider any change that would explain evolution upwards they are more sideways and irrelevent IMO

With respect, you're not using the scientific definition of macroevolution, which is speciation. If you don't want to listen to evolutionists, check out what YEC apologist Todd Wood has to say:

First, horse evolution is not microevolution. Although it's a vague term, microevolution generally refers to evolutionary changes within a species. Horse evolution produced new species, genera, and even subfamilies. I'll probably get a lot of flak for saying this, but horse evolution counts as a kind of macroevolution

Can you explain the Cambrian Explosion? How come suddenly things were evolving like mad then stopped according to evolutionists? Does evolution go turbocharged then and run like a snail now by some random accident or was there an intelligence at that time causing the unexplained phenoma?

Nothing has stopped evolving since the Cambrian explosion. In fact, the more we learn about the early fossil record, the less explosive it appears to be (we're now finding precursors to Cambrian life in the Ediacaran deposits). Still, there does appear to be a change in evolutionary tempo in the Cambrian, and the following explanations have been offered:

Cambrian explosion - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(I should also point out to any anti-evolutionists out there that citing the Cambrian Explosion in an attempt to stymie evolutionists is really a non-starter. Even if we were to grant that life was created miraculously in the Cambrian, there is still A LOT of intra-phyletic evolution that has happened since (like ALL vertebrates, ALL arthropods, etc).

 

[gluadys]

this is nonsense and exaggerated given that high of an error we would literally die before ever born if the error rate was even 1/10 of 1% and if we had 100 mutations in a cell every time things would malfunction and we would end up probably with cancer most of the time instead of a new species.

Possibly, but Papias again has the correct figure: 0.000003% That still gives you about 100 mutations per cell division, yet it is an extraordinarily small percentage of error. Then consider that around 90% of those mutations occur where they can't do any harm---in non-coding DNA, and that most of the remaining mutations will be neutral (neither harmful nor beneficial) in their effect.

how can a species evolve if it is born hard coded from the start to be a bird does it become a non bird before it is born? if evolution can happen it can happen in reverse because evolution is not intelligent that would be admitting ID.

Single mutations can be reversed. Evolution, though does not work in reverse because it normally involves more than single mutations. And as long as there is variation in a population, you can get evolution without any mutations at all. Consider chromosomal recombination for example. Each time a new sperm or ovum is generated by meiotic division, there is a point where the pair of chromosomes inherited from father and mother cross-over and switch places so that some genetic material from the mother ends up on the same chromosome as genetic material from the father. No mutation needed, this is just a normal feature of meiotic cell division. But the "breaking" point where the chromosomes split from their original position and move over to join the other chromosome in the pair can occur almost anywhere, even right in the middle of a gene. In any case, every meiotic cell division shuffles around the genetic material recombining it in unique ways, and this is apart from classic mutations like point insertions or sequence reversals.

All of this contributes to a species variability, but to get evolution, you need additional factors. Variation alone is not evolution.

"Bird" is not a species. It is a whole clade of species. Since new species are always formed within an existing clade, new species in the bird clade will always be new species of birds. Just as birds themselves were originally new forms of dinosaurs. We only see them differently now because the rest of the dinosaur clade is extinct.

mutation=evolution because the original DNA is mutated to evolved according to evolution something *changes* it otherwise it would not change if left alone.

DNA is not the only thing that changes. DNA can only change in one cell at a time. To get evolution you need changes in every individual in a population. It is getting from changes in one cell to changes in thousands of individuals that is evolution.

natural selection is not a proof of evolution as by definition is produces members of the same species, not a new species.

No one said it was a proof of evolution. (There are no "proofs" in science, just evidence.) But, there is no evolution where there is no selection. Selection need not be natural selection (selection for fitness), it can be sexual selection (selection for reproduction) or neutral selection (aka genetic drift), but in any case there must be selection or there is no evolution. Of course, variation is a pre-requisite since selection is a matter of giving preference to some variations over others. But variation alone does not bring about evolution, only lots of variability within the population. To get evolution both variations and selection are essential. Then there is also inheritance and speciation. One cannot lodge the whole of the evolutionary process in just one mechanism when it actually takes at least four.

Variations are like the fuel in an automobile. Fuel is necessary to make the car move, but it doesn't drive the car. And you can have plenty of fuel in the tank but still get nowhere if you have no wheels or if the ignition does not function.

Natural selection or adaptation is a design perameter just as easily as anything. It is easy enough to say that certain genes could be designed to be there from beginning to have a chance of a member with ability to be better suited by environment but it has never been proven that these turn a member into a new species unable to reproduce with its former parents species.

This is incorrect. New species which cannot reproduce with its former parents have been produced in laboratory controlled experiments and observed to develop in nature. Papias mentioned the Culex molestis species of mosquito. Ring species are another example.

Also, (with a few very rare exceptions) you never get one member of a species turning into a new species. That is an incorrect view of how speciation happens. Normally speciation involves groups, not single individuals and it takes several generations to complete the process of speciation.

you are assuming a lot here, there is little proof that other than what the species have already as limits in design of the species they will go beyond. We have seen limits on variation in every species on the planet that have been catalogged over and over so much that the scientists that watch them are not finding these *mutations* that are responsible for new species.

Usually mutations are not responsible for new species. That takes selection and isolation so that inheritance proceeds along a limited lineage. There are indeed constraints on evolution, but they are mostly historical constraints, not design constraints. Nothing ever evolves outside of the nest of clades it is already in. That is why the historical pattern of evolution is a branching tree----not a railway track. In fact, this means that in general evolution confirms that everything reproduces "after its kind". Think of species as twigs on a tree branch. Newer species will be like leaves on the twig. Will the leaves ever grow on a different branch? Or even on a different twig? No, each new leaf (species) will form on its own twig and always be part of the same "kind" as the twig (species) it came from.

how is that change passed on? through magic?

Through reproduction. Inheritance is a very important part of the evolutionary process. Selection can be defined as differential reproductive success. Who gets to pass on their genes and who doesn't is the defining issue in evolution. Organisms with harmful mutations generally don't get to pass on their genes as often as organisms with beneficial mutations. That is why harmful mutations don't contribute to or impede evolutionary change, while beneficial ones--and also some neutral ones---do contribute to evolutionary change.

adapting is automatic, evolving is unproven. I do not consider microevolution (adaptataton within a species) the *evolution* that is taught.

Then you don't really know what is taught. Evolution is essential to adaptation. There can be no adaptation without the evolutionary process--in particular natural selection.


You would be more accurate to say that you object to common descent than that you object to evolution.

sure it is different but it still is evolution

So is stellar evolution, but that doesn't mean it tells us anything about change in biological species.

and this evolution denies creationism and denies outright ID

True, but it does not deny creation or design.

while Theistic evolutionists can accept the rest of evolotion they cannot accept how the start of things comes from dead matter to what I consider DNA *adapted* life from which all the dogma of evolution relies upon for explanation.

Do you mean non-organic matter? "Dead" matter is matter that used to be alive.

Not all theistic evolutionists accept a natural process that produced the first living forms; some do, some don't. What we do accept is that God is just as likely to work through a natural process as through a miracle, so either way God creates life.

creator = ID... period. creator = designer of living things which are programmed to procreate and should be adaptable to survive

IOW programmed to evolve.

tha only means bees were not before flowers... it is possible they came at the same time.

Possibly, but not likely. A paleontologist would know what the evidence says about the coincidence of bees and flowers appearing together.

that is because they are designed to not inherit others by default, evolution would allow any genetic anomaly while DNA is designed to resist harmful ones. There is no logic that would allow more beneficial mutations other than design

Incorrect on two counts. DNA does not resist harmful mutations. What DNA resists is incorrect copying. But on the rare occasions that DNA copies itself incorrectly it is in fact more likely that the error will be harmful than beneficial. Although in most cases it is neither.

Secondly, evolution does not allow any genetic anomaly. In fact, the process of selection weeds out genetic anomalies fairly thoroughly. When DNA changes are harmful, selection is the line of defence that protects the species. Only genetic differences that are not harmful become widespread in a species. Genetic differences that are beneficial soon come to be the species' norm.

wrong, macro is evolution across the boundry of a species into a new species that is no longer identified with the former, birds stay birds, cats stay cats in micro evolution a bird can breed with a bird etc. Macro evolution is when a bird is no longer a bird nor a cat is no longer a cat and it is seperate species. Macro evolution is where all the transitional fossils are missing it is where *suggested* connections between species are said to be and where we used to get from ape to man. For man to get from lesser life to where he is took macroevolution and that form before it supposedly evolved from a lower form all the way back to dead dirt.

Basically, you are working with an incorrect linear model of speciation. You also confuse single species with whole clades (groups of related species). "Ape" for example, is not a species; it is a clade (specifically a family) of species and humans are members of that clade. That doesn't make us any less than human any more than being a placental mammal or a vertebrate makes us any less than human. It simply defines what sort of animal we are.

You would do well to acquaint yourself with the basics of cladistics and cladistic speciation.

changes in species do not explain new species that are no longer members and breedable amongst the old species. birds do not evolve beyond being birds nor do 4 legged animals evolve beyond 4 legged animals you said it yourself they resist doing so that is why there are not 4 legged humans because they do not evolve beyond 2 legs.

Again, these objections are to an incorrect, almost phantom, model of how evolution works. Before you can provide legitimate objections to evolution, you need to be better acquainted with the actual process of evolution. The notion of evolving "beyond" something has no place in evolutionary theory.


And humans, like all mammals, do have four limbs. We have adapted two of them into arms just as bats have adapted two of them into wings.

 

[Mallon]

Your patience and clear explanations are great, gluadys. Keep it up!

 

[Mallon]

By the way, Sophrosyne, here is an excellent website that should help to clarify any misconceptions you might have about evolution (e.g., evolving individuals, "devolution", evolving "beyond" your ancestry, etc.):

Understanding Evolution