Why I do not accept evolution part two.

[Kenny'sID]

N

Your "game" is simply a dodge on your part.

i am still willing to help you to learn.

By it's very nature, stalling will get you nowhere.

 

[Subduction Zone]

By it's very nature, stalling will get you nowhere.

How ironic.

 

[Aussie Pete]

I'll gladly admit that evolution is impossible - the way you define it, i.e. 'a moth becoming an ant'.

The thing is, that's not what evolution actually says.

I'm sure you know what I meant.

 

[Larniavc]

I disbelieved evolution long before I started researching.

End thread

 

[Subduction Zone]

I'm sure you know what I meant.

What you meant tells us that you have no understanding of the theory of evolution.

 

[Guy Threepwood]

I'm not sure what you mean by they had to "go beyond/under the design's own capacity for adaptation"?

Did you read the article?

Also, the full paper is here if you're interested: https://people.duke.edu/~ng46/topics/evolved-radio.pdf

The oscillator experiment was specifically configured- pre-adapted with a built in fitness function, a specific intended goal, to try to amplify a signal, which it of course did- from surrounding interference

I understand that the way this happened was not clearly predicted or understood, and it is an interesting experiment compared with mere computer sims that claim to model evolution- but of course there was an enormous amount of constraint of the design towards achieving this specific intended result

akin to Dawkin's weasel program, where the result had to be determined from the get-go. Only using hardware-

So of course; utilizing random tinkering to get the result, works when you can constrain to the result- this requires forethought, design, anticipation- phenomena which only exist in a conscious mind.

And through this, fitness function experiments are very useful for finding the most efficient/ minimalist route to the goal- they progress no further, because the goal is satisfied.

Obviously the oscillator will not progress to develop it's own consciousness, and start pondering the meaning of it's own existence! - not given a trillion years. And likewise for the fitness function of mere individual survival in nature- a world full of simple single celled life more than satisfied that- i.e the result far exceeded that Darwinian goal, so I believe the actual intended goal did likewise.

 

[pitabread]

I'm sure you know what I meant.

With creationists, that's never a given.

 

[Hans Blaster]

Nonsensical? Like evolutionists who simply don't accept that evolution is impossible? The arguments against evolution are sound. It's the knee jerk reaction from evolutionists that is unsound. It's like kicking over an ants nest. Watch them rush to defend the indefensible! Why do you care? What will happen if you are proven to be wrong? A big deal over nothing. I'm fascinated as to the "why".

Components of blood (article) | Khan Academy

How can you believe that blood evolved? Which came first, the blood vessels (arteries and veins), the heart? If any of those are missing, it's death. How did white corpuscles know that they were needed? If an organism became infected, nothing was there to defend it. A scratch would be enough to kill it. Somehow this stunning defence mechanism just happened to be there. No way.

Multiply this kind of question a gadzillion times and that is just one of my reasons for rejecting evolution.

Common ancestry? Only in the sense that God created them.

Have you looked at the items I linked about the circulatory system in my reply to your OP?

 

[Aussie Pete]

Have you looked at the items I linked about the circulatory system in my reply to your OP?

No. I have been bombarded with all kinds of links from evolutionists. Some I've already looked at. I came to the conclusion some time ago that evolution is simply impossible. Every now and again, some new discovery piques my interest. Headlines such as "everything you believed about evolution is wrong", for example. I've found nothing that remotely answers my objections and a great deal that confirms them. My life is too short to follow every line of reasoning, especially when next week a scientist may be telling me that its all different now. You don't agree? Well, I've been lectured by enough people to know that evolution is pretty much what the "experts" decide it is. What was taught as evolution, as fact, not so long ago, is different now. So no, thanks but no thanks.

 

[Ophiolite]

No. I have been bombarded with all kinds of links from evolutionists. Some I've already looked at. I came to the conclusion some time ago that evolution is simply impossible. Every now and again, some new discovery piques my interest. Headlines such as "everything you believed about evolution is wrong", for example. I've found nothing that remotely answers my objections and a great deal that confirms them. My life is too short to follow every line of reasoning, especially when next week a scientist may be telling me that its all different now,

If you refuse to study material that directly addresses and corrects your misunderstandings, yet you continue to insist upon those and repeatedly assert untruths then you are being supremely discourteous and provocative. I recommend you post somewhere that your brand of self-imposed ignorance will be appropriate.

 

[Speedwell]

No. I have been bombarded with all kinds of links from evolutionists. Some I've already looked at. I came to the conclusion some time ago that evolution is simply impossible. Every now and again, some new discovery piques my interest. Headlines such as "everything you believed about evolution is wrong", for example. I've found nothing that remotely answers my objections and a great deal that confirms them. My life is too short to follow every line of reasoning, especially when next week a scientist may be telling me that its all different now. You don't agree? Well, I've been lectured by enough people to know that evolution is pretty much what the "experts" decide it is. What was taught as evolution, as fact, not so long ago, is different now. So no, thanks but no thanks.

From what I can tell, you don't object to the real theory of evolution, but to an imaginary version you have constructed for yourself.

 

[Hans Blaster]

No. I have been bombarded with all kinds of links from evolutionists. Some I've already looked at. I came to the conclusion some time ago that evolution is simply impossible. Every now and again, some new discovery piques my interest. Headlines such as "everything you believed about evolution is wrong", for example. I've found nothing that remotely answers my objections and a great deal that confirms them. My life is too short to follow every line of reasoning, especially when next week a scientist may be telling me that its all different now. You don't agree? Well, I've been lectured by enough people to know that evolution is pretty much what the "experts" decide it is. What was taught as evolution, as fact, not so long ago, is different now. So no, thanks but no thanks.

I'm not the one who wrote two rambling posts (the OP of this thread and the similarly titled sister thread) presenting a long series of claims, and misunderstanding. So frankly if you want to make a claim, not reply to a response to that claim or even consider the offered counter material and then repost the same claims, you'll get these replies again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again and again, ad infinitum.

 

[pitabread]

I've found nothing that remotely answers my objections and a great deal that confirms them.

Have you ever tried taking an introductory biology course and working your way up from there?

 

[Kylie]

The moment you've all been waiting for.............

Introductory comments.

The pro-evolutionist community bears the hallmarks of a dictatorship. This is because the purse strings are controlled by pro-evolutionists. Researchers often dare not contradict the evolutionary bully boys because they won’t get tenure or grants. Professor James Tour advises his students to keep their anti-evolution beliefs to themselves.

Starting off with an allegation of a conspiracy doesn't help your viewpoint.

“Science against Evolution”. This website is a somewhat sarcastic, and sometimes very funny, commentary on evolution. It raises some interesting issues. Since it is self-explanatory, I’ll just insert the link.

Science Against Evolution Official Home Page

Yes, I'm sure a website that looks like a 12 year old was let loose on Myspace in 1996 and is run by someone named "Do-While Jones" who has no education in any biological fields (he's an electrical engineer) is an excellent source for correct information about evolution.

So why am I not convinced by the “science”?

Let's have a look...

· Huge numbers of fossils appeared at much the same time. The “Cambrian Explosion” is now thought to be over a period of 10 million years, not 70 million. That goes against evolutionary theories.

Why does it go against evolutionary theories?

The Cambrian explosion was simply the evolution of body parts that could easily fossilise. It does not mean that life was rare before and common after, nor does it mean that the number of total life forms suddenly jumped, nor does it mean the number of species suddenly increased.

· Complexity. I used to work in industry, selling to automation companies. Pharmaceutical, oil and gas, paper and most manufacturing is automated. Processes are controlled by industrial computers using sophisticated software. If the software is bugged, the systems crash. When you have many processes that need control, monitoring and safety systems, the system implementation is as important as building the plant. Random changes do not produce good results.

An example. The blood transport system within a mammal. It needs a pump. The whole system starts off extremely small and has to grow with the organism. How does it know when to stop growing? The tubing has to be flexible to permit movement. It needs a temperature regulation system to prevent death by overheating.

If the tubing is punctured, there is a self-healing process that technology cannot begin to match. The system has to recognise a leak, determine the position of the damage and commence repair. If the leak is not repaired, the organism dies. If it takes too long, death occurs. Blood clots in order to patch the defect. If it clots in the wrong place, (within the tube) the organism dies. Veins are different from arteries. They have to have non-return valves or blood does not get back to the heart.

I know how hard it is to get these systems right. Any error in the control system stops the process. How did blood evolve? Did the veins, arteries and heart evolve first? If so, how did the blood get in? If the blood evolved first, how did it get into the system? Blood itself is amazingly complex.

To make the jump from say a reptile to a mammal is complexity upon complexity. I liken it to taking an encyclopaedia, encrypting it and expecting the complete works of Shakespeare to be the result. I know about encryption from my Navy career. I don’t care how many times you run the routine, garbage results. That’s the idea, of course.

Why do you think all these systems evolved separately and then sat around doing nothing while waiting for all the other systems to evolve?

They evolved at the same time.

And how does it know when to stop? It's a matter of balance. If a small change in structure can lead to a big change in performance, then this may be very beneficial. Like adding antifreeze to a car's cooling system. It's a small change, just adding one thing, but the increase in performance - allowing the system to keep running in zub-zero temperatures - is very important. This is a low cost, high benefit thing, and so is worth the added resources it uses.

But let's say I spend billions of dollars to develop a new kind of antifreeze that allows the system to continue operate half a degree below what regular antifreeze does. This is a huge expenditure of resources, but the gain it makes is tiny. This is high cost, low benefit, and isn't likely to be used.

Evolution is the same way. If evolution drives an organism to spend huge amounts of resources on an improvement that doesn't accomplish much, then this change is not likely to be selected for. Those are resources that individual could have used for producing more offspring. Since it isn't producing those offspring, it's not likely to pass on the trait. You can't pass a trait to children you never have.

· Symbiosis. A great number of symbiotic relationships require organisms that did not exist at the time to make the other organism viable. It is a great concern to those who are concerned about climate change. If one creature dies out, it affects the whole ecosystem. The alarm about the decline in bee numbers is a well known example.

Do you think that such relationships couldn't evolve after the animals in the relationship already exist?

· Behaviours that should be impossible. For example, a parasitic wasp that can work its way through seemingly impregnable spider defences. How many zillions of wasp variants failed before one succeeded? What happened to the rest? Even if they evolved, one failure means the end of the line. My father was a boxer. I could not fight my way out of a paper bag. His abilities were not handed down to the next generation.

You think it's done only in one individual?

· The fossil record. There is zero evidence to suggest that evolution has taken place. There should be far more failures than successes. The vast majority of fossils suggest viable creatures, not failures that imply random processes.

This is not true. And why do you think all the failures should be found in the fossil record? Fossilisation is very rare. Why do you think that the failures - which will be rare by definition - would be easily found, if they are there to be found at all?

· Widespread scepticism. In the US, 44% of people do not believe in evolution. This is in spite of a blanket ban on Creation being taught as an alternative in most schools. Some of the finest minds reject evolution. Not all are Christians by any means.

The US education system is shockingly poor. In any case, scientific fact is not determined by a vote or popularity.

· Evolutionary explanations usually revolve around drawings of mature animals. That’s not how they start. They are eggs or embryos. 3,000 fruit fly variants demonstrate that producing a new species from an existing species just does not happen.

Evolution requires many small changes over many generations. This oft-repeated claim that evolution requires an individual of Species A to give birth to an individual of Species B is just wrong.

· Human qualities are at odds with natural selection. Love your neighbour? You are kidding, right? There is not a lot of that in the animal kingdom. Why condemn racism, genocide, inequality, or any other struggle for domination? That’s how evolution works, surely? Surely genocidal regimes are doing the world a favour? There are way too many people anyway.

As social creatures, altruism is a trait that does help us.

· Life itself. Nothing “just happens”. How can a collection of chemicals suddenly come alive? What is the mechanism? What is life anyway?

If you don't know enough about life to define it, how can you claim to know enough about it to declare that it can't just happen?

Evolution to me is like giving a blind and deaf man a pile of sand, some water and stone, copper and iron ores. Then you tell him to construct a building. He has no way of knowing even that he is supposed to be building, let alone turning such base materials into usable products.

I agree.

But your analogy is flawed. You are specifying the required result at the beginning. Evolution does not.

If you give a blind and deaf man those materials and then tell him to arrange them in such a way that they won't fall down, he'll probably be able to find a way to do it. If you then make a slight change to the environment he is trying to build in to make some difficulty and then tell him to do it again, he's probably going to find a way to slightly change his original technique to make it work in the new environment.

And that's what evolution does.

So the answer to why you do not accept evolution is because you do not understand it.

 

[Aussie Pete]

If you refuse to study material that directly addresses and corrects your misunderstandings, yet you continue to insist upon those and repeatedly assert untruths then you are being supremely discourteous and provocative. I recommend you post somewhere that your brand of self-imposed ignorance will be appropriate.

A typical response from the the evolution brigade. If you can't persuade, intimidate. It's not going to work on me.

Have you ever tried taking an introductory biology course and working your way up from there?

Have you ever considered that your world view is entirely wrong? After all, several billion people are not agnostic.

 

[pitabread]

Have you ever considered that your world view is entirely wrong? After all, several billion people are not atheists.

Did you respond to the wrong comment? Your reply is a complete non-sequitur; nothing in my question to you has anything to do with atheism (or theism for that matter), nor am I an atheist myself.

I simply asked if you've ever tried taking an introductory biology class. Have you?

(Although if you're just avoiding the question, then I've already got my answer.)

 

[Aussie Pete]

Did you respond to the wrong comment? Your reply is a complete non-sequitur; nothing in my question to you has anything to do with atheism (or theism for that matter), nor am I an atheist myself.

I simply asked if you've ever tried taking an introductory biology class. Have you?

(Although if you're just avoiding the question, then I've already got my answer.)

Sheesh, you are quick on the draw. I changed "atheist" to "agnostic" almost immediately after I posted the wrong word. When I went to school, biology was mandatory. I passed quite well.

 

[Subduction Zone]

Sheesh, you are quick on the draw. I changed "atheist" to "agnostic" almost immediately after I posted the wrong word. When I went to school, biology was mandatory. I passed quite well.

Passing is far from understanding. Passing often means that one did good enough and the teacher does not want to see the student again.

EDIT: And school where biology is a requirement is almost always whatever your equivalent to American high school would be. Clearly you did not take a biology class at the college level.

 

[Aussie Pete]

Starting off with an allegation of a conspiracy doesn't help your viewpoint.



Yes, I'm sure a website that looks like a 12 year old was let loose on Myspace in 1996 and is run by someone named "Do-While Jones" who has no education in any biological fields (he's an electrical engineer) is an excellent source for correct information about evolution.



Let's have a look...



Why does it go against evolutionary theories?

The Cambrian explosion was simply the evolution of body parts that could easily fossilise. It does not mean that life was rare before and common after, nor does it mean that the number of total life forms suddenly jumped, nor does it mean the number of species suddenly increased.



Why do you think all these systems evolved separately and then sat around doing nothing while waiting for all the other systems to evolve?

They evolved at the same time.

And how does it know when to stop? It's a matter of balance. If a small change in structure can lead to a big change in performance, then this may be very beneficial. Like adding antifreeze to a car's cooling system. It's a small change, just adding one thing, but the increase in performance - allowing the system to keep running in zub-zero temperatures - is very important. This is a low cost, high benefit thing, and so is worth the added resources it uses.

But let's say I spend billions of dollars to develop a new kind of antifreeze that allows the system to continue operate half a degree below what regular antifreeze does. This is a huge expenditure of resources, but the gain it makes is tiny. This is high cost, low benefit, and isn't likely to be used.

Evolution is the same way. If evolution drives an organism to spend huge amounts of resources on an improvement that doesn't accomplish much, then this change is not likely to be selected for. Those are resources that individual could have used for producing more offspring. Since it isn't producing those offspring, it's not likely to pass on the trait. You can't pass a trait to children you never have.



Do you think that such relationships couldn't evolve after the animals in the relationship already exist?



You think it's done only in one individual?



This is not true. And why do you think all the failures should be found in the fossil record? Fossilisation is very rare. Why do you think that the failures - which will be rare by definition - would be easily found, if they are there to be found at all?



The US education system is shockingly poor. In any case, scientific fact is not determined by a vote or popularity.



Evolution requires many small changes over many generations. This oft-repeated claim that evolution requires an individual of Species A to give birth to an individual of Species B is just wrong.



As social creatures, altruism is a trait that does help us.



If you don't know enough about life to define it, how can you claim to know enough about it to declare that it can't just happen?



I agree.

But your analogy is flawed. You are specifying the required result at the beginning. Evolution does not.

If you give a blind and deaf man those materials and then tell him to arrange them in such a way that they won't fall down, he'll probably be able to find a way to do it. If you then make a slight change to the environment he is trying to build in to make some difficulty and then tell him to do it again, he's probably going to find a way to slightly change his original technique to make it work in the new environment.

And that's what evolution does.

So the answer to why you do not accept evolution is because you do not understand it.

I will only respond to one of your points.
Do-While Jones is David R. Pogge. Not exactly your average electrical engineer. He redesigned the air to air missiles (AIM-9) used by the USAF in the Vietnam war. The original design had a very poor strike rate. He fixed the problem. He's written books on ADA programming.

Mr Pogge has a great deal of experience with closed loop systesm, such as the temperature control that mammals require. He knows how difficult it is to get it right. Programming is not a bad background for analysing genetic systems. I know from experience that the slightest error will likely cause a program to crash. I've never yet seen an error in a program make it work better.

I understand the claims of evolution. My response is exactly the same. It's not feasible. There is a perfectly satisfactory alternative. I accept the alternative. When a chimp at the zoo taps me on the shoulder and asks, "Am I my keeper's brother?", I will rethink my position. I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Larniavc]

I will only respond to one of your points.
Do-While Jones is David R. Pogge. Not exactly your average electrical engineer. He redesigned the air to air missiles (AIM-9) used by the USAF in the Vietnam war. The original design had a very poor strike rate. He fixed the problem. He's written books on ADA programming.

Mr Pogge has a great deal of experience with closed loop systesm, such as the temperature control that mammals require. He knows how difficult it is to get it right. Programming is not a bad background for analysing genetic systems. I know from experience that the slightest error will likely cause a program to crash. I've never yet seen an error in a program make it work better.

I understand the claims of evolution. My response is exactly the same. It's not feasible. There is a perfectly satisfactory alternative. I accept the alternative. When a chimp at the zoo taps me on the shoulder and asks, "Am I my keeper's brother?", I will rethink my position. I'm not holding my breath.

None of that has anything to do with Biology.

“I know from experience that the slightest error will likely cause a program to crash.”

So not like biology.