Evolution and Creationism

[rossum]

But now we know it will not stand.

No, you are wrong. Replace “we” with “me and my YEC friends” to make it more accurate.

You still have no evidence to support a changing speed of light or a change in radioactive decay rates. Your obvious avoidance of producing any relevant evidence is very very obvious.

 

[Michaelangelo]

You still have no evidence to support a changing speed of light

I urge a bit caution when making this claim. For the sake of clarity it is best to specify exactly what is meant by this statement.

 

[rossum]

I urge a bit caution when making this claim. For the sake of clarity it is best to specify exactly what is meant by this statement.

Given that buffalo believes that the universe is only 6,000 years old, he has a very small window to demonstrate any such change.

If you want more precision then try:

You still have no evidence to support a changing speed of light in vacuo any time in the last 10 billion years.

 

[Michaelangelo]

Given that buffalo believes that the universe is only 6,000 years old, he has a very small window to demonstrate any such change.

The change in light speed that we actually do observe does not in any way support those YEC ideas. So he has no suport there.

If you want more precision then try:

You still have no evidence to support a changing speed of light in vacuo any time in the last 10 billion years.

That is way better and more specific. If one is involved in a philosophical debate where most ideas tossed around are founded in the understanding of nature of the time from the greek philosophers up to Newton, then no problem. But if one uses physics from the Einstein and forward, then such statements may become problematic. We simply know that the speed of light is far from constant. It is usually better to refer to the constant c.

The whacky thing quantum mechanics has taught us is that the universe is operating in a way that is far from our intuitive understanding. And that things we were taught up to college level becomes sketchy when looking closely. For example: a photon has no mass. Period! Well actually the shorther the timeframe is for the observation of the photon the less accurate the measurement of its energy becomes. The result is that photons can indeed have mass.

 

[Freddy]

Change the ‘meter’ and everything changes

You don’t often come across people who think you’re a different height if you’re measured in the metric system as opposed to the imperial one.

 

[Freddy]

rossum:

The speed of light has been shown to be constant for the last 10 billion years, and probably so for 2 billion years before that, by measurements of the Fine Structure Constant on very distant objects.

Well no it has not. It has changed. And what goes right along with it? Decay rates.

You know how fast light would travel if you ‘decayed’ it to the same extent as you reduce the age of the planet to what you think it is? 4.2m/s. I can run faster than that.

 

[Freddy]

Try again, Fred.

Unfortunately I will have to resort to repeating myself. He makes a categorical error in that he uses terms from philosophy in the mistaken assumption that they apply to evolution. They don’t. Your example from Panapermia (really?) uses scare quotes around terms such as ‘higher’ for a reason. You don’t appear to understand why.

We can a actually use one of Buff’s go-to phrases here (which he thinks is a zinger for all the wrong reasons) and describe the ‘tree of life’ as a ‘tangled bush’. The tree analogy is a simple method of trying to get people with limited understanding of cladistics to get a basic understanding of how it represents the evolutionary process.

Unfortunately, people like yourself take it in a more literal sense and use terms such as ‘better’ or ‘higher’ when you should simply be using ‘fitter’ (or you could use ‘more recent’). And ‘fitter’ only applies to those organisms that survive as opposed to their progenitors. Which might happen for a short time until the environment changes again and the later species might die out whilst the original one survives. Is a species that’s extinct a ‘higher’ species than one which survives? Did the surviving species suddenly become ‘higher’ simply by not dying out?

The terms are nonsensical used in an evolutionary sense. TOD (the old duffer) doesn’t know this and neither do you. So what you think is a reasonable argument based on philosophical proposals is not even wrong.

And let me know the maximum number of ‘micro’ changes an organism is allowed to go through. You can define what constitutes a ‘micro change’ yourself. Is it ten? A hundred? A few thousand? What’s the limit? It’s an utter waste of time saying one can happen but the other can’t if you don’t tell us what you mean by both terms and what the limit is.

 

[buffalo]

The change in light speed that we actually do observe does not in any way support those YEC ideas. So he has no suport there.

As buffalo’s spokesman he has never claimed a 6,000 year old earth and @rossum knows it.

 

[buffalo]

The tree analogy is a simple method of trying to get people with limited understanding of cladistics to get a basic understanding of how it represents the evolutionary process.

What a crock… Wrong. The tangled bush was not a prediction and came about after HGT was understood. In addition, it was demolished by genetic studies. Cladistics was more than to simplisticly explain evo. The TOL was the whole ball of wax…

 

[Freddy]

Try again, Fred.

And now Buff has kindly posted something I can add another post myself. Which is an explanation from our good friends at Berkley (my emphasis in each case) so that you know that this is common knowledge among those who understand evolution: https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/misconceptions_teacherfaq.php#a3

'MISCONCEPTION: Evolution results in progress; organisms are always getting better through evolution.

CORRECTION: One important mechanism of evolution, natural selection, does result in the evolution of improved abilities to survive and reproduce; however, this does not mean that evolution is progressive — for several reasons.

First, as described in a misconception below, natural selection does not produce organisms perfectly suited to their environments. It often allows the survival of individuals with a range of traits — individuals that are “good enough” to survive. Hence, evolutionary change is not always necessary for species to persist.

Many taxa (like some mosses, fungi, sharks, opossums, and crayfish) have changed little physically over great expanses of time. Second, there are other mechanisms of evolution that don’t cause adaptive change. Mutation, migration, and genetic drift may cause populations to evolve in ways that are actually harmful overall or make them less suitable for their environments. For example, the Afrikaner population of South Africa has an unusually high frequency of the gene responsible for Huntington’s disease because the gene version drifted to high frequency as the population grew from a small starting population.

Finally, the whole idea of “progress” doesn’t make sense when it comes to evolution. Climates change, rivers shift course, new competitors invade — and an organism with traits that are beneficial in one situation may be poorly equipped for survival when the environment changes. And even if we focus on a single environment and habitat, the idea of how to measure “progress” is skewed by the perspective of the observer. From a plant’s perspective, the best measure of progress might be photosynthetic ability; from a spider’s it might be the efficiency of a venom delivery system; from a human’s, cognitive ability.

It is tempting to see evolution as a grand progressive ladder with Homo sapiens emerging at the top. But evolution produces a tree, not a ladder — and we are just one of many twigs on the tree.’

Or a tangled bush (or ball of wax?)…

 

[Freddy]

Michaelangelo:

The change in light speed that we actually do observe does not in any way support those YEC ideas. So he has no suport there.

As buffalo’s spokesman he has never claimed a 6,000 year old earth and @rossum knows it.

Would you like to take this opportunity to do so?

 

[Hume]

If Adolf Hitler and Mother Teresa both end up in the same place eventually then there is no justice in Nirvana. A truly diabolical concept.

I thought it was a theological standard in Christianity that all who go to heaven do so by grace.

Apropos, Mother Theresa deserved to go to hell too, right?

 

[buffalo]

 

[Noose001]

Really? But earth does not move at a constant speed relative to the sun. You can set yourself to be the universal frame which makes everybody else’s clocks to move at a different rate. But that does not solve the problem. We have not found a universal reference for time.

From earth’s movement, we get days and months and years and seasons, you can calculate and compensate the much you want but this is our starting. Not that the clock really matters, even if the earth stops or all clocks stop, we will still experience ‘passage of time’.

 

[Maximus_Power]

I thought it was a theological standard in Christianity that all who go to heaven do so by grace.

Apropos, Mother Theresa deserved to go to hell too, right?

In a sense. Sin merits Hell. Without baptism man go’s to hell by default. The grace of Baptism removes original sin and prayer aquires requisite Grace’s to stay out of sin.

Mother Theresa and Hitler’s deserved hell, were reborn through Baptism, Mother Theresa persevered in faith, God granted her graces and granted her heaven.

Hitler abandoned his God and slew a great multitude of his brothers. The Lord is all mercy on this side of life and all justice on the otherside.

One sin offends an infinite God Infinitely.

After Baptism. Mother Theresa and Hitler werent on the same level in this life and there’s no reason to believe they are on the same level now.

 

[stoplooklisten]

I thought it was a theological standard in Christianity that all who go to heaven do so by grace.

Apropos, Mother Theresa deserved to go to hell too, right?

Yes, Mother Theresa needed grace and mercy.

But, there are degrees of reward/recompense in heaven and hell. (For example, see 1 Corinthians 3:13-15; Luke 20:47)

 

[stoplooklisten]

The tree analogy is a simple method of trying to get people with limited understanding of cladistics to get a basic understanding of how it represents the evolutionary process.

Almighty God has His mysteries. The Trinitarian nature of Almighty God has its mysteries. God has revealed Himself in part in nature and Scripture and Providence and supernatural revelation but not fully. There are somethings that mere humans cannot fully understand.

The cults sometimes like to attract people based on a promise of access for the initiated to “secret knowledge” or “higher, deeper knowledge” or “hidden mysteries”.

Is cladistics one of the gateways to the deeper, higher knowledge and mysteries and secrets of evolution? I think not.

Cladistics is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups based on the most recent common ancestor. Wikipedia

 

[stoplooklisten]

But if one uses physics from the Einstein and forward, then such statements may become problematic. We simply know that the speed of light is far from constant. It is usually better to refer to the constant c .

The whacky thing quantum mechanics has taught us is that the universe is operating in a way that is far from our intuitive understanding. And that things we were taught up to college level becomes sketchy when looking closely. For example: a photon has no mass. Period! Well actually the shorther the timeframe is for the observation of the photon the less accurate the measurement of its energy becomes. The result is that photons can indeed have mass.

The constancy of the constants is sustained by Almighty God. That’s why the movement of moons, planets, comets, tides and more is so predictable. But, over time, the value of the constants could have been changed by the same Almighty God. And, oh wait, time itself is not a constant. But, God never changes (Hebrews 1:12)

 

[Freddy]

Is cladistics one of the gateways to the deeper, higher knowledge and mysteries and secrets of evolution?

It’s not scientolology we’re discussing, Stop. Just science.

 

[o_mlly]

Unfortunately I will have to resort to repeating myself. He makes a categorical error in that he uses terms from philosophy in the mistaken assumption that they apply to evolution. They don’t. Your example from Panapermia (really?) uses scare quotes around terms such as ‘higher’ for a reason. You don’t appear to understand why.

Start to repeat? We asked you why macroevolution does not violate (your hero Leibnitz’s) Principle of Sufficient Reason? And all we get is 4 or 5 repeats from the Atheist Playbook Rules again. Fred, you’re long on vitriol and short on argument.

Let’s examine your first deflection – Ripperger’s alleged categorical error. This rather inane deflection – “he uses terms from philosophy in the mistaken assumption that they apply to evolution” – demonstrates that you do not understand firstly what a categorical error is and, more importantly, the role of philosophy in the history of the scientific revolution. Did you know that the original term for “scientist” is “philosopher of nature”? (Another thread.)

Now, let’s examine your argument: "They don’t"
Sorry, Fred but that’s not an argument.

Next, let’s look at your criticism of Panspermia as a source: "Panapermia (really?) [sic]".
Sorry, Fred but that’s not an argument.

Did you know that Richard Dawkins endorsed their core idea? (See Ben Stein - Richard Dawkins interview on youtube.)

Now, moving on we see you employ Atheist Playbook Rule #3 “You’re stupid”. "You don’t appear to understand why."
Sorry, Fred but that’s not an argument.

If you want to distance yourself from Dawkins and Panspermia, how about NCBI?

Complexity, Natural Selection and the Evolution of Life and Humans

In this paper, I discuss the concept of complexity. I show that the principle of natural selection as acting on complexity gives a solution to the problem of reconciling the seemingly contradictory notion of generally increasing complexity and the observation ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

it actually is natural selection that elevates species to successively higher levels.

At the same time, natural selection has raised a limited number of species residing on the highest level of complexity to still higher levels of complexity

This means that evolution began with species at the lowest level of complexity, followed by species of successively higher levels of complexity. This may seem intuitively self-evident but many scientists nevertheless hesitate about how to express it.

Now, let’s see what Fr. Ripperger wrote:

While it is true that some perfections require a greater complexity at the material level, the possession of those perfections is still higher. Moreover, the more complex a thing is, the greater principle of unification is required to have that complexity work harmoniously. Essentially what this means is that the substantial form of a thing must be on a higher order so that greater complexity can be brought about at the level of matter. In evolution, further complexity in matter is asserted without accounting for higher substantial form. This again violates the principle of sufficient reason.

Well, NCBI and Ripperger are in synch. Looks like you’re the odd man out, Fred.

So, do you have an argument that demonstrates how macroevolution does not violate Leibnitz’s principle of sufficient reason?