Why I do not accept evolution part one

[Job 33:6]

Did you know that the appearance of the majority of genus observed in earth today, actually either pre-date or post date (by over 100 million years) the Cambrian explosion, or have disputed pre-cambrian precursors? Let me see if I can find my excel spread.

Why do evangelicals care so much about disproving evolution?

I guess I should have said "phyla" not genus.

Here it is. My summary:
Of 24 phyla (of the world), 8 appeared between 505 and 535 Mya. So presumably the Cambrian explosion could arguably have occurred in this window. 6 are contested between Cambrian and pre-cambrian appearance. 6 appear in the fossil record in completely separate times including the ordovician, eocene, devonian, Cretaceous, triassic etc., 3 appeared in the pre-cambrian, and one doesn't have a fossil record.

So in actuality, the Cambrian explosion isn't this moment in which all life radically appeared. But in actuality a lot of phyla/phylum these days have been discovered to predate the Cambrian explosion both by their fossils and by studies in genetics.

And I could work some of the bugs out of the little summary cells on the right but the point stands.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Why is 'imperfection' an inherent and necessary part of being human?

Good and evil, as left and right- literally define each other, one has no meaning without the other does it?

& from a physical standpoint; our weaknesses are the reason, that right now we are sitting comfortably in front of a computer pondering the meaning of our existence, perhaps with a nice 'quarantinee', rather than scampering about in the woods on all fours, sneaking up on bugs with our awesome night vision!

I agree that nested hierarchies- this is inherent in self replication... unless there were creative mechanisms involved.

Even if the Intelligent Designer was constrained by common descent as yours appears to be, they aren't obliged to re-invent the wheel as they modify their life forms. They can introduce their new designs and techniques at later stages. Also they could clean up orphan genes and other remnants if they choose.

Not sure if it is by constraint or choice? Second guessing God is pretty tough, kind of like a caveman criticizing a smart phone- 'I could make a way better arrow head than that' many features once held up as 'bad design' have proven otherwise.

Other than that it gets to the above post's 'imperfection logic', it is part of being human, and learning about how nature works, what better way to appreciate it?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Why do evangelicals care so much about disproving evolution?

I guess I should have said "phyla" not genus.

i was gonna say...

Here it is. My summary:
Of 24 phyla (of the world), 8 appeared between 505 and 535 Mya. So presumably the Cambrian explosion could arguably have occurred in this window. 6 are contested between Cambrian and pre-cambrian appearance. 6 appear in the fossil record in completely separate times including the ordovician, eocene, devonian, Cretaceous, triassic etc., 3 appeared in the pre-cambrian, and one doesn't have a fossil record.

So in actuality, the Cambrian explosion isn't this moment in which all life radically appeared. But in actuality a lot of phyla/phylum these days have been discovered to predate the Cambrian explosion both by their fossils and by studies in genetics.

And I could work some of the bugs out of the little summary cells on the right but the point stands.

fair enough, there is some categorization wiggle room, though I don't think Wikipedia is accused of skewing things to an anti-Darwinian perspective:

"The Cambrian explosion or Cambrian radiation was an event approximately 541 million years ago in the Cambrian period when practically all major animal phyla started appearing in the fossil record."

But give or take a few features, it's an explosion of new forms requiring a lot of new information.

One aspect little discussed also is the crucial symbiotic timing of various stages- bacteria, gasses, laying down the conditions necessary for more complex life to appear later- more coincidence perhaps- but they sure add up!

 

[pitabread]

Im just curious, were the laws of gravity inherently deceptive before people knew the earth was a sphere, or did people just have incomplete data to properly understand it?

I'm not quite following you here.

When I talk about the universe being inherently deceptive, it's in the context of how it appears. The universe looks like it is ~14 billions of years old. The Earth appears to be ~4.6 billion years old. And so on.

If one wants to argue that is not how things are (e.g. that a universe is not ~14 billion years old) then it comes to down to arguing that the universe is not how it appears.

 

[Speedwell]

But give or take a few features, it's an explosion of new forms requiring a lot of new information.

How were they new, and not built on what had come before?

 

[Guy Threepwood]

How were they new, and not built on what had come before?

as you said, all kinds of hard body parts appeared that did not exist before, this requires a lot of new information from somewhere.

Sure they may have been 'built on what came before', as a new car still reflects some design principles established by Henry Ford- though even then, many seem unrelated:

as Dawkins put it: "It is as though they [fossils] were just planted there, without any evolutionary history"

though this is somewhat beside the point, I don't necessarily reject common ancestry- just how the changes occurred, and how rapidly they occurred is relevant to this

 

[Speedwell]

as you said, all kinds of hard body parts appeared that did not exist before, this requires a lot of new information from somewhere.

Maybe so, but maybe the body parts just got harder.

 

[pitabread]

as you said, all kinds of hard body parts appeared that did not exist before, this requires a lot of new information from somewhere.

In this context, "new information" are just modified genetic sequences. And for which we already have a process (biological evolution) capable of generating said biological information.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

Maybe so, but maybe the body parts just got harder.

It gets into Darwinism of the gaps- but wherever the evidence hides, at some point going from a single celled bacteria like organism.. to a human being... requires a huge amount of novel design appearing ultimately by 'chance' according to ToE- you can't just randomly tweak control genes for eye color or hair length to affect that kind of metamorphosis! you need entire new volumes of DNA and even new 'software architecture' to organize it

 

[Speedwell]

It gets into Darwinism of the gaps- but wherever the evidence hides, at some point going from a single celled bacteria like organism.. to a human being... requires a huge amount of novel design appearing ultimately by 'chance' according to ToE- you can't just randomly tweak control genes for eye color or hair length to affect that kind of metamorphosis! you need entire new volumes of DNA and even new 'software architecture' to organize it

You need to do a better job of characterizing this "novel design" you keep taking about. Otherwise we won't understand why it is out of reach of a stochastic process.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

In this context, "new information" are just modified genetic sequences. And for which we already have a process (biological evolution) capable of generating said biological information.

As our arguments are just modified sequences of the same characters we already used

sfdhsdfuh sdfiuuhsfd fsdjkfosd;fsdfsm s;fn;sfk sfs

how it's modified is the tricky part

But random copying errors do not produce volumes of new specified information, that has not been shown, and we know a little bit more about hierarchical digital information systems such as DNA than in Darwin's time..

 

[Ophiolite]

sticks and stones,

I am always happy to respond to any substantive arguments without derogatory comments.

I'm not offended by them, I just find trading insults boring, many people here are willing and able to debate without them (makes for a far more compelling case also)

You seem confused. I have not offered any insults, but rather a considered opinion of your knowledge on specific topics. Your fatuous comparison of evolutionary evidence with what was to be found in junk yard came with zero support and therfore required no supporting material to refute it. Rest assured, if I were to insult you, there would be absolutely no doubt that it had occurred.

Meantime, if you wish to be presented with substantive arguments you had best break the historical pattern and actually offer one or two that we can respond to.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

You need to do a better job of characterizing this "novel design" you keep taking about. Otherwise we won't understand why it is out of reach of a stochastic process.

once again, new information, specifying new form- that's pretty cut and dry-

how much? how much hair do you need to lose before you are 'bald'?

there being no specific quantity does not mean there is no distinction to be made

obviously between a single celled bacteria and a human being, and as in the Cambrian, there is the appearance of many novel forms in the record requiring new genetic information- disputing that is to devolve into a semantic debate

 

[Speedwell]

As our arguments are just modified sequences of the same characters we already used

sfdhsdfuh sdfiuuhsfd fsdjkfosd;fsdfsm s;fn;sfk sfs

how it's modified is the tricky part

But random copying errors do not produce volumes of new specified information, that has not been shown, and we know a little bit more about hierarchical digital information systems such as DNA than in Darwin's time..

You haven't even defined "information" yet. much less "specified information."

 

[Guy Threepwood]

You haven't even defined "information" yet. much less "specified information."

well I honestly don't know what you don't know

you surely recognize that DNA contains information, (in a quaternary (v binary) code) right?

'specified' or 'specifying' or 'functional' information merely differentiates between information which specifies something v Shannon information which does not- e.g. words in a book v radio static

To use an entirely secular example:
SETI searches Shannon information for the existence of specified information, it considers the latter such a strong objective indicator of the presence of intelligence, that a sequence of merely 6 (I think) anomalous amplitudes was enough to write 'WOW' in the margin.

I would argue that DNA is a tad more compelling than that -

must run for now but much appreciate the thoughtful debate from folks here

 

[BNR32FAN]

I'm not quite following you here.

When I talk about the universe being inherently deceptive, it's in the context of how it appears. The universe looks like it is ~14 billions of years old. The Earth appears to be ~4.6 billion years old. And so on.

If one wants to argue that is not how things are (e.g. that a universe is not ~14 billion years old) then it comes to down to arguing that the universe is not how it appears.

My point was that because of incomplete data mistakes were made in defining how gravity works and in the same manner mistakes could also be made by estimating how old the universe is.

 

[Speedwell]

My point was that because of incomplete data mistakes were made in defining how gravity works and in the same manner mistakes could also be made by estimating how old the universe is.

Yes, we may not yet know exactly how old the universe is but we know how old it is not. I have no idea how of how far it is from here to Cleveland, OH and even cartographers may differ on the exact figure, but I know it's not six feet.

 

[pitabread]

My point was that because of incomplete data mistakes were made in defining how gravity works and in the same manner mistakes could also be made by estimating how old the universe is.

If you're suggesting that there are mistakes in our observations which leave option a universe in line with a literal Biblical 6-day creation, I wouldn't count on it. There are far too many observations of the universe that don't fit in that context.

 

[pitabread]

You haven't even defined "information" yet. much less "specified information."

Since he's likely getting that from Meyer, his source doesn't really define it either.

 

[pitabread]

SETI searches Shannon information for the existence of specified information, it considers the latter such a strong objective indicator of the presence of intelligence, that a sequence of merely 6 (I think) anomalous amplitudes was enough to write 'WOW' in the margin.

SETI is not looking for specified information. Rather, SETI is looking for indications of artificial signal sources based on relative comparison to natural signals.

The information content of such a signal is irrelevant.