Why evolution doesn't work.

Originally posted by Outspoken "The second is terrible. "

the second was a broad nonscientific def. I wasn't sure if you wanted context taken into account or not.

"But, does a population have a single genetic code?"

You tell me. 

Nope.  Instead, each population has variations at nearly every locus on the DNA. Lots of alleles. (different sequences for the same gene).

The mech are different in terms of the time aspect.

How are the mechanisms different in terms of time? Please be more specific.

&nbsp;<IMG alt="" src="http://www.christianforums.com/images/smilies/sigh.gif" border=0> Here we go again.&nbsp; There are several types of intermediate fossil series.&nbsp; All have been found.



Were your grandparents required to die on the day you were born?&nbsp; Perhaps so. But your misfortune is not the norm. Similarly, when lineages split -- one species sprouts off a daughter species in another location -- the original species is not required to die.&nbsp; The grandparent species&nbsp;aren't "younger" than the grandchildren species, just living alongside them.

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Nice post lucaspa but you provide no proof of any missing link between two different species. Not in your summations or in the links you provide. Everything you have provided has been either proven to be wrong or out and out lies and half truths.

These intermediate fossil series you tout that&nbsp;have been found have&nbsp;been disproven as proof of evolution or at least have strong arguements against it which have fallen on deaf ears. Since the evolutionary development of animals currently roaming the earth would dictate many transitional animals from one branch to the current tip of the branch that are now seen, one should reasonably expect the number of intermediate transitional fossils to outnumber those of extinct animals as well as those currently alive and the fact of the matter is they just simply haven't been found or proven.

While superficially these intermediate fossils you talk about may suggest that one species to another was in evolution. All they really do is resemble each other but almost always the number of ribs, toes, or the like vary, so that to have evolved one must assume that ribs come and go, toes multiply or vanish, and whatever to make it an almost impossibility if one really were seeing a step by step evolution of an animal. While it is possible to group animals into similar families, and even arrange the fossils perfectly so that they appear to be evolving from one group to another, the fossil records don't actually reflect this.

No my grandparents didn't die when I was born but I didn't evolve into a different species from them either. To ask me to believe that an animal evolved from one to the other and yet the evidence shows the&nbsp;two are living side by side at the same time makes no sense if I were to believe in evolution specially when scientist say it takes millions of years for one species to evolve into a different species. As for believeing that the first species doesn't have to die for the other to live at the same time is going against the theory of evolution for the simple fact that the theory says the reason something evolves is to adapt to it's environment.

Originally posted by RufusAtticus Methodical naturalism is the working assumption that only natural forces affect what you observe.

That's not methodological naturalism. That's philosophical naturalism.&nbsp; MN&nbsp;arises from how we do experiments and that we have no control for, and therefore can't test for, anything other than 'natural' causes.

Atheism is simply a lack of belief in gods. It doesn't perclude the supernatural though. You and I are both atheists. We both don't believe in Zeus or Hanuman. I just believe in one more god then me.

While all theists are atheists to rival theisms, your definition of atheism simply won't stand up to critical evaluation either semantically, common usage of "lack of belief", or compared to nature.&nbsp; Eventually, in order to hold that "lack of belief", you are going to have to make a statement of belief about the entities in the physical universe.

Lucaspa,

Really? Can you give me an idea as to what leads you to that conculsion? Was that opinion formed before or after X-ray crystalography revealed that ther is no protein in the active site of ribosomes.

Looking over the papers in PubMed on origin of life and the papers presented at meetings on the subject.&nbsp; And both before and after the discovery that there is no protein at the active site in ribosomes.

Yeap that's right, in translation peptide bond formation is catalyzed by a ribozyme. Hmm, looks like the death knell for protein first hypothesis.

I don't see that at all.&nbsp; You are looking at modern directed protein synthesis, which is the product of a long evolutionary process.&nbsp; Because this is how directed protein synthesis acts now says nothing about what came first. Remember, some peptides/proteins in cells today are not made by directed protein synthesis.&nbsp; Glutathione is one of the best known, but there are others. The peptide bones in glutathione are made by protein enzymes with no ribozyme in sight.

RNA world has a couple of problems. Starting with the fact that RNA itself can't seem to be formed directly by chemical reactions.&nbsp; One possible way around this to hypothesize a simpler nucleic acid.&nbsp; 18. L Orgel,&nbsp; A simpler nucleic acid. Science 290: 1306-1307, Nov 17, 2000. 222/sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/290/5495/1306&nbsp; Threose nucleic acids are easy to synthesize under prebiotic conditions and act like RNA chemically.&nbsp; Could be precursors to RNA.

However, amino acids can be made by simple chemical reactions and proteins can be made from amino acids by simple chemical reactions:
15. J. P. Amend, E. L. Shock , Energetics of Amino Acid Synthesis in Hydrothermal Ecosystems, Science 281: 1659 - 1662 ,11 Sep 1998.
16. Imai, E., Honda, H., Hatori, K., Brack, A., Matsuno, K. (1999). Elongation of Oligopeptides in a simulated submarine hydrothermal system. Science283: 831-833.

Proteins can then synthesize new proteins without ribozymes:
13.&nbsp; Lee DH, et al. Emergence of symbiosis in peptide self-replication through a hypercyclic network.&nbsp; Nature. 1997 Dec 11;390(6660):591-4.
14.&nbsp; Yao S, et al.&nbsp;&nbsp; Selective amplification by auto- and cross-catalysis in a replicating peptide system.&nbsp; Nature. 1998 Dec 3;396(6710):447-50.
&nbsp;Rohlfing, DL.&nbsp; Thermal polyamino acids: synthesis at less than 100°C.&nbsp; Science 193: 68-70, 1976.
&nbsp; Yanagawa, H. and K. Kobayashi. 1992. An experimental approach to chemical evolution in submarine hydrothermal. systems. Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere 22: 147-159.

Add to that proteins made by thermal polymerization can make RNA/DNA (some of which would be ribozymes)&nbsp; JR Jungck and SW Fox, Synthesis of oligonucleotides by proteinoid microspheres acting on ATP.&nbsp; Naturwissenschaften, 60: 425-427, 1973. and you have a possible protein-first scenario that then makes both RNA and DNA, getting around the difficulty of not being able to make either directly in prebiotic conditions.

A recent review:

&nbsp;Peptides 1999;20(6):773-86&nbsp;Peptides and the origin of life.&nbsp; Rode BM.

Considering the state-of-the-art views of the geochemical conditions of the primitive earth, it seems most likely that peptides were produced ahead of all other oligomer precursors of biomolecules. Among all the reactions proposed so far for the formation of peptides under primordial earth conditions, the salt-induced peptide formation reaction in connection with adsorption processes on clay minerals would appear to be the simplest and most universal mechanism known to date. The properties of this reaction greatly favor the formation of biologically relevant peptides within a wide variation of environmental conditions such as temperature, pH, and the presence of inorganic compounds. The reaction-inherent preferences of certain peptide linkages make the argument of 'statistical impossibility' of the evolutionary formation of the 'right' peptides and proteins rather insignificant. Indeed, the fact that these sequences are reflected in the preferential sequences of membrane proteins of archaebacteria and prokaryonta distinctly indicates the relevance of this reaction for chemical peptide evolution. On the basis of these results and the recent findings of self-replicating peptides, some ideas have been developed as to the first steps leading to life on earth.

"No my grandparents didn't die when I was born but I didn't evolve into a different species from them either. To ask me to believe that an animal evolved from one to the other and yet the evidence shows the two are living side by side at the same time makes no sense if I were to believe in evolution specially when scientist say it takes millions of years for one species to evolve into a different species."

First it doesn't take millions of years for species to speciate into two or more different species. In some organisms, like African cichlids (a type of freshwater fish) it takes an average of 33 years for them to speciate. We observe speciation in many organisms all the time - in nature and in the lab.

Second, a species and a descendant species can easily co-exist for millions of years - usually in slightly different (or even vastly different) environmental niches.

"As for believeing that the first species doesn't have to die for the other to live at the same time is going against the theory of evolution for the simple fact that the theory says the reason something evolves is to adapt to it's environment."

Yes, but you are forgetting that environmental niches can be quite small. A new species might thrive in a new area or by eating a new prey animal. One doesn't need an iridium comet to change the global environment for evolution to occur - millions of environmental niches already exist.

Cheers

Originally posted by nephilimiyr Nice post lucaspa but you provide no proof of any missing link between two different species.

Sure I did. See the&nbsp;references in transitional individuals. If you want more references to&nbsp;links between species, then look at these articles.

1.&nbsp; McNamara KJ, Heterochrony and the evolution of echinoids. In CRC Paul and AB Smith (eds) Echinoderm Phylogeny and Evolutionary Biology, pp149-163, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1988 pg 140 of Futuyma.
2. Kellogg DE and Hays JD Microevolutionary patterns in Late Cenozoic Radiolara. Paleobiology 1: 150-160, 1975.
1.&nbsp;&nbsp; Williamson, PG, Paleontological documentation of speciation in cenozoic molluscs from Turkana basin. Nature 293:437-443, 1981.
3.&nbsp; "Unscrambling Time in the Fossil Record"&nbsp; Science vol 274, pg 1842, Dec 13, 1996.&nbsp; The primary article is by GA Goodfriend and SJ Gould "Paleontolgy and Chronolgy of Two evolutionary Transitions by Hybridization in the Bahamian Land Snail Cerion", pgs 1894-1897.

&nbsp;Not in your summations or in the links you provide.

The links were transitional species, which I clearly labeled as such.

&nbsp;Everything you have provided has been either proven to be wrong or out and out lies and half truths.

Go look at the books and articles yourself.&nbsp; I'm afraid that your statement is an out-and-out lie.&nbsp; No creationist has even addressed these sequences of transitional individuals, much less shown that they are wrong.&nbsp; The same lack of attention by creationists applies to the articles I just referenced.&nbsp; Creationists look either at the transitional species or the single transitional species like Archie. They ignore the real data.

These intermediate fossil series you tout that&nbsp;have been found have&nbsp;been disproven as proof of evolution or at least have strong arguements against it which have fallen on deaf ears.

I agree to the deaf ears, but please cite the reference where they have been "disproven".&nbsp; Creationists are deaf to that evidence, since it spoils their claim of "no transitional series", but it has been sufficient to convince working paleontologists of the reality of evolution.

Since the evolutionary development of animals currently roaming the earth would dictate many transitional animals from one branch to the current tip of the branch that are now seen, one should reasonably expect the number of intermediate transitional fossils to outnumber those of extinct animals as well as those currently alive and the fact of the matter is they just simply haven't been found or proven.

This is a different claim. And it depends on certain premises on how evolution happens and how complete the fossil record is.&nbsp; These premises amount to a strawman argument.

The premise on how evolution happens is that a large population covering large geographical areas transform to a new species. A one-to-one correspondence.&nbsp; However, if that happened, then considering extinction, there would be no increase in the diversity of life and all species would eventually go extinct.&nbsp; So, it is obvious that species have to split and give rise to new species while the original still exists.&nbsp; How does that happen?

It turns out there are two ways.&nbsp; The most common is for a small population to become geographically isolated from the main population and to face a new environment.&nbsp; The small population transforms to a new species.&nbsp; Once that is done, then the new species migrates and expands its range.&nbsp; The second way is for a small population to exploit a new ecological niche within the geographical range of the parent species. Facing a new environment, natural selection transforms that small population to a new species.

Now, either of these is going to be difficult to detect in the fossil record.&nbsp; You have a very small area and a very small time (geographically speaking).&nbsp;With most of the fossil record still&nbsp;buried under the surface, a lot of it already eroded, very little exposed on the surface, and a&nbsp;very limited number of paleontologists working only over the past 150 years,&nbsp;just how many of these do you expect we will have found?&nbsp; Not many. But we have found several. Creationism says we&nbsp;should have found none.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

All they really do is resemble each other but almost always the number of ribs, toes, or the like vary, so that to have evolved one must assume that ribs come and go, toes multiply or vanish, and whatever to make it an almost impossibility if one really were seeing a step by step evolution of an animal.

if you look at the papers, you will see just how wrong that statement is.

While it is possible to group animals into similar families, and even arrange the fossils perfectly so that they appear to be evolving from one group to another, the fossil records don't actually reflect this.

The transistional series of individuals grading into new families, orders, and even class do reflect exactly that.&nbsp; Go look for yourself. I know some of the books are hard to find.&nbsp; You will need a well equipped university library.&nbsp; But they are there.

To ask me to believe that an animal evolved from one to the other and yet the evidence shows the&nbsp;two are living side by side at the same time makes no sense if I were to believe in evolution specially when scientist say it takes millions of years for one species to evolve into a different species.

Why?&nbsp; Remember, lineages split.&nbsp; If you think of species as individual gene pools, then the analogy is exactly as for your grandparents and you.&nbsp; So it takes species tens of thousands of years to evolve (a more accurate statement).&nbsp; The average lifetime of a species is 5-8 million years.&nbsp; About 500 times longer than it takes for a species to evolve.&nbsp; People only live 6 score and 10, which is only 80 times as long as it takes a human to gestate and be born.&nbsp; Lots of time for a daughter species to live alongside the parent.

As for believeing that the first species doesn't have to die for the other to live at the same time is going against the theory of evolution for the simple fact that the theory says the reason something evolves is to adapt to it's environment.

And under either sympatric speciation (a new ecological niche) the new species isn't even competing with the old because they inhabit different environments within the same geographical area.&nbsp; Since they never compete, why would the younger cause the extinction of the older?

Under allopatric speciation, the daughter species also adapted to a different environment.&nbsp; That may or may not be close enough to the old one to cause the two species to come into conflict when they meet.&nbsp; Even if there is competition, it is going to take time for the daughter species to drive the older one to extinction.&nbsp;

When H. sapiens first hit Europe and found H. neandertals there, it still took 30,000 years to drive neandertal to extinction.&nbsp; Around Shkul, sapiens and neandertals coexisted for 60,000 years.

Originally posted by Outspoken
[BAs for the research, Its all at home and its all messy...I can try and organize it, but I have a 17 page paper due and a quiz coming up, don't count on it&nbsp; [/B]

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What a surprise.&nbsp; I have a great suggestion for you: FAQ file. Start an .rtf file in your world processor where you add the references you are reading to it as you go along. Then all you have to do is cut and paste when someone asks you for references.

Now, are you saying we will never get the research, or that we will have to wait until the paper and quiz are over?

Hello all,

I'm very sorry but I've been extremely bogged down lately and simply haven't been non-tired enough to participate in discussion. I'll try to catch up in a minute. Thanks for being patient!

-Chase

Lucaspa:

Philosophical naturalism holds that there are no supernatural causes or entities. That's pretty much atheism, isn't it?

As to interpreting scientific evidence based on our philosophies, that doesn't work. There are too many scientists with different philosophies that all accept evolution. Also, remember that creationism was the scientific theory prior to 1831. The people who falsified it were all theists or deists. Now, if evidence is only interpreted by your philosophy, then creationism couldn't have been falsified in the first place. It's the data. It's always the data.

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A definition of naturalism in my dictionary states: "Doctrine rejecting spiritual explanations of the world" among other things. It sounds atheistic to me, too. So it seems to me that the philosophy underlying evolutionary naturalism is perhaps bound with atheism. Just thoughts.

As to scientists with many philosophies accepting evolution; of course. That's because many, many different religions are based in naturalistic philosophies--their 'gods' evolved too, if you will, just to higher state of being. Or, we're all gods. Things like that. I think that the only religions, to my knowledge, that hold to special creation are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Perhaps there are other majopr religions that hold to such, I do not know.

Of course it's always the data, but data can be interpreted differently by different people with different ideas--even within evolution, you know this to be true. This is true even for different theories--Wachtershauser might interpret one thing to support his pyrite idea, while Miller might interpret it to go against it. Much of the time, dare I say most of the time, the evidence isn't black and white. Then a creationist comes in and interprets the same data to falsify certain ideas about chemical evolution in a sense--why's that so much different from contrasting ideas within the evolutionary camp?

A literal interpretation of the Bible and evolution are quite contradicting. However, even Biblical theism is not only literalism. What the Darwin quotes showed was that Darwin did not believe that evolution falsified a deity or eliminated the necessity of one.

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As AiG often stresses, it's not just a literal interpretation--it's a natural interpretation. Sure, you can bend the meaning of almost any document to suit your interests. But what Genesis says is obviously within a literal-type context. And Revelation is obviously in a prophetic/symbolism-type context; it SAYS he's having a dream. Ken Ham uses this illustration: "Back in my father's day, it took one day to drive across the Australian outback during the day." As you can see, day takes on three different meanings here: time, one solar day, and the period of daylight, respectively. I don't really wish to discuss theology here too much, but--there's my thoughts.

About Darwin, he began to compromise greatly with the natural understand of Genesis after reading a book introducing geological naturalism--if my memory serves me, it was authored by Huxley.

All the data I have seen is that Fox's protocells are alive. Therefore, the secondary causes of chemistry will yield life just like the secondary cause of gravity keeps the planets in orbit.

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I'm sorry, can I have a reference for that again? Sorry for the inconvenience.

Right here is your god-of-the-gaps. If there are no known at present chemical processes that yield life, then you invoke god. That is exactly what god-of-the-gaps is. So what happens when a material (naturalistic) cause is found? No god. Chase, what you are unconsciously doing here is accepting the basic statement of faith of atheism: natural = without God. Even if there is a naturalistic mechanism, is God absent?

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It doesn't really matter if I believe life arose naturally or not here. I'm just discussing whether it can be explained naturally, because it interests me. As for a 'creation scientist', he would probably start with the bias that such a cause will not be found.

No, it was the plea of another poster that I go easy on you because of your youth.

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Lol, I don't expect you to go easy nor do I wish you to. I simply want you to explain things so that I may understand them, because my own understand is somewhat limited. I of course don't expect to really prevail in the discussion, so to speak. I wish to learn what others have to say about different arguments in this issue.

And here is your concern. You have fashioned the debate such that evolution = atheism and creationism = theism. What you have done is said: if God created by evolution there is no God. Doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? Or, put another way, you have taken your literal interpretation of Genesis and said: If God didn't create this particular way, then God didn't create and doesn't exist. Can you see the does-not-follow here? If God is as powerful as you say, can't God have created by evolution?

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I would say in my mind that evolution = philosophical naturalism which, as I've always understood it, underlies evolutionism. Creation would equal non-strict naturalism, or uniformitarianism. That is, Uniformitarian means are not always necessary, and evidence can be explained on the supernatural level ONLY where the Bible specifically mentions events that affect scientific history--that is, the Flood as it applies to geology and population genetics, or whatever.

I think that if God created by evolution, it falsifies the Bible's God--but not necessarily any god at all. If I were to change the up-front meaning of Genesis 1-11 because of scientific evidence, I would consider it a worthless Bible.

Mass action works in a situation where 1) the system is in equilibrium and 2) the energy of bond formation is low. Such as ionic interactions. However, the energy of the covalent bond in the peptide bond is such that just having water around isn't going to provide the energy to pull the peptide bond apart. Sulphur gave you a good point: proteins in your cells are in water. Why aren't they disintegrating?

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Well, obviously because of activation energy level--they still are disintegrating, just very very slowly. Sarfati's article, which I highly suggest, is located here: &lt;http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs/3998.asp&gt;. I discussed this with Sarfati once, and he said that he'd presented in the information in Queensland, saying: "I mentioned aspects such as stabilising alpha helix. This was experimentally verified by some of the references I cited. For example, polymerization experiments with various optical purity, and small amounts of allochiral impurities markedly shortened the maximum possible chain that could be formed. I also pointed out in more detail that allochiral impurities disrupted oligomerization of RNA."


I found an interesting section of an article that is relevant to this:

&nbsp;"This means that condensation reactions, like the synthesis of peptides from amino acids, are <I>inhibited </I>by excess water, and the reverse reaction is favoured. Professor A.E. Wilder-Smith, commenting on this fact, writes:<I></I>‘The consequence of this well-known fact of organic chemistry is important: concentrations of amino acids will combine only in minute amounts, if they combine at all in a primeval ocean providing excess water, to form polypeptides. Any amounts of polypeptide which might be formed will be broken down into their initial components (amino acids) by the excess water. <I>The ocean is thus practically the last place on this or any other planet where the proteins of life could be formed spontaneously from amino acids. </I>Yet nearly all textbooks of biology teach this nonsense to support evolutionary theory and spontaneous biogenics. It requires a very great unfamiliarity with organic chemistry not to take into consideration the above-mentioned facts when proposing postulates for biogenesis….’<SUP>13</SUP> (Emphasis in the original.)

In the case of biogenesis, these reversible reactions are all in equilibrium with one another, since there is no cell machinery to remove products selectively. In the body, organic reactions such as the synthesis of proteins and the oxidation of fats occur because of the intervention of specific enzymes (acting as a type of ‘chemical machinery’)<SUP>14</SUP> acting specifically at each step along the reaction chain. However, enzymes are proteins, and one cannot claim synthesis for a product if one begins with the product one is trying to end up with."

-Russell Grigg, "Could Monkeys Type the 23rd Psalm?" Creation13(1):30-33, December 1990-February 1991. His references were: 13: A.E. Wilder-Smith, <I>The Natural Sciences Know Nothing of Evolution </I>(San Diego, CA: Master Books, 1981), Chapter 2, Biogenesis by Chance? p. 16. AND 14: Cell machinery ensures that products are removed from the reaction before they can revert to reactants, which results in irreversibility. The ‘primordial soup’, from which life is alleged to have evolved, would have no such elaborate machinery, so the reaction would tend towards equilibrium which is away from life.

But the papers do explain everythig about protein synthesis. It does take place in water. Quite well. Data trumps claims about "mass action".

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I suspect this is because the energy barrier is broken, under conditions which many consider implausible. I again suggest Sarfati's article, if only to give you an idea of his arguments.

Glycine is neither D nor L. Which refutes Sarfati right there.

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No it doesn't. He refers to glycine as the simplest, non-chiral amino acid, as it contains only a H atom for its R-group.

No, they simply fold differently. They may have a random walk (unfolded) sequence in the middle, but wherever they can fold, they will.

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I was under the impression that they would denaturize if most of the R-groups didn't form H bonds.

If you can, get a copy of Lehninger's Biochemistry.

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Thanks--I'll see if I can find one.

Chase, Once you mentioned that changing one amino acid caused them all to flip. I think I found that reference...

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This is not the reference I had in mind, actually. I'll have to look this paper up, as well. Come to find out, my ref. was referring to this idea as applied to nucleic acids: "an otherwise achiral PNA strand can have its chirality fixed by the presence of an L- or D-lysine residue attached to its end." (Christopher F. Chyba, "A Left-Handed Solar System?" Nature 389(6648):234-235, 18 September 1997. This is also mentioned in Jon Cohen, "Getting All Turned Around Over The Origins of Life on Earth," Science 267(5202):1265-1266, 3 March 1995.)

Thank you for correcting my hemoglobin example, I believed I understand protein structure a bit better now.

Chase, I tracked this down. Chickenman's post is relevant. If you are claiming that mass action will tear peptide bonds apart if they are in water, it doesn't matter whether they are in a cell or not; they are in water. The homeostasis doesn't include removing water from a cell. When that happens, cells die.

So, proteins in living cells are constantly surrounded by and in water. If mass action worked the way you say it works, then those proteins have to degrade. Of course, that doesn't happen. Proteins are degraded by specific enzymes to do the job -- proteases.

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I would think that enzymes in the cell affect the proteins' activation energy so that they do not break down like the would otherwise. Also, wouldn't active and passive transport bring water in and/or out of the cell?

-Chase

Today at 04:47 PM ChaseNelson said this in Post #288 (http://www.christianforums.com/showthread.php?postid=671628#post671628)

A definition of naturalism in my dictionary states: "Doctrine rejecting spiritual explanations of the world" among other things. It sounds atheistic to me, too. So it seems to me that the philosophy underlying evolutionary naturalism is perhaps bound with atheism. Just thoughts.[

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Chase,

You need to get a larger dictionary. Important distinctions exist between metaphysical naturalism, methodical naturalism, and atheism.

Atheism is simply the lack of the belief in dieties or similar sentient supernatural forces. Atheists don't have to lack belief in supernatural things, take buddhists for example.

Most atheists in the west are metaphysical naturalists though. That means they hold that the natural world is all that exist.

Methodical naturalism is not a philosophy or religion. It is a way of interacting with the world. Every one uses methodical naturalism. You yourself use it to post on CF. You assume that there are no supernatural gremlins that will intercept what you type in and change it to make you say something different. Whenever you speak to your parents you make the assumption that they still speak English and that no magic gnome has charmed them to speak and understand only Faroese. Methodical naturalism is the working assumption that only natural things affect the natural world. That is why I find it funny that creationists and other evolution-deniers complain about "naturalism" in science. They have us abandon reality for a world where gremlins might control the internet and language is under the control of magical gnomes.

As to scientists with many philosophies accepting evolution; of course. That's because many, many different religions are based in naturalistic philosophies--their 'gods' evolved too, if you will, just to higher state of being. Or, we're all gods. Things like that. I think that the only religions, to my knowledge, that hold to special creation are Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. Perhaps there are other majopr religions that hold to such, I do not know.

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Then how do you explain all the dedicated Christians, Jews, and Muslims that not only accept evolution but actively study and teach it? How do you explain the many Christian denominations that accept evolution and reject special creation? How do you explain Christian universities like Baylor, Emory, and Duke that are at the forefront of evolutionary biology research? Baylor is a conservative school, but can you find a single class on creation "science"?

As AiG often stresses, it's not just a literal interpretation--it's a natural interpretation.

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Well, I for one would expect a "natural" interpretation to be supported by evidence form the "natural" world. Yet that is what creationism always lacked: empirical support.

Sure, you can bend the meaning of almost any document to suit your interests. But what Genesis says is obviously within a literal-type context.

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Then find me the floodgates in the sky. If Genesis is litteral, then there should be litreral floodgates in the sky. If you can find them, then maybe your argument has a shot.

I would say in my mind that evolution = philosophical naturalism which, as I've always understood it, underlies evolutionism.

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And that is wrong. Methodical naturalism underlies science and since evolution is science it underlies evolution too.

Creation would equal non-strict naturalism, or uniformitarianism. That is, Uniformitarian means are not always necessary, and evidence can be explained on the supernatural level ONLY where the Bible specifically mentions events that affect scientific history--that is, the Flood as it applies to geology and population genetics, or whatever.

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Why just the Bible? Why not the Vedas or the Homeric Epics too? What about the book of Mormon? If you can invoke supernatural causes to prove your interpretation of the Bible, then Hindus can invoke supernatual forces to disprove it. How then do you tell who is right? Emperical evidence. If the evidence doesn't support an idea, then it's the idea that is wrong not the evidence.

Your entire post has proven why science is the best method we have and use to deal with what we know and don't know.

You see, we can use science to disprove many things. By that, we learn what is true, so far as we know.

Piltdown&nbsp; Man? Would we have known he was a fake if the Church had made him out to be Jesus? Or do you still believe that the Shroud of Turin is His Actual Body, and not a 13th century painted forgery?

Anyways, my point is, the fact that theories are proven wrong is what makes science so invaluable, and able for us as a species to carry on doing what we do, you know, impossible things like going to the moon, or curing horrible diseases.

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Speaking of horrible diseases, why would a creator create these if special creation is true?

Chris

As you can see, day takes on three different meanings here: time, one solar day, and the period of daylight, respectively. I don't really wish to discuss theology here too much, but--there's my thoughts.

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We know the term takes on different meanings and we know what those meanings are because we're familiar with the language. I assume that the people who translate the Bible are also familiar with the languages they're translating from and to and are aware of the confusion that can be caused when words are used in contexts where their meaning isn't clear. If they intended "day" to be used to mean "era," then they wouldn't (one hopes) start putting in words like "evening" and "morning," which tend to fix the meaning of "day" as a 24-hour period rather than as a general unspecified historical stretch of time.

Misty:

Your entire post has proven why science is the best method we have and use to deal with what we know and don't know.

You see, we can use science to disprove many things. By that, we learn what is true, so far as we know.

Piltdown Man? Would we have known he was a fake if the Church had made him out to be Jesus? Or do you still believe that the Shroud of Turin is His Actual Body, and not a 13th century painted forgery?

Anyways, my point is, the fact that theories are proven wrong is what makes science so invaluable, and able for us as a species to carry on doing what we do, you know, impossible things like going to the moon, or curing horrible diseases.

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I assume you're talking to me here. I agree with what you say about science, and I love science. I don't understand your point about Piltdown, and to tell you the (embarassing) truth, I don't know what the shroud of Turin is. I also agree fully and especially with your last paragraph. Wonderful insight

Chris H:

Speaking of horrible diseases, why would a creator create these if special creation is true?

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A creator obviously didn't create them, in a creationist view. They arose by mutations, as observed by science. In fact, this point would seem to support a creationist position, because it includes the mutations that they rely on to delete and not add what they call genetic information. It points back to a time of less harmful mutations and a purer genome, closer to the genetic perfection with which God created us. However, this has been marred over time by mutations. Natural selection does tend to conserve non-diseased organisms' genes.

Cantaur; thank you for your post, also.

-Chaser

I just remembered this thread: BUMP!

Has anyone covered this?

Pretty much&nbsp;a good example of&nbsp;Irredcible Complexity is a Mouse Trap.

Take away any component of the Mouse Trap and it fails to work. now I've read the response to Irreducible Complexity on TalkOrigins and it wasnt impressive. The guy just substituted a base for the mouse trap with dirt/the ground. He's a moron though since not all parts of the mouse trap could have sprung out of the ground all at once.

Lets look at the Esophogus: Without the Cilia it ceases to be an Esophugus and thus fails and dies. Cilia are different organs yet both are highly complex and rely on one another. arn(.org)has a good section of other such organs and organisms in life that give good and bad examples of irreducible complexity. Lets take the Human eye for example. It contains thousands of different and unique organs and cells which are dependant yet reliant on one another so that if one fails to exist then the whole organ of teh eye would fail. Thus, the eye could not have evolved since there is no room for mutations or errors. There isnt even room for gradual development of individual&nbsp;cells since they all have to exist at the same time or else the eye wouldn't work. The website gives much better examples also. Oh, and run a search on profusion.com for Irreducible Complexity. It produces the talkorigins.com and both sides to the arguments. If you find a site with a lot of details and more examples than the ARN.org site then you'll see that talkorigins.org is pretty off. It was a good try though. Oh, and Irreducible Complexity is a fact.

Sincerely,

Lord-Rashid

Today at 08:22 PM Lord-Rashid said this in Post #296

Lets look at the Esophogus: Without the Cilia it ceases to be an Esophugus and thus fails and dies. Cilia are different organs yet both are highly complex and rely on one another. arn(.org)has a good section of other such organs and organisms in life that give good and bad examples of irreducible complexity. Lets take the Human eye for example. It contains thousands of different and unique organs and cells which are dependant yet reliant on one another so that if one fails to exist then the whole organ of teh eye would fail. Thus, the eye could not have evolved since there is no room for mutations or errors. There isnt even room for gradual development of individual&nbsp;cells since they all have to exist at the same time or else the eye wouldn't work. The website gives much better examples also. Oh, and run a search on profusion.com for Irreducible Complexity. It produces the talkorigins.com and both sides to the arguments. If you find a site with a lot of details and more examples than the ARN.org site then you'll see that talkorigins.org is pretty off. It was a good try though. Oh, and Irreducible Complexity is a fact.

Sincerely,

Lord-Rashid

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So there are no organisms alive today that have simpler eyes or esophugus than humans?

Today at 11:22 PM Lord-Rashid said this in Post #296
Pretty much&nbsp;a good example of&nbsp;Irredcible Complexity is a Mouse Trap.

Take away any component of the Mouse Trap and it fails to work. now I've read the response to Irreducible Complexity on TalkOrigins and it wasnt impressive. The guy just substituted a base for the mouse trap with dirt/the ground. He's a moron though since not all parts of the mouse trap could have sprung out of the ground all at once.

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Two points:

First, the problem with the mouse trap analogy is it assumes the parts are only functional as a mousetrap and they would not be able to exist otherwise. But different parts in different combinations can have different functional uses. Therefore, one can not assume that the spring, for example, arose solely to be used in the mousetrap. It may have been used elsewhere in some other system (just look around you and I'm sure you can find numorous examples of springs being used).

Second, resorting to ad hominems isn't a good idea.

interestingly enough they found the exact same thing in other organisms. including birds, frogs, etc. Same Irreducible complexity umong complex organisms. Read the sites I mentioned.

Sure, but each spring similiar to the naked eye preforms different tasks and thus grew or was engineered differently. It's not like a spring adopted itself to another mouse trap b/c it liked it. But see Irreducible Complexity is in the cellulr level too. Not just on the larger organ scale. Take away the nucleai, vacul, or ribosomes that comprise a part of a cell and that cell will no longer exist. Yet each are complex and different. As if a assembled from a workshop. No pun intended thats just an analogy.