Evidence for Evolution

[SeekingCatholic]

I didn’t know it did. You’re apparently saying that the world slows down and speeds up with them? I thought it was the moon.

Yes, if you want a completely stationary earth, the universe’s rotational speed appears to speed up and slow down with the tides.

Says you. But science has to first be logical for its conclusions to be useful.

Well, certainly. However, you’ve as yet shown no logical contradiction or error in the science.

No, you’re thinking for God. Otherwise you can’t frame a notion of likelihood.

Yes, you certainly can. The likelihood of the “God model” is defined as the probability of God doing a particular thing (to be precise, the probability of the particular data we observe) bearing in mind all the other actions God may have chosen to do. You may not able to precisely evaluate this likelihood but you can certainly frame the notion.

Christ said that a swallow doesn’t fall from the sky which escapes his attention. If He “makes” me nearsighted (and by the way I’m not) or if He allows me to remain nearsighted, isn’t this the distinction without a difference?

Certainly not. The distinction between God’s positive will and His permissive will is crucial. Otherwise God is positively willing evil.

Huh? Maybe I’m stupid here. Try spending a night naked in the woods, not even in the dead of winter, but perhaps spring. My cognitively challenged, elderly beagle would fair better than I. But we evolved because of survival of the fittest? This is a simple example of why it doesn;t work for me.

Our brains make us more fit overall. But those come with a “cost”. Evolution puts constraints on which positive adapations producing improved fitness are available.

 

[Brian_Millar]

Frankly, I would think it would be stated clearly how man is not the same as the animals and created in His image especially in an evolution scenario.

We’re not ‘merely evolved apes’ even if evolution is utterly true. The distinction between man and ape has nothing to do with biological ancestry, and everything to do with our rational faculties, our soul (itself a tough thing to define), our capabilities, and our destiny.

If we took the creation stories literally, our last ancestor would be earth. Mud/clay. If that does not impugn on us why would our evolution from a primate ancestor? To say ‘we’re merely molded dirt’ would be to miss the point every bit as much as ‘we’re merely evolved primates’.

Well, there is always a good reason why things are written out the way they are, in the case of Adam being formed from clay for example, there is a purpose for him to be initially formed this way, it doesn’t state anywhere where God made the animals from clay in like manner, and in Eve’s case, he didn’t even use that, just Adams rib.

There is more to this story we are missing, nothing is written frivously.

With being stuck in a loop with evolution, where you are trying to define exactly when was man, man, and no longer an animal, when was his soul, that of a man and not of an animal. I do believe when it’s stated that man was made in God’s image, I don’t place it in the physical context, where God needs eyes, nose, mouth, fingers, etc. strictly spiritual and intellectual in that regard.

 

[Nullasalus]

Well, there is always a good reason why things are written out the way they are, in the case of Adam being formed from clay for example, there is a purpose for him to be initially formed this way, it doesn’t state anywhere where God made the animals from clay in like manner, and in Eve’s case, he didn’t even use that, just Adams rib.

I’m suggesting something along the same lines: There’s a reason why some things aren’t written.

No recipe, method, or mechanism was given in Genesis. We’re told God created all (procedurally, no less), period. It doesn’t even outright state why man was created out of clay. I think it’s a mistake to read so much specific, literal, mechanistic idea into these passages.

There is more to this story we are missing, nothing is written frivously.

And maybe nothing is excluded without reason. Again, what’s noteworth in the case of Genesis (among other things, naturally) is what’s left out of the description.

With being stuck in a loop with evolution, where you are trying to define exactly when was man, man, and no longer an animal, when was his soul, that of a man and not of an animal. I do believe when it’s stated that man was made in God’s image, I don’t place it in the physical context, where God needs eyes, nose, mouth, fingers, etc. strictly spiritual and intellectual in that regard.

And neither do I. Which is why I think, even if humanity was formed out of a lesser physical being, the difference between humanity and the rest of life on earth is clear. Think about it this way: What if man really did appear out of the blue mere thousands of years ago, fully formed. Would we still not have questions about the soul? About God? About our relation to him?

We should investigate the history of this planet, just like we investigate everything else. But we should also realize that some questions will always be difficult when dealing with nature, God, and existence. It wouldn’t be clear-cut even if the most literal version of genesis were scientifically explicit (We’d just hear about how the Bible merely recorded a natural historical truth, and how that proves nothing about its validity anymore than accurately reported how it rained once on a particular day in Israel).

 

[Brian_Millar]

I’m suggesting something along the same lines: There’s a reason why some things aren’t written.

No recipe, method, or mechanism was given in Genesis. We’re told God created all (procedurally, no less), period. It doesn’t even outright state why man was created out of clay. I think it’s a mistake to read so much specific, literal, mechanistic idea into these passages.

I have learned so, so much aloing this thinking, the only word I have to say in this matter is WOW, back up, God has much, much more to say, this is his “living” word you know!!!

Think about it brother.

I’m liking this board, I also want to add you to my family, all that are in line with me here!!!

 

[Thing]

Sounds like an interesting question. Do you have any specifics?

Maybe you’ll have more success than I’ve had answering it.
home.entouch.net/dmd/greenriver.htm - and scroll down about half way for flamingos.

"The fossil bird concentration occurs 104 feet below the base of the basal oil shales of the Laney Shale Member of the Green River Formation in a grayish-green silty claystone. The site is in the S 1/2 sec 24, T 25N, R. 102 W. "

“That the Green River flamingo locality was a nesting site is proven by the abundant egg shell fragments found among the bones.”

"Paul Buchheim acknowledges that birds nested throughout Green River time in Fossil Lake. They studied three different Presbyornis nesting sites and found that they spanned 160 meters of vertical rock. They also commented that such nesting sites are quite common in the shore facies of the Green River Formation. His team writes (Legitt, Buchheim and Biaggi, 1998): "

“Autochthonous Presbyornis sp. (Aves: Anseriformes) eggshell from three Eocene Fossil Lake sites is strong evidence for multiple avian nesting sites within Fossil Basin. Two of these nesting sites (the Bear Divide and Warfield Creek sites) occur near the base of the lower unit of the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation. The third nesting site (the Powerline site) occurs near the top of the upper unit of the Fossil Butte Member. The Presbyornis nesting sites span Green River Formation time in Fossil Basin.”

And thats as far as I can go because I do not have anything else written by the above people.

“The Presbyornis nesting sites span Green River Formation time in Fossil Basin.”

What I’m trying to find out is how many layers of sediment are between each nesting instance on that particular site.

The vertical rock column can be dated in this area by volcanic tuff deposits at two different depths by using radioactive dating.
So the frequency of, (or number of sediment layers between), flamingo nesting sites can back up or confirm radioactive dating of rock. Both on this site or any other.

 

[rossum]

But after hundreds and thousands of generations, we don’t see races of people with three arms and extra elbows.

Then there was no selection pressure for extra limbs. Where there is selection pressure we do see changes. There are spreading adaptations in human haemoglobin to the presence of malaria, there is a new adaptation to the fat-rich western diet and we are currently evolving a response to HIV. Not all changes have to be visible.

But it can’t account for why a platypus was smarter than than the animal it is puported to be descended from.

What evidence do you have for a modern platypus being smarter?

Now that is funny.

Sorry, it just is. No offense.

None taken. It is still true however.

If you do not think that it is true then what evidence can you produce to support your contention and how do you explain that we are left-right symmetric and that we have a three-layered embryo (triploblast) as opposed to a two-later embryo (diploblast). See here for an idea of the level of detail that there is available on this general subject.

rossum

 

[Brian_Millar]

The fossil bird concentration occurs 104 feet below the base of the basal oil shales of the Laney Shale Member of the Green River Formation in a grayish-green silty claystone

Was it through sediment over the years or the “great flood”??? This is highly speculative baased upon the knowlege of carbon dating which is now under high scrutiny!

 

[The_Barbarian]

We still traditionally are designed to have similar diets to primates, be it, with our abilities for more rich of a venue because of our big brains.

There is no “primate diet.” Some, like howlers, are almost entirely leaf-eaters. Some, like aye-ayes, are almost exclusively insectivores. Some, like most great apes, are almost exclusively fruit-eaters with some other vegetation thrown in. And some, like chimps, humans and baboons, are omnivores. All very different.

Your logic here is going in circles, you still assume too much, such as the nature of dinasours for example.

There is abundant evidence for it. Would you like to learn more about it?

Some say they were warm blooded

Almost certainly. High activity output (as shown by Haversian canals in those for which anatomy shows high activity) in the small cursorial and birdlike dinosaurs. The larger ones were likely inertial homeotherms.

and some even had feathers instead of scales.

Yes, that’s been verified. Would you like to see how?

There is too much science hasn’t proven with even their own discoveries to assume they have the difinitiave answers for all things

Science doesn’t (and can’t) know all things. It’s a rather limited method, only useful for the physical universe.

You are still not even willing to entertain the concept, that all things may have been created whole, as is from the beginning, and that all we can do as man is observe what God has set forth from the beginning.

For one thing, that idea denies God’s word in Genesis. And there’s no evidence for it. So no, it doesn’t appear very likely to me.

There is a movie Ben Stein created, it’s due to release soon, and he clearly explains that if you are a scientist and you do not believe in darwinism, that you are ostrasized from the scientific community, you are denied grants and denied jobs, especially at univerisities.

Kurt Wise is a Young Earth creationist. But he’s very bright and capable. None other than Stephen Gould accepted him as a doctoral candidate at Harvard. On the other hand, if you want to study at the ICR graduate school, you will have to submit a loyalty oath to YE creationism to apply. This is one of the the main differences between creationism and science. Creationism cannot tolerate dissent.

This is pretty much the norm as to our so called “open minded” scientific community. The point I’m making here, we are holding ourselves back because we refuse to explore all options and perspectives, we are looking at things with tunnel vision and this is the reason why things progress so slowly

You can’t be serious. There has been, in our lifetimes, a great expansion of discovery about the universe. Unless you’ve been living in a cave you must have noticed.

 

[The_Barbarian]

The fossil bird concentration occurs 104 feet below the base of the basal oil shales of the Laney Shale Member of the Green River Formation in a grayish-green silty claystone

Birds predate the Cretaceous. That’s not new.

Was it through sediment over the years or the “great flood”??? This is highly speculative baased upon the knowlege of carbon dating which is now under high scrutiny!

Oh, that’s an imaginative story Answers in Genesis. They assert that it’s not possible for birds to die during spring flows, which can add inches or even feet of sediment in a day or less. Bird dies, and is swept downstream by the overflow, which buries the bird quickly in layers of mud.

 

[The_Barbarian]

But after hundreds and thousands of generations, we don’t see races of people with three arms and extra elbows.

Right. It would be good design, wouldn’t it? We could use an extra hand or two. But the problem is, we can’t evolve an extra arm or two, because there seems to be no useful intermediate stages. It could be “designed”, but not evolved. And so we don’t have them.

But it can’t account for why a platypus was smarter than than the animal it is puported to be descended from.

What does “smarter” have to do with it? Evolution doesn’t necessarily make things smarter. A modern platypus is simply more fit for it’s way of life than earlier ones. No teeth, for example.

 

[Thing]

No luck yet on those flamingos I suppose, Barbarian…or rossum…or anyone else…

 

[The_Barbarian]

It would be helpful if you could be more specific about what puzzles you. Possibly, it’s this:

** Paul Buchheim acknowledges that birds nested throughout Green River time in Fossil Lake. They studied three different Presbyornis nesting sites and found that they spanned 160 meters of vertical rock. They also commented that such nesting sites are quite common in the shore facies of the Green River Formation. His team writes (Legitt, Buchheim and Biaggi, 1998):

"Autochthonous Presbyornis sp. (Aves: Anseriformes) eggshell from three Eocene Fossil Lake sites is strong evidence for multiple avian nesting sites within Fossil Basin. Two of these nesting sites (the Bear Divide and Warfield Creek sites) occur near the base of the lower unit of the Fossil Butte Member of the Green River Formation. The third nesting site (the Powerline site) occurs near the top of the upper unit of the Fossil Butte Member. The Presbyornis nesting sites span Green River Formation time in Fossil Basin."

It takes time for a bird to nibble and they don’t do it when terrified for their life during a global flood. To believe that the Green River formation is the deposit of a global flood requires one to believe that the fish, with their coprolites, and birds, with their coprolites, eggshells and footprints, were washed into place and arranged so that the catfish are in the center of a circular area surrounded by birds and animal tracks. It is perverse to think that God could have caused a flood which would create deposits which are arranged so that they look like they were not from a global flood.

Life of Caddisflies on the Banks of Lake Gosiute

One of the most amazing finds on the edges of Lake Gosiute are bioherms made up of microbial deposited carbonate on caddisfly larval cases. A bioherm is a buildup of organic material, usually in domal-shaped structures. Some of the caddis-fly bioherms are 9 meters tall and 40 meters in diameter (Leggitt and Cushman, 2001, p. 378). These features are found in a linear trend, 70 kilometers (44 miles) along what was at the time the northern edge of the lake. These bioherms consist of caddisfly pupa cases interlaminated with stromatolite forming microbial-caddisfly couplets. Leggitt and Cushman (2001, p. 383) write:

“The caddisfly larval cases are not randomly arranged within the cores of the columns, but are arranged with the long axes of the cases parallel to each other and normal to bedding. Each bedding plane is one case thick (i.e., about 1 cm). Cases are closely packed and almost touch each other. The smaller caudal end of the slightly tapered case is almost always directed downward (or inward toward the column core). All cases are similar in length (1 cm) and diameter 2.5 mm).”

How do such things form? Drysdale 1999, p. 146) observed:

"In general, Cheumatopsyche larvae collect locally available detrital mineral and vegetable particles and bind them together with silk to form a retreat, an approximately cylindrical tube within which the animal lives and which is anchored to the substratum by silk strands.  Calcium carbonate deposited over the anchor points must add considerable stability to these retreats, reinforcing them against erosion during spate conditions.  At the opening of the retreat, an elaborate silk net is spun by the larvae to strain food particles from the water column."

The existence of these caddisfly larval cases indicates that time was required for the deposition of this part of the Green River. While it is doubtful that the stromatolite/caddisfly couplets represent a yearly deposit, the fact remains that a global flood would have a great deal of difficulty collecting such small items and arranging them so that their tiny ends all point towards the center of a circular column and do this over and over so that layer after layer can be deposited. Below is a figure from Leggitt and Cushman’s article.

And the YEC must explain why the Flood did this over and over only in a line along the north shore of a deposit which would be interpreted as a lake long after this deposition and not deposit such things anywhere else in the area. One must have a truly flexible mind to hold that such things are deposited by a global flood.

While I don’t have an example of a caddisfly pupae interlaminated in a stromatolite, I do have a picture of a green river stromatolite which a friend cut and polished for bookends. You can see the major banding, but what the photo won’t show is the even tinier daily banding of the stromatolite in which small layers of limestone are deposited each day. **

What Glenn (a former YE creationist, BTW) is saying here, is that there is no logical way to explain these formations in terms of a great flood. Birds don’t walk about and browse for food, stromatolites form daily layers for years, or caddisflies form large structures, in the middle of a flood that is dumping meters of sediment per second.

He’s saying it just won’t work with a sudden flood.

 

[rossum]

No luck yet on those flamingos I suppose, Barbarian…or rossum…or anyone else…

I had a quick look on Google Scholar, but I could not find any of the articles Glenn references. Your best bet is probably either to contact Glenn direct or to use your local library or university library to get copies. Glenn gives extensive references in his Green River article.

rossum

 

[Thing]

Barbarian:

It would be helpful if you could be more specific about what puzzles you.

No puzzle yet. I was thinking about ‘evidence for evolution’. So, I thought the age-of-rocks evidence is tough to beat. And evolution needs time. But if you could date rocks with ‘fossilized animal behaviour’ like large nesting sites then it could be compared with radioactive dating methods and both should match. It was just an idea but I cannot test it because the data is not public [on the internet]. Anyway…

---

Thanks rossum, I would’nt have thought of that.

 

[The_Barbarian]

No puzzle yet. I was thinking about ‘evidence for evolution’. So, I thought the age-of-rocks evidence is tough to beat. And evolution needs time. But if you could date rocks with ‘fossilized animal behaviour’ like large nesting sites then it could be compared with radioactive dating methods and both should match.

You can’t directly measure the ages of nesting sites; you need fresh igneous rock for that, and it’s not likely flamingos will be hanging around an active volcano. Apparently, there are some volcanic rocks in two different places that make dating possible.

But not the nesting areas themselves.

 

[Thing]

You can’t directly measure the ages of nesting sites; you need fresh igneous rock for that, and it’s not likely flamingos will be hanging around an active volcano. Apparently, there are some volcanic rocks in two different places that make dating possible.

But not the nesting areas themselves.

The flamingos used the site according to the article throughout the formation of the green river area. The fossil lake area in question is composed of varves, one per year apparently. So I thought the flamingos would, like other birds, nest every year. You should then see a new fossilized nesting area at regular intervals through the vertical span of the varves, one per year. If however you saw nesting sites regularly every one thousand years or whatever according to the varves, then you’d know something was up with your ‘other dating methods’ used to date the varves.
I though volcanic tuff was found and dated in the fossil lake area but I may be wrong.

 

[buffalo]

Barbarian observes:
As you see, the appendix is a complete mystery to creationists, but is easily explained by evolutionary theory. It’s one of the reasons creationism isn’t taken seriously by most people.

Hardly. It often becomes infected with bad ones, and when it bursts will cause a fatal peritonitis unless quickly removed. The large intestine maintains a large culture of useful bacteria, and people without an appendix do not lack for them.

The reason it often becomes infected is that it is relatively small and can easily be blocked. In other animals, it is larger and less likely to do so.

But as you learned, the reason it is vestigial is that it no longer serves the original function.

**Scientists: Appendix Protects Good Germs

http://health.myfoxatlanta.com/images/news/D8S3I76O0_2007.jpg
**

 

[mapleoak]

What evidence do you have for a modern platypus being smarter?

Well, I guess what I was getting at is a worm probably doesn’t have very much mental capacity. So all these creatures that supposedly descended from it also developed brains of increasing complexity?

Well, there is always a good reason why things are written out the way they are, in the case of Adam being formed from clay for example, there is a purpose for him to be initially formed this way, it doesn’t state anywhere where God made the animals from clay in like manner, and in Eve’s case, he didn’t even use that, just Adams rib.

But the animals are mentioned thus: “Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so done.” So it would seem each different type of creature came forth from the earth. The specific way they were created isn’t mentioned. This as opposed to “let the amoeba come forth and every creature in its kind descend from it. And eventually it was so done.”

 

[Brian_Millar]

Well, I guess what I was getting at is a worm probably doesn’t have very much mental capacity. So all these creatures that supposedly descended from it also developed brains of increasing complexity?

But the animals are mentioned thus: “Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so done.” So it would seem each different type of creature came forth from the earth. The specific way they were created isn’t mentioned. This as opposed to “let the amoeba come forth and every creature in its kind descend from it. And eventually it was so done.”

You should have backed up a bit, it explains it directly:

And God said: “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the sky” So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living and moving thing which the water teems, according to their kinds…

Something just has me perplexed here. How can someone call themselves Catholic and reject Genesis? Where is it that they decided all of a sudden, this part of the bible is incorrect? If they deem this part incorrect, and all out lies, it really makes me question the validity of their faith, I then must reflect upon 2 Timothy 3 and place those individuals within that context.

 

[mulligan59]

Our brains make us more fit overall. But those come with a “cost”. Evolution puts constraints on which positive adapations producing improved fitness are available.

Our brain is “born” completely devoid of basic survival instincts (which the lower animals simply appear programed with) an in bodies which are incredibly weak (relative to weight). We can’t lift our ungainly fragile heads for 3 months or stand up for nearly a year. On top of this we are terribly sensitive to the smallest deviations in envirnmental conditions. Many of us literally could not survive a single day of full sun exposure, or live 12 hours in a sub 40 degree temperature without not only knowing how to protect ourselves against these things and to also have the means of attaining the protection (we are completely tool dependent) readily available. I think we had to have been put here, with a mature and knowing mind, and we had to be taught the basics of survival. Despite your sophisticated arguments about viruses and such, this is why it will never add up for me. Natural selection would not select us. We had to have a fairly high level of culture from the very first instant of our arrival, or we wouldn’t have lived two days in the natural world.