The Deception of Evolution and the Fossil Sequence

[Atheos canadensis]

Your demands for "evidence" don't even make sense. I'm describing the actual logic and principles of the theory. Try addressing the points raised instead of making nonsensical or undefined demands.

You also ignored the known fact that fossils can be OUT OF SEQUENCE and still reconciled to evolution theory. You don't like that do you?

You described a particular fossil order that would be hard to explain. Yep I agree, there are some like that. That doesn't change the fact that there are countless fossil orders where major animal groups could becompletely shuffled around and Evolution theory could still have accommodated it

The inescapable logical conclusion is that the present fossil record is not an Evolutionary one in any remotely specific sense. It is obvious.

You're not describing anything but what you suppose would happen if the fossil record were different. You have not given any esupport beyond your imaginings that support the way you think those scenarios would play out.

You admit that at a large scale (an entire phylum) a fossil record that is the reverse of what we actually see it would be very difficult (I suggest impossible) to reconcile with the theory of evolution. That's good. If the diverse forms of tetrapods showed up first and gradually became more and more similar to each other until there was just one form near the top of the rock record, evolutionary theory as we know it could not accommodate it. The same is true for a subset, like birds. If all the birds appeared in Cambrian rocks and gradually merged into a single form in the Holocene then our understanding of how evolution works would have to be completely different. And it is the same for everything else. If the fundamental fossil order of a given lineage changing and being followed by increasingly diverse forms as we move up in the rock record were reverse, evolutionary theory could not accommodate this.

You want to brush this off as if it is insignificant, but that does not make it so. At a very fundamental level the theory of evolution would not just as easily fit a reversed fossil order as you keep insisting. I see you've added the caveat "in a specific sense" now that you see that in a fundamental sense you are wrong. But you are wrong anyway because the same thing holds true at the small scale. If the fossil record showed the 19 species of Nannostomus (to pick a random example) gradually became more similar until there was just one species, this would be quite contrary to how we understand evolution to work. Thus, even at a literally specific level, evolutionary theory would not just as easily explain a reverse fossil order. In other words, the fossil record is an evolutionary one in a specific sense.

 

[ViaCrucis]

Why is it in the bible then?

Despite the Evangelical/Fundamentalist mantra that the Bible is God's "instruction manual" to man, that's not what it is. The Bible is a diverse collection of very different texts written by many different people over a very different period of time. By the first century Pharisaism recognized "Scriptures' in effectively two portions, the first being "the Law" (Torah) also known by the Greek name Pentateuch; and the second "the Prophets", which consisted of the Major Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel) and the book of the Minor Prophets (Amos, Obadiah, Micah, etc). Additionally the Psalms were accepted. But there existed a great deal of diversity of opinion on a great many different things.

Speaking to that diversity several centuries before Christ, traditionally said to have been in Alexandria, Egypt, a Greek translation of Jewish Scripture was made (though possibly made over several stages) known as the Septuagint in Greek or the LXX in Latin ("the Seventy" after the tradition that 72 Jewish scribes were involved in translating the text). When one reads the writings of the New Testament most of the time quotes taken from what later became known as the Christian Old Testament are verbatim from the Septuagint, in other cases there are differences and thus possibly relying on another Greek variant than the Septuagint, or other variant source.

The Septuagint, as it existed both in antiquity and today, contains a number of books which were ultimately not accepted into the Jewish Bible (the Tanakh) though given the widespread nature of Christianity and spread among Greek-speaking people in the Roman world the Septuagint was generally received; though with continued debates in Christian circles without any real conclusion (in the Christian West the Roman Catholic Church came to its final conclusion on the Canon at the Council of Trent in the mid 16th century, whereas most Protestant churches have their own Canon largely based upon Luther's German translation -- Lutherans, ironically, are about the only ones who don't).

The development of the New Testament Canon over the course of many centuries was a very lengthy process, though there were a core group of Homolegoumena (commonly accepted books) such as the four Gospels, the thirteen epistles of St. Paul, and the Acts of the Apostles; there were also a group of disputed books or Antilegomena (lit. "Disputed Writings") which include the familiar 2 Peter, 2 & 3 John, Jude, James, Hebrews, and the Revelation of John but also included the largely unfamiliar Epistle of Clement, Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, the Shepherd of Hermas, and a couple others (which could be found in various biblical codices in the 4th and 5th centuries).

The Bible isn't a monolithic book, it's not a homogenous text; it's not a text or a book at all, but a collection of many books, many texts. With different purposes, and are to be read differently according to context and literary genre (something forgotten by the literalists who refuse to take seriously the subtleties and nuances of the biblical texts.

Christians receive the five books of the Pentateuch or Torah as Scripture for several reasons:

1) These were always regarded as Scripture by the Jewish people as these contain the mitzvot or instructions from God as to how they are to live and be the covenant people of God.

2) There are many beautiful things written in the Torah that we can benefit from in our hearing.

3) It contains the grand narrative of Israel, without which Christianity is meaningless.

4) Christians confess in faith that all Scripture points us to Christ, and in the writings of the Torah we see inklings and promises that are ultimately made full in the person of Jesus Christ. For example St. Paul tells us in his letters that it is Christ that is Abraham's Seed, and thus the promise to Abraham that he would be the father of many nations is fulfilled, Christians believe, in Jesus; and therefore we by our faith in Christ are children and heirs of Abraham.

But the Bible isn't an instruction manual, it's not a list of rules to follow or proscriptions of things to believe, it is a library, a tapestry, of the story of God and people of faith in many different ways which Christianity understands finds its fullness in Jesus, who being God in the flesh has revealed God fully to the world, and all of Scripture exists to bear witness to Him as it is He that is the very Word of God. Scripture isn't that Word, Jesus is. Scripture isn't God's Revelation, Jesus is God's Revelation. Scripture is holy, inspired, and important because we believe Christ is there present in Scripture for us; not because it is some sort of magical book or a divinely dictated set of rules or ordinances, it isn't God's "instruction manual".

-CryptoLutheran

 

[nonbeliever314]

Everything is tied to something else. It is all important to the whole.

Nice dodge. (Emoji thumbs up)

 

[lifepsyop]

You admit that at a large scale (an entire phylum) a fossil record that is the reverse of what we actually see it would be very difficult (I suggest impossible) to reconcile with the theory of evolution. That's good.

Yep. It would. And dogs giving birth to cats would be hard to reconcile with the Bible. The point being that nearly everything is falsifiable in some way. This doesn't automatically make it persuasive. Though many evolutionists lend a magical sacrosanct quality to any measure of potential falsifiability. In actuality, obsessing over limited examples of falsifiability is kind of a last resort for when your theory generally isn't very scientifically persuasive and seems to fight the data rather than flow from it.

If the diverse forms of tetrapods showed up first and gradually became more and more similar to each other until there was just one form near the top of the rock record, evolutionary theory as we know it could not accommodate it. The same is true for a subset, like birds. If all the birds appeared in Cambrian rocks and gradually merged into a single form in the Holocene then our understanding of how evolution works would have to be completely different. And it is the same for everything else. If the fundamental fossil order of a given lineage changing and being followed by increasingly diverse forms as we move up in the rock record were reverse, evolutionary theory could not accommodate this.

Yet birds and mammals could appear alongside dinosaurs and other tetrapods in the early Mesozoic and Evolution theory could simply attribute it to rapid evolution and diversification of tetrapods. (Again, the "transitionals" don't have to be in proper stratigraphic sequence) Higher mammals could appear at least a hundred million years before dinosaurs and Evolution theory could simply attribute it to nature selecting for mammals before dinosaurs. At the very least, major animal groups could be rearranged throughout half of the Phanerozoic rock record and Evolution theory could have still accommodated it. If I believed in Evolution, that would stop and make me think.

You want to brush this off as if it is insignificant, but that does not make it so. At a very fundamental level the theory of evolution would not just as easily fit a reversed fossil order as you keep insisting. I see you've added the caveat "in a specific sense" now that you see that in a fundamental sense you are wrong. But you are wrong anyway because the same thing holds true at the small scale. If the fossil record showed the 19 species of Nannostomus (to pick a random example) gradually became more similar until there was just one species, this would be quite contrary to how we understand evolution to work. Thus, even at a literally specific level, evolutionary theory would not just as easily explain a reverse fossil order. In other words, the fossil record is an evolutionary one in a specific sense.

If that were really a constraint on evolution theory then it would be impressive, however it's not. In your example it would simply look like more basal groups of Nannostomus outlived and fossilized after its more diversified progeny, merely giving the illusion that an animal group was becoming less diverse over time. A small-scale fossil pattern like this would be easily accommodated into the theory.

On a related note, a dominant pattern we do see in the rocks is the sudden appearance of lots of variety with only a few highly ambiguous examples of supposed transitioning. Let's not forget that this reality represents a major historical failure of Evolutionary predictions. Yet, unsurprisingly, it was all accommodated into the theory later on by simply imagineering new ad-hoc models of the speed and tempo of evolution. This again shows the plasticity in which the theory is able to adapt to unwelcome data.

 

[PsychoSarah]

So we can then assume that E coli after billions of generations and billions of mutations never evolve into another species and falsify the theory - since after all these billions of mutations and generations - they are still E coli.

-_- bacteria have evolved into other species, what makes you think they haven't? And before you mention "but they are still bacteria", that wouldn't be a species level transition. That wouldn't even be a genus level transition. That would be kingdom level, and that kind of transition takes BILLIONS of years and requires a huge niche gap that no longer exists on our planet.

 

[AV1611VET]

He who blasphemes the name of Yahweh,

That's what I thought

-_- bacteria have evolved into other species, what makes you think they haven't? And before you mention "but they are still bacteria", that wouldn't be a species level transition. That wouldn't even be a genus level transition. That would be kingdom level, and that kind of transition takes BILLIONS of years and requires a huge niche gap that no longer exists on our planet.

If we came from bacteria, then why is bacteria still around?

 

[PeterDona]

My one and only message in this thread, and only because threadstarter is so spot on, on the issue of evolution "theory".

Evolution is not a theory. it is an explanation. I will not accept to call evolution a theory, because that normally in science a theory has to have some predictive power, to point towards new experiments, to further technology or some other positive goal for science.

Evolution "theory" has no predictive power in my field of science (molecular biology). You cannot tell from the protein structure of glutathion-S-transferase in mouse, what will be the structure of glutathion-S-transferase in a dog. It might be similar, in most cases, but it might also be very different. And one other thing, you cannot tell which species have the enzyme and which have not.

Molecular biology should be a core science for evolution "theory", because we are the ones with the DNA you know !? So if evolution "theory" is not good science in molecular biology, why do people still call it science? It is an explanation, for the common man, it is not something that researchers are seriously building their predictions upon.

Having realized the abuse of the term "theory" and "science", I became angry with the masses of people who use those words like so easy and with so little intention of ever following it up scientifically. If anything, it lends the credibility of science to their selfsufficient lifestyles.

best regards ....

 

[PsychoSarah]

That's what I thought


If we came from bacteria, then why is bacteria still around?

I know I have told you before that a species doesn't have to go extinct in order to have a portion of its population evolve into another species. And that is all the more apparent with kingdom level designations. Bacteria are a kingdom, not a genus, certainly wouldn't qualify as a kind unless you think all animals are the same kind.

 

[AV1611VET]

Bacteria are a kingdom, not a genus,

Only on paper.

Bacteria has been excused of Linnaeus' classification, else the paperwork would be staggering.

Think about it: a new binomial every nine hours would require a lot of treeware.

 

[PsychoSarah]

Only on paper.

Bacteria has been excused of Linnaeus' classification, else the paperwork would be staggering.

Think about it: a new binomial every nine hours would require a lot of treeware.

-_- in what way are bacteria ever excused from classification in any regard?

 

[TheyShallExpel]

<Staff Edit>
The theory of gravitation eh... well lets see, if you were to say, walk off a building; do you think that would demonstrate the virtues of gravity or do you think you need to see it again?

Ok, all chiding aside. lets start over. Since we need to prove what a theory is... (see what i did there!) from Wikipedia, the only truth in the world it seems, says the following about theory!

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation. (emphasis mine) As with most (if not all) forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and aim for predictive power and explanatory capability.

So yes, it seems I had it right the first time and do indeed know what a theory is. It does however beg the question if you do?
Once again, please show me where evolution has been repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation and then perhaps we can call it a theory. Until you can do that it is just a religion based on deep seated beliefs. In fact, you have way more faith than me as I could never believe in evolution.

 

[AV1611VET]

-_- in what way are bacteria ever excused from classification in any regard?

I said "Linnaeus' classification."

Give me, for instance, the binomial for a species of bacteria: genus & species.

 

[AV1611VET]

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation. (emphasis mine) As with most (if not all) forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and aim for predictive power and explanatory capability.

Have you seen this?

There is no single list called "The Scientific Method." It is a myth.

 

[AV1611VET]

Try Google Scholar to find many reports on observed evolution.

Anyone can observe microevolution.

That's why Roundup™ needs to be more potent each year.

It's macroevolution that can't be observed.

 

[TheyShallExpel]

Have you see this?

There is no single list called "The Scientific Method." It is a myth.

You right - I think we should just hypothesize the heck out of whatever we want - that way, when it suits us we don’t actually have to provide proof of anything. Smart eh, well done. No really, you got me there. Serious well done. I think I will use tautology from now on too .

 

[TheyShallExpel]

LOL and ROFL back at you. So, what makes you think evolution has not been observed? Have you researched the issue somewhere except in creationist publications? Let me quote Talk Origins CA220:

1. Science requires that observations can be replicated. The observations on which evolution is based, including comparative anatomy, genetics, and fossils, are replicable. In many cases, you can repeat the observations yourself.
2. Repeatable experiments, including experiments about mutations and natural selection in the laboratory and in the field, also support evolution.

Try Google Scholar to find many reports on observed evolution.

Nah, I prefer to remain ignorant and one sided in my opinion and will therefore reiterate that evolution has never been observed either in a lab or in the field. All you will ever observe is speciation and not evolution, regardless how many times you say it is. as for natural selection and mutations? really? I have absolutely no issue with either except where evolutionary acolytes use them as "proof" of evolution.

 

[Loudmouth]

Ok, all chiding aside. lets start over. Since we need to prove what a theory is... (see what i did there!) from Wikipedia, the only truth in the world it seems, says the following about theory!

A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation. (emphasis mine) As with most (if not all) forms of scientific knowledge, scientific theories are inductive in nature and aim for predictive power and explanatory capability.

You say that theories are proven, yet your own reference says that they are well substantiated, tested, and confirmed. Not the same thing.

Also, it does not say that the theory is observed. It says that the theory is confirmed by observations. This would mean that observations such as fossils and genome comparisons between species can be used to confirm theories. It is no different than testing how gravity works without being able to see gravity itself. Fossils and genomes are the effects caused by evolution in the same way that falling off a building is an effect caused by gravity.

Once again, please show me where evolution has been repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation and then perhaps we can call it a theory.

ERV's are one such test, and I discuss them in this thread if you are interested in discussing the topic:

http://www.christianforums.com/threads/lines-of-evidence-part-1-ervs.7867271/#post-67527087

Until you can do that it is just a religion based on deep seated beliefs. In fact, you have way more faith than me as I could never believe in evolution.

I always find it interesting when people try to insult evolution by comparing it to their religious beliefs.

 

[Loudmouth]

Nah, I prefer to remain ignorant and one sided in my opinion and will therefore reiterate that evolution has never been observed either in a lab or in the field.

You don't observe the theory. You test the theory.

All you will ever observe is speciation and not evolution, regardless how many times you say it is.

That's like saying that all you will ever observe is people falling, not gravity.

as for natural selection and mutations? really? I have absolutely no issue with either except where evolutionary acolytes use them as "proof" of evolution.

Mutations and natural selection are two of the mechanisms that drive evolution. Speciation is another.

 

[Atheos canadensis]

Yep. It would. And dogs giving birth to cats would be hard to reconcile with the Bible. The point being that nearly everything is falsifiable in some way. This doesn't automatically make it persuasive. Though many evolutionists lend a magical sacrosanct quality to any measure of potential falsifiability. In actuality, obsessing over limited examples of falsifiability is kind of a last resort for when your theory generally isn't very scientifically persuasive and seems to fight the data rather than flow from it.

Yet birds and mammals could appear alongside dinosaurs and other tetrapods in the early Mesozoic and Evolution theory could simply attribute it to rapid evolution and diversification of tetrapods. (Again, the "transitionals" don't have to be in proper stratigraphic sequence) Higher mammals could appear at least a hundred million years before dinosaurs and Evolution theory could simply attribute it to nature selecting for mammals before dinosaurs. At the very least, major animal groups could be rearranged throughout half of the Phanerozoic rock record and Evolution theory could have still accommodated it. If I believed in Evolution, that would stop and make me think.

If that were really a constraint on evolution theory then it would be impressive, however it's not. In your example it would simply look like more basal groups of Nannostomus outlived and fossilized after its more diversified progeny, merely giving the illusion that an animal group was becoming less diverse over time. A small-scale fossil pattern like this would be easily accommodated into the theory.

On a related note, a dominant pattern we do see in the rocks is the sudden appearance of lots of variety with only a few highly ambiguous examples of supposed transitioning. Let's not forget that this reality represents a major historical failure of Evolutionary predictions. Yet, unsurprisingly, it was all accommodated into the theory later on by simply imagineering new ad-hoc models of the speed and tempo of evolution. This again shows the plasticity in which the theory is able to adapt to unwelcome data.

So your complaint is that, were the fossils arranged in a different way that was nonetheless consistent with the idea of descent with modification, evolutionary theory could accommodate this. Shocking. Evolution is about descent with modification, so if there were a pattern that supported this in the rock record it would be utterly reasonable to interpret that pattern evolutionarily. But if we simply reversed the order of the fossil record as I described, you admit that the theory could not accommodate. That's because we would be seeing convergence and diminishing diversity rather than the descent with modification upon which evolution is founded. You admit this at the level of a phylum but doubt it at the species level. Where and how do you draw the line? Family? Order? Class? If the order of the fossil record for various lineages at these taxonomic levels were flipped, evolutionary theory as we know it could not support it. You also seem to criticise evolutionary theory for not explaining why certain lineages appeared before others. This is puzzling because, as you should know, the theory concerns descent with modification, not why certain things appeared when they did.

Plate tectonics would work as a theory regardless of the timing of the plate movements, but this doesn't make it any less an excellent explanation for how the continents came to be as they are. If there were alternate shapes, lithologies and index fossils of the continents that revealed that Australia was once part of North America rather than Antarctica, geologists would have no trouble reconciling this with plate tectonics. That doesn't make plate tectonics a bad theory any more than different fossil record configurations that nonetheless show descent with modification being compatible with evolutionary theory makes evolution a bad theory.

Also, I don't understand your strange insistence that a theory should not change to reflect new data and that if it does so it is merely an ad hoc rescue attempt.

 

[ViaCrucis]

I find this idea that science must be immutable to be very strange. Our knowledge of the natural world is shaped by data found in the natural world, and so our knowledge of the natural world is going to change the more we learn about it. This seems excruciatingly obvious to me. The whole point of science is to understand the natural world as it really is, now what we simply believe it to be.

The geocentric model worked for a very long time, and generally speaking, we really had no reason to know better. New evidence, however, challenged our thinking on this and so as it turns out the heliocentric model is correct, we were wrong before and we know that now because more evidence and more data showed up and our knowledge of how things are changed to conform closer to how things are. It wasn't a failure in science to discover that the earth goes around the sun rather than the sun around the earth, that was its success. Changing our knowledge of the natural world to conform to what actually is as evidenced in the world around us isn't a failure of science, it's a feature; it's the main feature.

All arguments against science that rely on criticism of the mutability of scientific knowledge are, intrinsically, ..oh what's a good word here? Stupid? Daft? Asinine? Offensive to reason?

-CryptoLutheran