Namesake, we received an email in the office yesterday from a YEC who challenged us thusly: if tetrapods evolved from fish, then why are there still fish? I use a PowerPoint slide in response to this: “If my ancestors descended from Europeans, then why are there still Europeans?” Audiences really understand that illustration, and it helps them better to understand common descent.Humans are not *just animals of course. But humans are animals. We are members of the kingdom of animalia. We are chordates, and vertebrates, and mammals, and primates, and eventually homo sapiens sapiens. But we are animals, not plants.
Your illustration “works” only because you did a switcheroo from “evolved” to “descended.” Descent can and does happen without evolution. If you were to change your slide presentation to say “If my ancestors evolved from Europeans, then why are there still Europeans?” you’d still have a bit of a problem. You are very good at this sort of thing, BTW.Namesake, we received an email in the office yesterday from a YEC who challenged us thusly: if tetrapods evolved from fish, then why are there still fish? I use a PowerPoint slide in response to this: “If my ancestors descended from Europeans, then why are there still Europeans?” Audiences really understand that illustration, and it helps them better to understand common descent.
StAnastasia
Where is the logic in that? I can get on a plane, have children in another country and that counts as what? Certainly not evolution.Namesake, we received an email in the office yesterday from a YEC who challenged us thusly: if tetrapods evolved from fish, then why are there still fish? I use a PowerPoint slide in response to this: “If my ancestors descended from Europeans, then why are there still Europeans?” Audiences really understand that illustration, and it helps them better to understand common descent.
StAnastasia
No “switcheroo” as you call it. You have to understand that evolution = “descent with modification.” My European relatives and I are descended for a common ancestor. If our two populations were isolated for long enough, and subjected to significantly different environmental stresses on our respective landmasses, we would evolve along different paths.Your illustration “works” only because you did a switcheroo from “evolved” to “descended.” Descent can and does happen without evolution. If you were to change your slide presentation to say “If my ancestors evolved from Europeans, then why are there still Europeans?” you’d still have a bit of a problem. You are very good at this sort of thing, BTW.
Ed, before you can attack the theory of evolution, you have to understand it and represent it correctly. And remember, there are certainly Nobel Prizes waiting for the one who can disprove evolution, or prove that the earth is only 6,000 years old, or that the Grand Canyon was formed by Noah’s Flood. With truckloads of ambitious young PhDs minted every year, don’t you think some among them would want to go out and tackle these problems?Where is the logic in that? I can get on a plane, have children in another country and that counts as what? Certainly not evolution.Peace,Ed
Do you tell this to everyone who presents a reasoned rebuttal to your antics? If something you just wrote doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense.Ed, before you can attack the theory of evolution, you have to understand it and represent it correctly. And remember, there are certainly Nobel Prizes waiting for the one who can disprove evolution, or prove that the earth is only 6,000 years old, or that the Grand Canyon was formed by Noah’s Flood. With truckloads of ambitious young PhDs minted every year, don’t you think some among them would want to go out and tackle these problems?
StAnastasia
Ed, you have never yet presented a reasoned rebuttal to evolutionary theory. You trot out talking points from the creationist playbooks of the ICR or Ken Ham’s Answers-in-Genesis or Seattle’s Discovery Institute, and yet none of these hold water with scientists. If you are going to refute evolution, you must first produce original research to back up your theory. The DI claims to have a secret research lab hidden somewhere in the Seattle area, and they keep promising that they are just about to refute evolution and prove irreducible complexity, but so far they have never quite come up with the goods! That’s OK – we can be patient. Evolution isn’t going to go away while we wait for them to produce.Do you tell this to everyone who presents a reasoned rebuttal to your antics? If something you just wrote doesn’t make sense, it doesn’t make sense. I don’t need to graduate from Harvard, get published in peer reviewed journals and then fly off to Oslo for my Nobel. This amounts to dodging my point. It’s not working.Peace,Ed
Here’s the URL for a free PDF download of the NAS’ Evolution in Hawaii:That’s why islands like Hawaii or the Canaries evolved unique bird species that have common ancestors with mainland species. See “Island biogeography and evolution: solving a phylogenetic puzzle using molecular genetics”; http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/fosrec/Filson.htmlStAnastasia
Who’s projecting now? I am not a card carrying member for any ism or ist and all of the Institutes on the internet are unknowns to me.Ed, you have never yet presented a reasoned rebuttal to evolutionary theory. You trot out talking points from the creationist playbooks of the ICR or Ken Ham’s Answers-in-Genesis or Seattle’s Discovery Institute, and yet none of these hold water with scientists. If you are going to refute evolution, you must first produce original research to back up your theory. The DI claims to have a secret research lab hidden somewhere in the Seattle area, and they keep promising that they are just about to refute evolution and prove irreducible complexity, but so far they have never quite come up with the goods! That’s OK – we can be patient. Evolution isn’t going to go away while we wait for them to produce.
StAnastasia
You seem to have convinced yourself that you didn’t pull a switcheroo.No “switcheroo” as you call it. You have to understand that evolution = “descent with modification.” My European relatives and I are descended for a common ancestor.
The YECs and the atheists agree that religion and science are not compatible. The vast spectrum of us lying between those extremes do not agree. The aims, methodologies, questions, and practices of science and religion are quite different; they do not compete. As a Jesuit friend of mine says, his “scientific work gives him more to pray about.”… “WE” can be patient? Yes, I know. The Evolution Marketing organization here is part of an ongoing campaign to just say yes to evolution, but even the atheists agree that religion and science are not compatible and are willing to shade the truth for 'the greater good.'Peace,Ed
On the contrary, ricmat, it’s a good analogy, because people can understand the relationship between this and evolution. All descent involves modification – my children are different from me, and their great-grandchildren will be different from them. Given long enough time, significant geographical isolation, and differential environmental selective pressures, two populations of post-humans would likely diverge and continue to evolve.Evolution is “descent with modification resulting in new species”. So far as I am aware, Europeans are not a different species. Perhaps your powerpoint presentation convinced folks, but it was not an accurate analogy. .
Your quote from your Jesuit friend is unintelligible. You are completely ignoring the fact… the fact-- that atheists post here regularly, along with modernists like yourself. Your point appears to be: Adam and Eve? No evidence. The end. You do not combine “other areas of reason we still need,” as Pope Benedict put it, to give the complete answer. I urge you to avoid doing that. It confuses the issue.The YECs and the atheists agree that religion and science are not compatible. The vast spectrum of us lying between those extremes do not agree. The aims, methodologies, questions, and practices of science and religion are quite different; they do not compete. As a Jesuit friend of mine says, his “scientific work gives him more to pray about.”
StAnastasia
Why is it unintelligible that his scientific work gives him more to pray about? Is it prayer itself that you find unintelligible, or science, or both? Or do you object to the idea that some people find the glory of God reflected in the Creation?Your quote from your Jesuit friend is unintelligible. You are completely ignoring the fact… the fact-- that atheists post here regularly, along with modernists like yourself. Your point appears to be: Adam and Eve? No evidence. The end. You do not combine “other areas of reason we still need,” as Pope Benedict put it, to give the complete answer. I urge you to avoid doing that. It confuses the issue.Peace,Ed
Maybe it’s just me but I didn’t find anything unintelligible about it. Perhaps things become unintelligible when you refuse to think about them.Your quote from your Jesuit friend is unintelligible.
Our descent from Europeans is a few hundred, or a few thousand years old at the outside. Not millions of years. There is no divergent evolution at work here when speaking of our European ancestors - OR DO YOU DISAGREE? Evolution results in new species (so you say), but there are no new species in American humans versus European humans.On the contrary, ricmat, it’s a good analogy, because people can understand the relationship between this and evolution. All descent involves modification – my children are different from me, and their great-grandchildren will be different from them. Given long enough time, significant geographical isolation, and differential environmental selective pressures, two populations of post-humans would likely diverge and continue to evolve.
In the five million years since our divergence from the other chimpanzees, each generation descended with modification from its predecessor. The genetic differences between any two (or ten or twenty) neighboring generations was not sufficient to result in species divergence. But despite this seamless descent with modification, I’m sure you would agree that chimpanzees and humans are now different species, and that in fact they probably have been for millions of years.
Hi Mike:Here is a summary I did for another thread once that covered material from Relics of Eden and another book – The Making of the Fittest by Sean Carroll:
FACT #1: Humans and chimps have 10 NANOG pseudogenes in common – pseudogenes that are known by their characteristics to have formed through duplication and retrotranscription of a “parent” gene. Therefore, these pseudogenes could not have been originally included in two independently-created genomes.
FACT #2: Humans, chimps, and gorillas all have a nonfunctional GBA pseudogene in addition to their one functional gene, and this gene is located in the same place in all three species. It is also located in the same place that a 2nd functional GBA gene exists in orangutans.
FACT #3: Humans and chimps both have two copies of the CMT1A gene in the same places in their genomes. The pseudogene copy of CMT1A has suffered the exact same type of damage as the additional copy of CMT1A in chimps.
FACT #4: Several instances of the retroelement Alu are found in and around the area of the DNA which produces hemoglobin in humans and chimps. All of these nonfunctional Alu elements are located in exactly the same places in both genomes.
FACT #5: Although primates and non-primate mammals can be found in both South America and the “Old World” (i.e., Africa and Asia), “Old World” primates (humans included) are the only mammals to possess trichromatic vision, which is the result of having an extra pigment gene that is keyed to an additional band of light on the color spectrum.
Let me know what questions you have about the above facts and their significance, and I’ll answer as best I can.
–Mike
You have to understand how evolution works. A new species does not come about immediately – it takes hundreds of generations (more or less time depending on the reproductive lifespan of the animal or plant. But the first steps begin with the first generation. Evolution is not something that proceeds in giant steps, like fish to tetrapod, or reptile to mammal, or hominid to human.Our descent from Europeans is a few hundred, or a few thousand years old at the outside. Not millions of years. There is no divergent evolution at work here when speaking of our European ancestors - OR DO YOU DISAGREE? Evolution results in new species (so you say), but there are no new species in American humans versus European humans.
Astronomer William R., Stoeger, S. J. says,When one loves an author or an artist, doesn’t one study their works further to understand more about them? To say that studying creation doesn’t give someone something to pray about is tantamount to insisting that God did not write himself in the world.