The complexity of the living cell has only in recent years, been really appreciated. Let me ask you a question if I may - what do you estimate is the probability of the first living cell having arisen by chance?
This is a common misconception, so let me return your question with another question - what do you think the first living cell looked like? What components did it have?
I'm not a scientist, that's true, but I like to think I am able to "see the wood for the trees" in some of the arguments that are put forward. I've had a look at some of the videos above and I can't see what the relevance these type of small-scale changes have to the idea that one kind or creature can change into a completely different kind. You can't have something that is half bird and half reptile because the vital life support systems (e.g., the way they breathe) are completely different.
Would you say you can't have something that is half fish, half tetrapod? Because we actually found that one. Just like the half-bird, half-reptile...
(if I'm wrong, somebody please list some and please, not Archaeopteryx, which is merely just an ancient bird).
You're wrong. Really, really wrong.
First of all, the younger dinosaurs actually did breathe like birds.
They had a bird-like breathing apparatus. This is a stark contrast to older dinosaurs, which did not.
Secondly, when you say Archaeopteryx is "merely an ancient bird", you're ignoring
numerous important features which clearly mark it as not "merely" an ancient bird, but a transitional form between dinosaurs and birds. The field of paleontology is pretty clear on this one.
Thirdly, the problem of "could this have evolved this way" has been addressed
at length both in the scientific literature and in the courtroom, and every time, regardless of how bizarre it seemed from the outset, the answer was "yes". Going from a reptilian breathing apparatus to an avian one? Try evolving the bacterial flagellum! It's really nothing more than an argument from ignorance - "I don't know how it could have evolved that way, therefore it couldn't have".
You keep on talking about shifting breathing apparatuses... Have you spent any time researching it? Because there appear to be
some pretty decent answers. But you didn't look for those answers. You immediately jumped to "I don't know, therefore evolution is wrong". This is a weak argument even when we don't know exactly how something could have evolved (because, after all, just because we don't know how something could have evolved does not mean there is no possible explanation), but when talking about things where we have a pretty solid idea not only of how they could have evolved but actually how they
did evolve, it just becomes depressing.
In Biblical times, evil spirits were able to cause physical and mental illness. There is no reason to expect that demons do not continue to cause these conditions today.
I think there might be a reason. Let me explain this to you with a simple example.
In the olden times, people thought the bubonic plague was caused by evil spirits. Then, we found out about this little fella, right here:
For some reason, along with the evil spirits, every time someone was sick with bubonic plague, this guy was found on the scene. Then we found this guy:
That's streptomycin. It killed off all the little wriggly thingies that came along with the demons. And oddly enough, when that happened, the demons
left! What an odd coinkidink!
But okay, how do you drive out demons? Pray? Here, tell you what, next time there's a bubonic plague outbreak, we'll split the people who have it into two groups. One will pray the lord's prayer, and the other will take streptomycin. Both will, of course, receive ancillary treatment (without which you will usually die before the antibiotic takes effect). I have a sneaking suspicion that one group is going to do a whole lot better than the other. In fact, I think one group is going to die almost completely, while the other has a decent survival rate.
Do I sound patronizing? I hope so, because I sure feel ridiculous explaining this like this. The reason we abandoned the idea that evil spirits were causing diseases was because it was a
worthless hypothesis. It offers us no way of understanding reality, and, you can see this
beautifully in medicine in ways you cannot immediately see in evolutionary biology,
gave us ways to make life better. We abandoned the "evil spirits cause disease" hypothesis because it was vapid, unscientific, and
completely worthless.
I almost cannot believe that it is the 21st century and we have someone capable of operating a computer who believes that evil spirits cause disease.
Jesus Christ had perfect knowledge when he observed the activity of demons in the lives of people and was able to determine the cause of illness without mistake. We should be very cautious today when attempting to distinguish between spiritual and natural causes.
See, this is where you're going to get it wrong every time.
Every single time. We shouldn't be cautious when attempting to distinguish spiritual and natural causes, we should
disregard spiritual causes! There has not been one
single case in recorded history where "spiritual causes" led us down the right road. Supernatural causation is a fool's game. Once you place the cause of an event outside of nature, you lose any and all means of examining that cause, and thus any and all means of making predictions about that cause.
If bubonic plague is called by evil spirits, how can we make predictions about it? What do we know about these evil spirits? How can we prevent them? Even if the bible said so, there would be no reason that the bible is necessarily a trustworthy source with regards to that topic. There is absolutely no way to make our lives better. We cannot use any knowledge gained. It is worthless.
But if bubonic plague is called by bacteria, then we can make very accurate predictions about how it spreads and how to treat it, and proceed to
make life better.
This is the difference between saying "God Did It" and "X naturalistic explanation Did It". Do you know what the difference is between "God did it" and "I don't know"? Neither has any practical application whatsoever, but one has the added detriment of actively discouraging further examination. After all, we have our answer. God did it, and we can't do anything about it. Except that, in every case thus far, "God did it" has either been unproven or
false. There's a massive pattern throughout history of "God did it" being
wrong. So appealing to that in
medicine, a field where scientific advances are saving lives on a daily basis, is just disgusting.
Regarding the changes from one type of creature into another, if I understand natural selection correctly, new features have to have some beneficial/survival value in order to be passed to succeeding generations. Now anyone who has (for example), looked at the complexity of a feather will appreciate that developing wings would not be of any use whatsoever until the whole structure had developed and so would not have any survival value at all and probably the reverse.
Please stop pretending you know anything about evolution. It's getting kind of tiresome.
"Half a wing"
"Half a leg"
"Half a brain"
If you're going to critique a scientific field learn something about it before doing so. It's things like this that put the lie to this statement:
I'm not a scientist, that's true, but I like to think I am able to "see the wood for the trees" in some of the arguments that are put forward.
No,
Not_By_Chance, you are
not able to "see the wood for the trees". You can't even see the trees. You're alone in a desert.
With an armchair. You're the biological equivalent of
this guy:
Please, before you spend even more time showing us just how little you understand the evidence available for the theory of evolution, go out and actually spend some time learning about it from sources that aren't ICR, AiG, and other creationist sources. Because, again, the massive scientific consensus stands behind evolution. For some reason, almost every single person who has studied biology accepts the theory of evolution as true. Somehow you don't seem to agree. But then again, you aren't a scientist. You have not studied biology to any meaningful degree. So I guess I'm not surprised.
