**Well, I think I will conflate the two, since the 20th century variety is very specifically atheistic.
I have to agree with you, No fence straddling allowed. Atheists, by definition, have no choice. And the people making the same points over and over, not just here but on other Christian forums on the internet are basically saying:
No
Asking a scientist to comment on God is like asking the weatherman how the stock market did.
I agree with you that it does help to know something about the other sides point of view if you are going to discuss it. But I don’t think you understand the complexity of a living cell. Mutation is not a valid mechanism for one species to turn into another. Any one who is telling you this is blowing smoke. I would agree that genetic engineering could modify a species funcion but there is no way that random mutation can do it. The mathimatical statistics are astonmical. Plus I only blieve the earth has existed for about 10000 years. Therefore evolution by mutation is impossible. They need the millions and millions of years to support mutation to another species theory. That’s two theories to support one big theory. Somewhere along the lines you have to have some factual information. My rule of thump is if your theory depends upon more than one other theory throw it out and just say you don’t know. They are too arrgent to say they don’t know. But I’m not afraid to say it their heads are too big and their minds are too small. They don’t know how to think outside the evolutionary box.
The evidence shows that you are incorrect. Chrysopa carnea and Chrysopa downesi are two North American lacewings. C. carnea is light green in summer, brown in autumn and breeds in winter and summer. It lives in deciduous trees, hence the colour change. C. downesi is dark green and breeds in spring. It lives in pine trees, hence the constant dark green colouring. These two do not breed in nature since they live in different habitats and breed at different times of year. Both morphologically and reproductively they are separate species. There are three differences in their genes. One carries the colour difference and the other two control the time of breeding. Given that the range of C. downesi is entirely contained within that of C. carnea, it is very likely that C. downesi is the newer species having originated from a single change in the gene for colour that allowed it to exploit a different habitat in pine trees. Since the cross-breeds have an intermediate colour they are not camouflaged in either pines or deciduous trees so there is selection pressure against them. The changes to the breeding cycle would probably have come later, having an advantage in reducing the number of cross-breeds which represent a wasted effort in evolutionary terms. That is three mutations to create a new species. Three mutations. The average human has about 100 mutations, 95% of which are neutral.
Cough, cough, cough.
Why not? I have just shown that it can be done, and more easily than I suspect you thought.
Please show your calculations. I have done some calculations in this area, they are too long to fit here but you can read them at The Evolution of Boojumase. The statistics are not that astronomical.
The available evidence shows that your belief is incorrect.
Bacteria have evolved resistance to antibiotics in a lot less than 10,000 years. Evolution by mutation is perfectly possible and has been, and is being, observed.
We have the factual information by the bucketload. Read The Mirage for an indication of the iceberg of scientific evidence that can wreck creationist attempts to overturn cosmology, physics and biology.
Changes within kind due to recessive genetic makeup is not evolution due to mutation. Natural selection makes use of information that is already programmed in.The evidence shows that you are incorrect. Chrysopa carnea and Chrysopa downesi are two North American lacewings. C. carnea is light green in summer, brown in autumn and breeds in winter and summer. It lives in deciduous trees, hence the colour change. C. downesi is dark green and breeds in spring. It lives in pine trees, hence the constant dark green colouring. These two do not breed in nature since they live in different habitats and breed at different times of year. Both morphologically and reproductively they are separate species. There are three differences in their genes. One carries the colour difference and the other two control the time of breeding. Given that the range of C. downesi is entirely contained within that of C. carnea, it is very likely that C. downesi is the newer species having originated from a single change in the gene for colour that allowed it to exploit a different habitat in pine trees. Since the cross-breeds have an intermediate colour they are not camouflaged in either pines or deciduous trees so there is selection pressure against them. The changes to the breeding cycle would probably have come later, having an advantage in reducing the number of cross-breeds which represent a wasted effort in evolutionary terms. That is three mutations to create a new species. Three mutations. The average human has about 100 mutations, 95% of which are neutral.
Cough, cough, cough.
Why not? I have just shown that it can be done, and more easily than I suspect you thought.
Please show your calculations. I have done some calculations in this area, they are too long to fit here but you can read them at The Evolution of Boojumase. The statistics are not that astronomical.
The available evidence shows that your belief is incorrect.
Bacteria have evolved resistance to antibiotics in a lot less than 10,000 years. Evolution by mutation is perfectly possible and has been, and is being, observed.
We have the factual information by the bucketload. Read The Mirage for an indication of the iceberg of scientific evidence that can wreck creationist attempts to overturn cosmology, physics and biology.
rossum
“Kind” or “baramin” is a creationist term that has never been defined in sufficient detail for scientists to make use of. Until it has been so defined it is useless.
Of the 5% of effective mutations the great majority will be mildly deleterious. Very few will be beneficial. However with a human population in the billions the total number of beneficial mutations will be substantial. Once one arises it will be amplified and spread by natural selection so it only needs to appear once.
You can say whatever you like. Unless you have evidence to back it up then I am free to ignore it. 82.76% of statistics are made up on the spot.
I made no assumptions about population - I was talking about the number of mutations is a single human being. For a population just multiply the number of mutations by the size of the population.
I am right about the age of the earth. The age of the earth was known to be longer than the 10,000 years or so allowed by a literal reading of Genesis by the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Correct. Mutation is mutation - it increases the variation in the genome of the species by introducing new variants. Natural selection is natural selection - it decreases the variation in the genome of the species by eliminating deleterious variants.
Not from the beginning - unused information in a genome gets trashed by mutations over time.
Read up on the Luria-Delbrück experiment I referenced above. If you want to criticise evolution then you need to criticise evolution, not some creationist strawman of evolution.
Since you brought up astrophysics, how do those of you who feel evolution somehow attacks faith interpret Genesis 1:16?
I have no problem with this. It’s the second story of creation that details the problems for me.
I thought it was at least 200 billion stars
From what i understand, at least half of the solar systems (stars) have orbiting planets of some type.God is the creator whether there are extraterrestrial beings on distant planets or not. Love is internal, not external.
Please don’t assume i’m right with anything i’m saying. I have “heretical” views on subjects that conflict with Church teachings, especially on other subjects. I’m nothing more than a protestant at best from the Church’s perspective.
Additional information is programmed into all life forms it’s called recessive genes. Why do evolutionist choose to ignore this. How did that variation get there? Maybe someone put it there is a better explaination than it mutated that way.“Kind” or “baramin” is a creationist term that has never been defined in sufficient detail for scientists to make use of. Until it has been so defined it is useless.
Natural selection makes use of the available variation in the genome of a population. The Luria-Delbrück experiment shows that mutations arise irrespective of the requirements of the organism. They are not “programmed in”.
Of the 5% of effective mutations the great majority will be mildly deleterious. Very few will be beneficial. However with a human population in the billions the total number of beneficial mutations will be substantial. Once one arises it will be amplified and spread by natural selection so it only needs to appear once.
You can say whatever you like. Unless you have evidence to back it up then I am free to ignore it. 82.76% of statistics are made up on the spot.
I made no assumptions about population - I was talking about the number of mutations is a single human being. For a population just multiply the number of mutations by the size of the population.
I am right about the age of the earth. The age of the earth was known to be longer than the 10,000 years or so allowed by a literal reading of Genesis by the first quarter of the nineteenth century.
Correct. Mutation is mutation - it increases the variation in the genome of the species by introducing new variants. Natural selection is natural selection - it decreases the variation in the genome of the species by eliminating deleterious variants.
Not from the beginning - unused information in a genome gets trashed by mutations over time.
Read up on the Luria-Delbrück experiment I referenced above. If you want to criticise evolution then you need to criticise evolution, not some creationist strawman of evolution.
rossum
I am aware of recessive genes. We have been aware of them since Mendel’s work was rediscovered about 1900.
Rubbish. Please show me a genetics textbook that does not mention recessive genes.
And maybe it is a worse explanation. We can see mutations happening now. We can see the evidence of mutations happening in the past, haemophilia in European royal families for instance. The only available evidence that “someone put it there” is in GM crops where there is evidence that humans made the changes directly. What evidence do you have the “someone put it there”? Without evidence your opinion has nothing to back it up.
Why? What is the point that you are trying to make with population numbers?
If you want proof then you do need evidence. Faith is belief in something without any proof. Since you have no evidence and I do not share your faith then I am free to ignore your personal beliefs about the age of the earth.
An easy burden to carry as I have the scientific literature to back me up. Start with The Age of the Earth.
Scientists like to avoid assumptions because any assumptions are an obvious weakness in any experiment. Scientists have checked that radioactive decay rates remain constant by looking at radioactive decays in distant astronomical objects such as SN 1987a. Scientists have checked that the speed of light is constant by looking at very distant astronomical objects - we know that it has been constant for the last 10 billion years. Please understand that creationist sources are not the best place to learn about science, any more than www.atheists-r-us.org would be the best place to learn about Christianity.
As I said, there are no assumptions - we know that redioactive decay rates have been constant and we know that the speed of light has been constant. These things are checked and measured. What assumptions do you think have been made?
Not in any great quantity, no. However evolution is a theory of random mutation and natural selection. Selection can make ordered information. Natural selection is a way of extracting information from the environment and copying it into the genome. Where a random mutation matches the environment then natural selection amplifies and spreads that mutation. Where a mutation does not match the envionment natural selection will suppress that mutation so it does not get a permanent place in the genome. Selection can and does make ordered information.
No, it is a glaring misunderstanding of creationists who put up a straw man caricature of evolution by only considering randiom mutations whiile ignoring the effect of natural selection. It is your creationist sources who are misunderstanding the theory of evolution.
The Luria-Delbrück paper is here (PDF). You can read it for yourself.