Ignorance and evolution

[freesoulhope]

However, if you want an example of gross immorality, look at what happens when the false theory of evolution is applied to human society.

Gary

When did God give you the authority to tell people that genesis is actual history? You could ask me the same question, but i would simply reply that i have no authority to answer on the basis of scripture. We don’t know; but we can get a good clue from science and the objective reality around us.

Whatever the theological differculties that arise, the Evolution theory icannot be called false on the basis that it can be used to abuse and destroy our human dignity.

All the animals we see today are vastly different from the ones that were around when the dinosaurs ruled the earth. This is one clue. Also; we have observed no morden animals such as the domestic cat or dog or even a fox in the same fossil time period as a T rex. Again; it is evident that the ecological or biological realities of the past are vastly different from the ones that we observe today.

We cannot cover it up by saying that there was a flood. Using the bible as science is as wrong as those who say that God dosn’t exist because of evolution.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Scientists are not better than the rest of us.

They just know more about some things than most people.

As was pointed out much earlier in this thread, some 70% of them are atheistic.

Last survey taken, using a survey wording done at the beginning of the last century, says about 50% believe in a personal God, with more being other sorts of theists and deists.

It’s not an unreasonable way to do it, but it doesn’t reflect the reality of common descent. And that’s why scientists accept it; it fits reality.

Dividing up the animal kingdom by the presence of absence of hair is no more valid or correct than dividing up the animal kingdom based on the presence or absence of wings.

You’ve confused homologous and analogous features.

They are both equally valid if they meet the needs of the culture.

Far out, man…

Also, if evolution were accurate, it should be impossible to divide animals and plants into different taxon.

It would be if every animal and plant that ever lived was still alive. If you go back far enough, it’s impossible to separate the mammals from the reptiles, because they are intermediate in every way we divide mammals from reptiles.

We don’t see any such continuum in the world.

Tell you what; I’ll show you a fossil. And you tell me whether it’s a reptile or a mammal, and the features by which you decided. Fair enough?

Barbarian observes:
I’m not buying the cultural-relativistic notion of postmodernists that reality is what we make it. You sure you want to promote their agenda?

I’m not talking about cultural relativism here

That’s what you’re preaching here. There is an objective reality, and we can learn about it.

Whether a bat is a bird or a mammal is morally neutral.

Morally, but not factually. Bats are mammals.

However, if you want an example of gross immorality, look at what happens when the false theory of evolution is applied to human society.

Let’s hear your story.

 

[garysibio]

Barbarian,

I’m not going to waste my time answering you since you are either not reading what I do write closely or you are just so deceived by the materialist viewpoint that you can’t understand an opposing view.

Gary

 

[The_Barbarian]

I’m not going to waste my time answering you since you are either not reading what I do write closely or you are just so deceived by the materialist viewpoint that you can’t understand an opposing view.

There’s another possibility; I understand what you’re saying but you are so immunized against reason, that you refuse to accept the evidence I showed you.

If you can’t stand disagreement, it’s best not to post on message boards. And you need to ask yourself why you find the evidence so unsettling.

Let God be God, and let the truth be what it is. It’s a better way.

 

[anthony022071]

Yes, that’s one of the ways you can get rapid speciation. Polyploid mutants are often immediately and completely isolated from their original population. It’s not very common in mammals, but at least one case of such speciation has been noted in a polyploid rodent species in South America.

Rapid speciation or no,the O. gigas are not a self-perpetuating population,so they cannot be used as proof of theory of common descent. Polyphoid mutants are common among plants,like coffee plants and strawberries. They usually can’t interbreed with their parents,and there is no new genetic information. They are still called coffee plants and strawberries.

They look quite different than O. lamarkana. They reproduce true to type. They are reproductively isolate from O. lamarkana. And they’ve had a few mutations since, so they are evolving.

They require constant care,and they always generate different chromosome sets,such as diploid, triploid, tetraploid,and so on.

They fit the scientific defintion of a new species.

They are not an example of a species that is self-perpetuating,and they do not have new genetic information.

Only new species get a new species name. If they were just a variety, they’d have an appended subspecies name. You’ve been badly misled about that.

Many of the names of oenothera listed by the Department of Agricultures Research Center are synonyms or obsolete. De Vries’ O. lamarckiana had already been named Oenothera glazioviana by other scientists.

See also the entries for Oenothera in The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew’s Electronic Plant Information Centre database
(sixty-year-old paper predicting the demise of O. gigas.)

The author of that paper is dead, but O. gigas lives on. Imagine that.

That’s because O. gigas are being helped along and perpetuated by scientists.
Did scientists help to perpetuate the earliest humans?

I think I trust Dobzhansky’s understanding of science better than yours. Sorry.

His understanding of science didn’t make his discoveries any more relevant to the theory of common descent.

Perhaps you don’t know what “hybrid” means. It has nothing whatever to do with these insects.

Ever hear of the Dobszanski-Muller model?

Those flies would be surprised to learn that. They are still there, still reproducing, many generations later.

“Most mutants which arise in any organism are more or less disadvantageous to their possessors. The classical mutants obtained in Drosophila usually show deterioration, breakdown, or disappearance of some organs. Mutants are known which diminish the quantity or destroy the pigment in the eyes, and in the body reduce the wings, eyes, bristles, legs. Many mutants are, in fact lethal to their possessors. Mutants which equal the normal fly in vigor are a minority, and mutants that would make a major improvement of the normal organization in the normal environments are unknown.”— Theodosius Dobzhansky, Evolution, Genetics, and Man (1955), p. 105.

“The clear-cut mutants of Drosophila, with which so much of the classical research in genetics were done, are almost without exception inferior to wild-type flies in viability, fertility, longevity.”—Theodosius Dobzhansky, Heredity and the Nature of Man (1964), p. 126.

“A review of known facts about their ability to survive has led to no other conclusion than that they [the mutated offspring] are always constitutionally weaker than their parent form or species, and in a population with free competition they are eliminated . . Therefore they are never found in nature (e.g. not a single one of the several hundred [types] of Drosophila mutation), and therefore, they are able to appear only in the favorable environment of the experimental field or laboratory.”— H. Nilsson, Synthetische Artbildng (1957), p. 1186.

“It is a striking, but not much mentioned fact that, though geneticists have been breeding fruit flies for sixty years or more in labs all round the world—flies which produce a new generation every eleven days—they have never yet seen the emergence of a new species or even a new enzyme.”— Gordon R. Taylor, The Great Evolution Mystery (1983), p. 48.

 

[IvanKaramozov]

this is astonishing, over 100 years saince Darwin published what was at the time extraordionary evidence and argument for evolution, a century of confirmation and it still contested.

Astonishing

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
Yes, that’s one of the ways you can get rapid speciation. Polyploid mutants are often immediately and completely isolated from their original population. It’s not very common in mammals, but at least one case of such speciation has been noted in a polyploid rodent species in South America.

Rapid speciation or no,the O. gigas are not a self-perpetuating population,so they cannot be used as proof of theory of common descent.

You’ve been misled. We still have this species in existence, and they still reproduce just fine, like other self-perpetuating populations.

Polyphoid mutants are common among plants,like coffee plants and strawberries. They usually can’t interbreed with their parents,and there is no new genetic information.

You mean speciation can occur without new information?

That’s true. In some cases, new species can actually have less information than the population from which it sprung. In fact, it usually does, since allopatric speciation is more common.

They are still called coffee plants and strawberries.

And we are still primates. You find that amazing? It’s one of the predictions of common descent.

Barbarian observes:
They look quite different than O. lamarkana. They reproduce true to type. They are reproductively isolate from O. lamarkana. And they’ve had a few mutations since, so they are evolving.

They require constant care

So do Zea maize and ginko trees. Some species have become dependent on humans. But, of course, this doesn’t mean that they aren’t species.

and they always generate different chromosome sets,such as diploid, triploid, tetraploid,and so on.

And yet they still reproduce and breed true. Hmm… is it possible there’s something you’re missing here… :ehh:

Barbarian observes:
They fit the scientific defintion of a new species.

They are not an example of a species that is self-perpetuating

Since they reproduce and continue even now, they certainly would seem to be so.

Barbarian observes:
The author of that paper is dead, but O. gigas lives on. Imagine that.

That’s because O. gigas are being helped along and perpetuated by scientists.

And corn is “helped” along. But of course that polyploid rodent in South America had to go it alone. So we know it works. Moreover, there are quite a number of polyploid wild plants that do just fine without human intervention. You’re running out of excuses.

Barbarian observes:
I think I trust Dobzhansky’s understanding of science better than yours. Sorry.

His understanding of science didn’t make his discoveries any more relevant to the theory of common descent.

Other than demonstrate the fact of speciation. BTW, even most YE creationists admit the fact of speciation. They can hardly do otherwise, since it’s directly observed:

Creationists have no problem, however, with speciation, or even the “evolution” of new genera in some instances, as long as such development does not extend to the “family” (dogs, cats, horses, etc.). Henry Morris, ICR
icr.org/article/567/

Barbarian suggests:
Perhaps you don’t know what “hybrid” means. It has nothing whatever to do with these insects.

Ever hear of the Dobszanski-Muller model?

You mean the Dobzhansky-Muller model? You’ve been misled on that:

**The Dobzhansky-Muller model proposes that hybrid incompatibilities are caused by the interaction between genes that have functionally diverged in the respective hybridizing species. **

It explains why two divergent species can’t hybridize. It doesn’t mean that they are hybrids.

Barbarian observes:
Those flies would be surprised to learn that. They are still there, still reproducing, many generations later.

"Most mutants which arise in any organism are more or less disadvantageous to their possessors.

And yet, the flies live on, completely disregarding your interpretation of genetics. Cheeky little miscreants. BTW, since Dobzhansky wrote that, molecular biology has made it clear that most mutations don’t do much of anything. But of course, such mutations were not visible until we could examine DNA in detail.

This is one of the hazards of trying to cite papers over a half-century old, as current knowledge. Often you get embarassed. Like this time.

 

[garysibio]

There’s another possibility; I understand what you’re saying but you are so immunized against reason, that you refuse to accept the evidence I showed you.

If you can’t stand disagreement, it’s best not to post on message boards. And you need to ask yourself why you find the evidence so unsettling.

Let God be God, and let the truth be what it is. It’s a better way.

Yeah, that must be it. If it makes you feel better to think that, knock yourself out.

Gary

 

[The_Barbarian]

So, you’ve decided to stay on, after all. Good show. Now see if you can bring something of substance to the table.

 

[garysibio]

So, you’ve decided to stay on, after all. Good show. Now see if you can bring something of substance to the table.

I never said I wasn’t going to discontinue following the thread; I said I wasn’t going to bother responding to you. You see, you don’t read what I write.

Gary

 

[mathematician]

There was not enough time for a-theistic evolution to have occurred.

What’s wrong with theistic evolution, as championed by Francis Collins, Sir Ghillian Prance, John Hapgood or Joan Roughgarden (to name but four)?

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
So, you’ve decided to stay on, after all. Good show. Now see if you can bring something of substance to the table.

I never said I wasn’t going to discontinue following the thread; I said I wasn’t going to bother responding to you. You see, you don’t read what I write.

Apparently, you don’t either. You just did what you said you weren’t going to do.

 

[steveandersen]

this is astonishing, over 100 years saince Darwin published what was at the time extraordionary evidence and argument for evolution, a century of confirmation and it still contested.

Astonishing

Yeah, it’s kinda sad

A testament to the lousy way science is taught in schools I suppose.

 

[garysibio]

What’s wrong with theistic evolution, as championed by Francis Collins, Sir Ghillian Prance, John Hapgood or Joan Roughgarden (to name but four)?

The issue for me is whether or not evolution stands up to scientific scrutiny and, in my opinion, it does not which makes theistic evolution as untenable as materialistic evolution. Just because the scientific community largely stands behind the theory, does not make it true. After all, before Darwin the scientific community claimed that Lamarkian inheritance was absolutely true. You don’t hear much about that today unless you take a class in the history of science. Scientists also believed that life could arise from non-life until Pasteur proved them wrong. (BTW, Pasteur was a creationist who rejected Darwinism.)

[In the interests of full disclosure I am not a scientist in anything but the amateur sense but I did get my BA in anthropology. I don’t consider myself to be an expert but I have studied the issue more than the average guy.]

Let me give you an example of what I mean about the lack of evidence supporting evolution. There is a dearth of hominid fossils. The sum total could be placed in an average size pickup truck. Let’s limit the scope here to those hominids which have been placed in the genus Homo. That would include Homo habilis, erectus, neanderthalensis & sapiens. (Some anthropologists consider H. neanderthalensis to be a subspecies of H. sapiens, others say it’s a separate species.) If you were to take the skulls of all of the fossils we have of these hominids, there would be less variation among them than there is among the skulls of all the people currently alive on Earth.

Radiometric dating methods are also suspect. Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) dating - the method used to date rocks - was used on a sample of rock known to have come from a volcano around 1800 and it gave a false result of being over 2 billion years old. Now evolutionists will exist that this error comes from the fact that K-Ar dating doesn’t work on young rocks which is absolutely correct. However it begs the question. When the method is used on a rock whose actual age is not known and shows an age in the billions of years, how can scientists know if the rock is really that old or is it thousands of years old and returning a false ancient date like the volcanic rock they tested. They can’t. That makes every date determined by the K-Ar method suspect.

Gary

 

[mathematician]

The issue for me is whether or not evolution stands up to scientific scrutiny and, in my opinion, it does not which makes theistic evolution as untenable as materialistic evolution. Just because the scientific community largely stands behind the theory, does not make it true. After all, before Darwin the scientific community claimed that Lamarkian inheritance was absolutely true. You don’t hear much about that today unless you take a class in the history of science. Scientists also believed that life could arise from non-life until Pasteur proved them wrong. (BTW, Pasteur was a creationist who rejected Darwinism.)

[In the interests of full disclosure I am not a scientist in anything but the amateur sense but I did get my BA in anthropology. I don’t consider myself to be an expert but I have studied the issue more than the average guy.]

Let me give you an example of what I mean about the lack of evidence supporting evolution. There is a dearth of hominid fossils. The sum total could be placed in an average size pickup truck. Let’s limit the scope here to those hominids which have been placed in the genus Homo. That would include Homo habilis, erectus, neanderthalensis & sapiens. (Some anthropologists consider H. neanderthalensis to be a subspecies of H. sapiens, others say it’s a separate species.) If you were to take the skulls of all of the fossils we have of these hominids, there would be less variation among them than there is among the skulls of all the people currently alive on Earth.

Radiometric dating methods are also suspect. Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) dating - the method used to date rocks - was used on a sample of rock known to have come from a volcano around 1800 and it gave a false result of being over 2 billion years old. Now evolutionists will exist that this error comes from the fact that K-Ar dating doesn’t work on young rocks which is absolutely correct. However it begs the question. When the method is used on a rock whose actual age is not known and shows an age in the billions of years, how can scientists know if the rock is really that old or is it thousands of years old and returning a false ancient date like the volcanic rock they tested. They can’t. That makes every date determined by the K-Ar method suspect.

Gary

All scientific theories are provisional, but theories are not usually thrown away unless you have got a better one to put in its place. It is no use looking in the Bible for such a theory, because the Bible is not that kind of book. Either you have to postulate the existence of some kind of physical process which brought human beings into existence, or else you have to postulate a hand coming down out of the sky to plant the first man and woman upon earth. Which sounds the more likely to you?

 

[The_Barbarian]

The issue for me is whether or not evolution stands up to scientific scrutiny and, in my opinion, it does not which makes theistic evolution as untenable as materialistic evolution. Just because the scientific community largely stands behind the theory, does not make it true. After all, before Darwin the scientific community claimed that Lamarkian inheritance was absolutely true.

In fact, there was considerable contention about that. You’ve been led astray again. Lamarckism was one of the popular ideas, but by no means the scientific orthodoxy.

Scientists also believed that life could arise from non-life until Pasteur proved them wrong. (BTW, Pasteur was a creationist who rejected Darwinism.)

Again, someone took advantage of your trust in them:

**Virulence appears in a new light which cannot but be alarming to humanity; unless nature, in her evolution down the ages (an evolution which, as we now know, has been going on for millions, nay, hundreds of millions of years), has finally exhausted all the possibilities of producing virulent or contagious diseases – which does not seem very likely. **
Louis Pasteur
Cuny, Hilaire. 1965. Louis Pasteur: The man and his theories.

[In the interests of full disclosure I am not a scientist in anything but the amateur sense but I did get my BA in anthropology. I don’t consider myself to be an expert but I have studied the issue more than the average guy.]

So didn’t you learn anything at all about physical anthropology?

Let me give you an example of what I mean about the lack of evidence supporting evolution. There is a dearth of hominid fossils.

How could you get a degree in anthropology and not know that there are hundreds of hominid fossils? (we now call them “hominins”, the group that includes humans and their close relatives)

Here’s a partial list of fossils of primitive hominins, showing some of the significant ones. They are but a fraction of the number actually existing, and new ones turn up every year.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_human_evolution_fossils

How is it a bacteriologist/anatomist/operations research guy knows more about anthropology than an anthropologist?

The sum total could be placed in an average size pickup truck.

You’ve been suckered on that one. They wouldn’t fit in a tractor trailer. Take a quick calculation and figure out how many human skeletons that would be.

Let’s limit the scope here to those hominids which have been placed in the genus Homo. That would include Homo habilis, erectus, neanderthalensis & sapiens. (Some anthropologists consider H. neanderthalensis to be a subspecies of H. sapiens, others say it’s a separate species.) If you were to take the skulls of all of the fossils we have of these hominids, there would be less variation among them than there is among the skulls of all the people currently alive on Earth.

If you include grossly deformed and microcephalic people. A Neandertal would be immediately noticed, even with a shave, haircut, and modern clothing. Even the children were very different. H. erectus was even more different. (most species of Homo were so like us apart from the skull that it would take an anatomist to know the difference)

H. sapiens:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515gMK28KpL.AA280.jpg

H. erectus:


H. habilis:
http://anthro.palomar.edu/homo/images/Homo_habilis_skull_right_side.gif

If you can’t tell the difference, you’re a lot less observant than normal humans.

Radiometric dating methods are also suspect. Potassium-Argon (K-Ar) dating - the method used to date rocks - was used on a sample of rock known to have come from a volcano around 1800 and it gave a false result of being over 2 billion years old.

It’s an old scam. All you have to do is find material with unmelted xenocrysts. That guarantees a false age. That is why there are entire books dedicated to the ways the method can go wrong if sampling is not careful. They didn’t tell you that, um?

Now evolutionists will exist that this error comes from the fact that K-Ar dating doesn’t work on young rocks which is absolutely correct.

“Young” is a relative term. Tests on the rocks from the eruption that buried Pompeii, for example, were accurately dated by Argon/Argon methods. Reality trumps anyone’s reasoning.

You’re their victim only as long as you uncritically accept what they say. Learn the truth, and the truth will set you free.

 

[Thing]

Barbarian,

Do you have a frontal image of this skull?

H. erectus:
http://www.godandscience.org/images/erectusrightfront.gif

Barbarian,
Try copying and pasting this into your google address bar and press go. Or just click it.
godandscience.org/images

 

[garysibio]

All scientific theories are provisional, but theories are not usually thrown away unless you have got a better one to put in its place. It is no use looking in the Bible for such a theory, because the Bible is not that kind of book. Either you have to postulate the existence of some kind of physical process which brought human beings into existence, or else you have to postulate a hand coming down out of the sky to plant the first man and woman upon earth. Which sounds the more likely to you?

When have I ever used the Bible as evidence in this discussion?

Gary

 

[The_Barbarian]

No, I don’t have a frontal view of that skull. I’ll see if I can find one for you.

 

[reggieM]

Also, if evolution were accurate, it should be impossible to divide animals and plants into different taxon. There should be a continuum of forms resulting from the gradual change of one form into another. We don’t see any such continuum in the world.

That’s a fascinating point – thanks.

I’m not going to waste my time answering you since you are either not reading what I do write closely or you are just so deceived by the materialist viewpoint that you can’t understand an opposing view.

You’re the fifth person I’ve seen on this or related threads to say basically the same thing (confirming what you said).

However, if you want an example of gross immorality, look at what happens when the false theory of evolution is applied to human society.

Again, another excellent point. John West’s “Darwin Day in America” explores that theme in all its gory detail.