National Academies book on evolution

[ricmat]

Hi ricmat

I hope Barbarian won’t mind me jumping in by giving my :twocents: worth pertaining to this specific comment of yours. Perhaps this will be of service to you. Please review the following document:

**The dangers of creationism in education **
Report by Committee on Culture, Science and Education
from the Parliamentary Assembly, Council of Europe
8 June 2007:

[If you scroll down the document to **Evolution

you’ll find a portion of what it says:]

*28. One of the discoveries that has been made in the study of our planet and has been confirmed many times, is the dating of the major events that have marked its development:

• the solar system, which includes the Earth, was formed approximately 4.6 billion years ago;
• life appeared on Earth at least 2.5 billion years ago (in the form of unicellular bacteria);
• about 200 million years ago Pangea began to split up to form the continents we know today;
• homo sapiens, ie human beings, emerged between 100,000 and 200,000 years ago.

It is thus not hard to understand why these discoveries have presented a challenge to those who apply a strict interpretation to the first part of the Bible, ie Genesis.*

http://assembly.coe.int/Main.asp?link=/Documents/WorkingDocs/Doc07/EDOC11297.htm#P362_70012
You will have to insert into your address bar the url that I’ve provided to view the document. I’m still having problems as you can note from my previous post trying to automatically activate it from Catholic.com’s site. Sorry.

Wildleafblower:

You too seem to be missing my point. I accept that the universe is 13 billion years old, that the earth is 4.5 billion years old and the time frames shown by the fossil record. I’ve said this many times, but Barbarian insists on calling me a creationist, which has people confused, it seems.

I’m sort of looking at the time line thing as a “project manager” would. In advance of the project, you ask all the participants to estimate how long their particular tasks will take, then you roll up the total.

What I’m asking for is that those who believe in unguided evolution (no hand of God involved) to prove, or even just estimate, how long each step takes. And by each step, I mean each mutation.

If someone said to me “We can assemble this Boeing 777 in 3 hours, given all the parts are available” I’d say “before you start, tell me how long each step takes.” Then I’d figure out what can be done in parallel and what needs to be done in series, and come up with the “real” estimate.

I’m just asking for the ground-up estimate for evolution. How long does each step in the chain take, then add it together to see if it comes out to 4 billion years, or 4 million billion years.

If the answer is 4 million billion years, then, well…unguided evolution can’t be true, no matter how good the other data looks.

Again, I have no contention with the fossil record, age of the universe, etc.

And I’ll repeat for at least the 100th time, I am not a 6 day creationist, I do not believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis.

 

[The_Barbarian]

1. I said that I wasn’t arguing ID. You brought it up anyway. And continue on with an insult.

If you use the same arguments, people tend to make a connection.

You’ve declared that I’m a creationist. Right after I said that I believe in 99.99% of what evolution says is true.

I know other creationists like that.

I’ve already explained that the time line I’m looking for is not the kind I illustrated in post 203 to Orogeny. You have answered it in the same wah. From post 203:

What you say above (in slightly different words) is that we know from other evidence that life on earth is 4 billion years old (OK so far). And we know that complex life now exists (still OK).

And we see the required transitional fossils in precisely the right order in rocks of the right age. And when we look at DNA and conserved molecules, we get the same nested hierarchy of taxa that is seen when organisms have common ancestors.

And we observe that Darwin’s theory was correct; natural selection does drive changes in populations. We know that speciation is a fact.

At some point, you have to come to terms with reality and admit that it is what the evidence says it is.

Therefore, evolution must have done it, somehow,

No, we know how evolution does it.

Sorry, that doesn’t work for me.

Evidence isn’t persuasive for everyone.

I’m looking for the ground-up time estimate.

That’s like asking how long to build a factory. Are you familiar with PERT? When I was getting my master’s in systems management, I tried to do just that. Back in the 70s, there were way too many variables to do anything like that, although it has been done in various ways since them.

One particularly interesting one was Nilsson’s demonstration on how long it would take a vertebrate eye to evolve. He did it an entirely different way. If you’d like to go with me on one of these, I can show you. How about the co-evolution of all the adaptations required for the transition from reptiles to mammals? It would PERT out nicely, with different mileposts and nodes with a good deal of interdependence (for example, diaphragms had to co-evolve with a secondary palate to be useful).

Given you know how evolution works, you should be able to come up with it from knowing how it works.

As Nobel Laureate physicist Erwin Schroedinger wrote, biology is a lot harder than physics. But we can take a tiny bit of the problem and work on it, if you’re game to try.

You have bought into (or been brainwashed into) believing that science is a monolithic entity, and that all scientists think alike.

Barbarian earlier:
Some here actually said that? Or did you just make the accusation to seem more trustworthy?

and then Barbarian continued on…

Barbarian observes:
The last world-class biologist who doubted Darwinian theory died about 1900. (Agassiz)

Thank you, thank you.

Ah, I see your confusion. There aren’t any world-class biologists who doubt evolution, but there are still some biologists who do.

Which reminds me. You asserted that you understand evolutionary theory. I asked if you could tell us the main points of Darwin’s theory, and how the modern synthesis has changed it.

Would you mind telling us about it?

 

[reggieM]

I’m just asking for the ground-up estimate for evolution. How long does each step in the chain take, then add it together to see if it comes out to 4 billion years, or 4 million billion years.

As I pointed out with an example about the so-called evolution of beetles, what happens very often is that fossil species is that they appear in the fossil record suddenly and then remain unchanged (they don’t evolve).

**Most species appear all at once in the fossil record fully formed **
The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and `fully formed.’" (Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, USA], “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, Vol. 86, No. 5, May 1977, p.14).

"All but one of the phyla in the fossil record appeared within the first 5 million to 10 million years"

“Zircon dating, which calculates a fossil’s age by measuring the relative amounts of uranium and lead within the crystals, had been whittling away at the Cambrian for some time. By 1990, for example, new dates obtained from early Cambrian sites around the world were telescoping the start of biology’s Big Bang from 600 million years ago to less than 560 million years ago. Now, with information based on the lead content of zircons from Siberia, **virtually everyone agrees that the Cambrian started almost exactly 543 million years ago and, even more startling, that all but one of the phyla in the fossil record appeared within the first 5 million to 10 million years.”**We now know how fast fast is," grins Bowring. “And what I like to ask my biologist friends is, How fast can evolution get before they start feeling uncomfortable?” (Nash, J. Madeleine [journalist], “When Life Exploded,” Time, December 4, 1995, p74. time.com/time/magazine/archive/1995/951204/cover.html)). * This sole exception was “Bryozoa, a group of sessile and colonial marine organisms, [which] do not arise until the beginning of the subsequent, Ordovician period, but this apparent delay may be an artifact of failure to discover Cambrian representatives.” (Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, USA], “The Evolution of Life on the Earth,” Scientific American, Vol. 271, No. 4, October 1994, p.67)

**“For millions of years species remain unchanged in the fossil record” **

“For millions of years species remain unchanged in the fossil record,” said Stephen Jay Gould, of Harvard, “and they then abruptly disappear, to be replaced by something that is substantially different but clearly related.” (Lewin, Roger [biochemist, former editor of New Scientist and science writer], “Evolutionary- Theory Under Fire: An historic conference in Chicago challenges the four-decade long dominance of the Modern Synthesis,” Science, Vol. 210, 21 November 1980, p.883).

**Darwinists have no good explanation for the Coelacanth **
"So, we have stasis. What are we to make of it? How do we explain it? Some of us would say that the lineage leading to Latimeria [Coelacanth] stood still because natural selection did not move it. In a sense it had no ‘need’ to evolve because these animals had found a successful way of life deep in the sea where conditions did not change much. Perhaps they never participated in any arms races. Their cousins that emerged onto the land did evolve because natural selection, under a variety of hostile conditions including arms races, forced them to. Other biologists, including some of those that call themselves punctuationists, might say that the lineage leading to modern Latimeria actively resisted change, in spite of what natural selection pressures there might have been. Who is right? In the particular case of Latimeria it is hard to know . … Let us, to be fair, stop thinking in terms of Latimeria in particular. It is a striking example but a very extreme one … It is conceivable that coelacanths stopped evolving because they stopped mutating perhaps because they were protected from cosmic rays at the bottom of the sea! - but nobody, as far as I know, has seriously suggested this … " (Dawkins, Richard [zoologist and Professor for the Public Understanding of Science, Oxford University], “The Blind Watchmaker,” [1986], Penguin: London, 1991, reprint, pp.246,247).

 

[reggieM]

Richard Dawkins asks: “How do we explain it?”

Barbarian answers: “we know how evolution does it.”

I conclude – evolution just did it. That’s good science.

 

[ricmat]

That’s like asking how long to build a factory. Are you familiar with PERT? When I was getting my master’s in systems management, I tried to do just that. Back in the 70s, there were way too many variables to do anything like that, although it has been done in various ways since them.

Yes, I’m familiar with PERT. Used it all the time.

But I’m not even asking for anything as complex as a full-up PERT for the entire evolutionary chain. There’s no way you could know the dependencies. Heck, you don’t even know in what order the mutations happened. Or how long each one takes. Or the probability of each one happening randomly. To use PERT you’d need to know all those things. PERT is totally inappropriate for this. (Are you sure you know what PERT is?)

As I mentioned to another poster, I’d be happy (to start with at least) with a reasonable SWAG based on the overall number of mutations, and some natural selection time for each step, necessary to get to a complex life form from a simple life form.

Really, if you can’t even come up with that, then evolution is really a religion based on faith, not facts.

 

[reggieM]

Another great book to add to my list …

In the Italian original, “Dimenticare Darwin” (Forget Darwin).
Ah, yet another American Fundamentalist – this one masquerading as an Italian geneticist.

Why Is a Fly Not a Horse?
amazon.com/gp/product/096386548X?ie=UTF8&tag=accessresearc-20&linkCode=xm2&camp=1789&creativeASIN=096386548X

The author, Giuseppe Sermonti, is a well-respected geneticist and the researcher who discovered genetic recombination in antibiotic-producing bacteria. That’s one of the most significant discoveries ever made in genetics, and it’s why bacteria are able to “evolve” resistance to antibiotics so easily. From his oft-demonstrated expertise, he describes the problems that Darwinism faces from genetics, a science that did not even exist when Charles Darwin formulated his theory. (Darwin’s own ideas about inheritance were discredited long ago.)

 

[wildleafblower]

Responding to RicMat’s msg. 241. RicMat, truth is you’re basically looking for God’s or a *you’re *so called Intelligent Designer’s involvement in science! :tsktsk: Science isn’t about proving what is guided or unguided. And God isn’t “an intelligent designer”!

You can review **An Introduction to the History and Basic Scientific Concepts in Evolution by Alec MacAndrew

*Introduction
This is a short, basic introduction to the history and the scientific concepts around the Theory of Evolution. Those who are entirely new to the topic can read from beginning to end and gain a general understanding of the subject. I hope that it can also be used as a reference by those wishing to brush up on particular aspects of the subject. I have attempted to link into other sources of information, either on this site or elsewhere that cover the subject in far greater detail.

I start with a bit of history, which also builds up an understanding of the various concepts involved in evolution; then I cover the fundamentals of the science of genetics and elementary molecular biology; link that into the way we understand evolution to progress, and finish with some of the topics scientists are currently wrestling with and some of the more recent thinking in this area which might be of some interest to those for whom the rest is outrageously elementary. . . .*
evolutionpages.com/intro_evolution.htm
http://www.evolutionpages.com/intro_evolution.htm

And take a peak at Cosmic Evolution from Big Bang to Humankind
tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolution/docs/splash.html
http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/cosmic_evolution/docs/splash.html

I really love what Father Coyne said in WIRED magazine:

*Coyne rejects much of the current discussion about science and religion. Echoing Immanuel Kant, he insists that belief in God is independent of anything scientists discover. More than two centuries ago, Kant argued that science could never disprove the existence of God. But neither, he said, could it prove Him. That hasn’t stopped many people from trying, and today there is a new fashion for the so-called anthropic principle.

Anthropic arguments are based on the notion that the universe has been specially tailored for the emergence of life. On both the cosmological and subatomic scales, from the force of gravity to electromagnetic bonds, the universe is shaped by powers that seem finely tuned for life to evolve. Evidence of an intelligent consciousness that built the very laws of nature?

Coyne dismisses this idea as well. “To imagine a Creator twiddling with the constants of nature is a bit like thinking of God as making a big pot of soup,” he declares with a rare flash of sarcasm. A bit more onion, a bit less salt, and presto, the perfect gazpacho. “It’s a return to the old vision of a watchmaker God, only it’s even more fundamentalist. Because what happens if it turns out there is a perfectly logical explanation for these values of the gravitational constant and so on? Then there’d be even less room for God.” In other words, if God is grounded in data, then He is immediately subject to revision every time we get new data — and data tends to improve over time. Coyne sums up his objection to this God of the gaps with an elegant economy: “God is not information,” he says. “God is love.”

What’s missing in “this privileging of the cognitive over the empathetic,” as Coyne puts it, is the concept of faith. The crux of the problem is that belief in God requires a leap outside anything science can describe or prove. Coyne insists that this leap does not happen on its own and does not sustain itself. For him at least, it must be continually rekindled: “I thank God constantly that He chose me. But it is not a rock of ages. It’s something I have to renew every day.”*
wired.com/wired/archive/10.12/pope_astro.html?pg=2&topic=&topic_set=

The Pope's Astrophysicist

MEET THE VATICAN PRIEST WHO SCANS THE HEAVENS FOR THE ORIGINS OF THE UNIVERSE. (HEY, GALILEO — WANT A JOB?) We have come to meet the Pope. It’s tourist season, and the Sistine Chapel is punishingly full. Visitors from around the world crowd together, ogling Michelangelo’s ceiling. At the back of...

www.wired.com

Hi Father Coyne! Love you!

 

[ricmat]

Responding to RicMat’s msg. 241. RicMat, truth is you’re basically looking for God’s or a *you’re *so called Intelligent Designer’s involvement in science! :tsktsk: Science isn’t about proving what is guided or unguided. And God isn’t “an intelligent designer”!

From the religious perspective:

God is certainly intelligent.

And the bible is certainly full of verses which speak of God’s designs in the universe. Read Wisdom 13 as a start. And the psalms have many references to design as well.

Now, from the science perspective, what is wrong with seeking to understand and appreciate the glory of God’s creation through science? God gave us senses, and the ability to reason, and the ability to understand the trancendental concepts of beauty and order and to know a good design when we see one. Scientists “looking for God” so to speak were responsible for many scientific discoveries. Science has unfortunately become the bastion of atheism, and so wishes itself to be “not involved in God” in any way.

I have already stated elsewhere that I can, in theory, accept any explanation for the appearance of the universe and man which involves God in some way or another. I think that 6 day creationism is very unlikely given what we know. And I think that “unguided” evolution is also very unlikely based mainly on concerns I have about the overall time that randomness takes to get things done. Guided evolution seems to be the best answer for me which reconciles God’s involvement and the facts that we seem to know.

BTW - I include in my definition of “guided” the possibility that God somehow introduced non-randomness into the process at the beginning of time, which “plays out” automatically so to speak. In my mind, that’s one heck of a design as well.

Your post refers to God constantly twiddling with the constants of nature (like making soup). Spiritmeadow also made similar comments. This is NOT what is typically meant when someone says that God fine tuned the constants of the universe. What fine tuning means is that God instantaneously created all the constants in harmony with each other, and in the right magnitudes to allow the universe to form and for life to evolve.

Now as to God having a totally hands-off attitude toward his creation - that’s Deism. A no-no for Catholics.

 

[drpmjhess]

Because in order draw what you did from what I said you must believe the above analogy. If you do not then I can only assume that either you don’t comprehend what I wrote or you are deliberately being obtuse.

Your argument was incoherent; that’s why I asked you to reformulate it. But I’m content to move on.

 

[The_Barbarian]

The author, Giuseppe Sermonti, is a well-respected geneticist and the researcher who discovered genetic recombination in antibiotic-producing bacteria.

**In 1971 Sermonti published Il Crepuscolo dello Scientismo (in English The Twilight of Scientism), a post-modernist, religiously-inspired critique of science. In 1980 Sermonti published an anti-evolution book Dopo Darwin (After Darwin), co-authored with Roberto Fondi.

Since 1979, Sermonti has been Chief Editor of Rivista di Biologia/Biology Forum, one of the oldest extant biology journals in the world (founded in 1919), which, prior to Sermonti’s assumption of the role of Chief Editor was considered to be respectable journal. Since Sermonti took over, however, it has published papers which would be regarded as pseudoscience by the scientific community, particularly articles by creationists such as Jerry Bergman, Richard Sternberg, Jonathan Wells, as well as articles by Morphogenetic field advocate Rupert Sheldrake and holistic scientist Mae-Wan Ho.[2

Between 1986 and 1989 Sermonti produced three books on the hermeneutics of fairy tales, entitled Fiabe di Tre Reami (Fairy Tales of Three Realms), arguing that they contained unexpressed principles of science: Snow White is the narrative of cupellation as well as of the phases of the moon; Red Riding Hood is the story of mercury; Cinderella is the tale of sulfur.**
Wikipedia

You betcha.

That’s one of the most significant discoveries ever made in genetics,

So much for Mendel, Morgan, et al. BTW, bacterial recombination was discovered in the 1940s, long before Sermonetti discovered it in his bacteria.

and it’s why bacteria are able to “evolve” resistance to antibiotics so easily.

That, he didn’t discover. It was predicted soon after penicillin was developed, and confirmed in the late 40s.

From his oft-demonstrated expertise, he describes the problems that Darwinism faces from genetics, a science that did not even exist when Charles Darwin formulated his theory.

Ironically, it cleared up a major problem with Darwin’s theory. Darwin, like all scientists of his time, thought inheritance was humoral, and that even acquired characters might be inherited. His critics asked how variation could spread in a population without being swamped like a drop of white paint in a barrel of red.
Genetics showed that inheritance was particulate, and therefore cleared up the one outstanding problem with natural selection.

Sermonti seems to have taken a sudden left turn back around the late 60s. A lot of people in universities did that back then. Possibly for the same reason.**

 

[Wolseley]

Yes we get that you don’t like evolution for some reason, but do you have any evidence to refute it? Real evidence, tried and tested by scientists?

There is actually plenty of evidence to contradict Darwinism, Spirit, but you won’t find it in “peer-reviewed” journals. Anyone who dares to suggest evidence in contradiction to Darwinism is either labelled an uneducated fool or a crackpot in the same class as UFO watchers and astral channellers trying to contact Atlantis.

Darwinists, by and large, are like people sitting in a big room with a mountain of evidence in front of them. They take one piece at a time, and try to make it fit into a test board in front of them with pre-drilled holes, which is Darwinian evolution. If the evidence fits the holes, that’s a keeper, because it doesn’t challenge evolution. If it doesn’t fit the holes, it’s thrown out, because well, obviously, since everyone knows that Darwinism is the only truth, this must be a fraud, an explainable anomoly (even if the “explanation” has to be fabricated from whole cloth), or otherwise airily dismissed.

The classic tactic of only keeping the evidence that fits the theory, instead of allowing the theory to be determined by the evidence. And anyone who comes up with contrary evidence will be ridiculed, demonized, character assassinated, judged a moron, and dismissed from ever being taken seriously again, because they have dared to question His Almighty and Inerrant Holiness, the Great God Darwin.

Don’t believe me? Just ask Virginia Steen-McIntyre: a classic example of a researcher who was savaged by the Darwinist Gestapo.

You’ll disagree with me, of course, and that’s fine. Frankly, I couldn’t care less. But just remember that every time you cheerlead for Darwinism, you’re cheerleading for people who have come to court with only half the evidence available to them to try to prove their case. They’ve fooled the universities; they’ve fooled themselves; and they’ve fooled quite a lot of the public at large.

But they haven’t fooled everybody.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Yes, I’m familiar with PERT. Used it all the time.

Been a long time since I did that. In the 80s, computers pretty much did it all.

But I’m not even asking for anything as complex as a full-up PERT for the entire evolutionary chain. There’s no way you could know the dependencies.

Sure you can. Let’s look at the suite of characters that produced mammals from reptiles. The initial step was a reduction in the size and later, the number of bones in the lower jaw, (these bones retained their sound-conducting function, and still exist in a much reduced form in the mammalian middle ear). This allowed a much stronger bite relative to the size of the jaw. And that permitted teeth for more than just grabbing and holding. So we see reptiles with more powerful jaws, and then differentiated teeth useful for cutting up food, not just holding and swallowing. Why was this useful? Because the food was more efficiently utilized thereby.

But chewing takes time. And in reptiles, breathing depends on movement (spine and rib movements) and the airway is blocked in eating. But a shelf of bone (from an existing ridge) grows, which begins to separate the airway from the gullet. Eventually, a full secondary palate is formed. But this wouldn’t be useful, unless there was another way to breath than the “bellows” pump.

And along with it, we see a reduction in ribs, and at some point, there was a repositioning of thoractic muscles to produce a muscular diaphragm. (crocodilians have an almost-diaphragm, which independently evolved but not to the degree found in mammals)

There was a sequence involved, because some adaptations would not be useful in the absence of others.

Heck, you don’t even know in what order the mutations happened. Or how long each one takes.

Fortunately, the evidence remains in the fossil record. But it makes functional sense, as I mentioned above. You don’t see these out of order.

Or the probability of each one happening randomly. To use PERT you’d need to know all those things. PERT is totally inappropriate for this. (Are you sure you know what PERT is?)

I have a masters in Systems Management. Although I got the degree in 1978, PERT was a healthy and useful system then. As you see, PERT could nicely model the process.

As I mentioned to another poster, I’d be happy (to start with at least) with a reasonable SWAG based on the overall number of mutations, and some natural selection time for each step, necessary to get to a complex life form from a simple life form.

As I said, we have much of that in the fossil record. Some of it, like scales to feathers, is pretty clear, since we still have animals with scutes and feathers to see. Some of it is less clear. But it you’re right, we shouldn’t see it at all.

Really, if you can’t even come up with that, then evolution is really a religion based on faith, not facts.

Surprise. There’s a lot more you don’t understand about biology and evolutionary theory. This is just a tiny bit of it. Can you get some appreciation for the reason scientists laugh at people who don’t know the basics, but try to lecture them on their specialties?

 

[drpmjhess]

Pope John Paul II did assert that the soul is not a “mere epiphenomenon” of the mind or body. But of course, an epiphenomenon could be one of the attributes of a soul. It stands to reason, though, that an immortal soul cannot be only a consequence of a perishable biological entity.

Barbarian, my objection is to the Cartesian dualism implicit behind a theology in which “all-humans-and-only-humans-have-immortal-souls.” That sort of radical body-soul dualism has been discarded for some time now, and theology needs to rethink Christian anthropology if it is to remain cogent.

It was made painfully clear to me at the Evolutionary Epic conference in Hawaii last week that some non-theists hold Christianity in derision in part because of incoherent Christian theologies of body and soul. Of course, we needn’t feel compelled to rearticulate theology to please atheists, but we must rearticulate it to make the faith intelligible to believers in each generation, as in Anselm’s dictum of theology as “faith seeking understanding.”

You will find it you attend the meetings of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) that my proposal of the idea of the evolution of “soulishness” is squarely in the theological mainstream. John Haught speaks eloquently to it in his “Deeper than Darwin.”

Petrus

 

[The_Barbarian]

There is actually plenty of evidence to contradict Darwinism, Spirit, but you won’t find it in “peer-reviewed” journals.

I guess now is the time to step up and show us, then. If you don’t actually know of any, what makes you think it exists?

Anyone who dares to suggest evidence in contradiction to Darwinism is either labelled an uneducated fool or a crackpot in the same class as UFO watchers and astral channellers trying to contact Atlantis.

Hmm… in fact, Darwinism has been successfully challenged at various times by scientists, and the theory has been appropriately changed to reflect that evidence. If you were right, that wouldn’t have happened.

Darwinists, by and large, are like people sitting in a big room with a mountain of evidence in front of them. They take one piece at a time, and try to make it fit into a test board in front of them with pre-drilled holes, which is Darwinian evolution. If the evidence fits the holes, that’s a keeper, because it doesn’t challenge evolution. If it doesn’t fit the holes, it’s thrown out, because well, obviously, since everyone knows that Darwinism is the only truth, this must be a fraud, an explainable anomoly (even if the “explanation” has to be fabricated from whole cloth), or otherwise airily dismissed.

I’m pretty sure even you don’t believe that one. Genetics, punctuated equillibrium, neutral evolution, and other theories have repeatedly changed evolutionary theory. None of that “fit the holes”, so the holes changed to fit the evidence. This probably seems like “cheating” to creationists, but it’s the way science works.

His Almighty and Inerrant Holiness, the Great God Darwin.

Your paranoia is unjustified. Darwin’s theory was amended time and time again.

Don’t believe me?

I’ve pointed out several cases that would not have happened, if your story had any substance to it.

Just ask Virginia Steen-McIntyre: a classic example of a researcher who was savaged by the Darwinist Gestapo.

Steen-McIntyre is a Darwinist. And her claims were not about evolution but about the earliest date for humans in the Americas.

Explanations for the dating at Hueyatlaco are either there was an error in the geological dating or that modern humans did in fact live 250,000 years ago in America. There has also been some disagreement concerning the manner of the dig and the effects which it may have had on the accuracy of the results obtained. Apparently, the site is near a lake that has flooded for thousands of years. This causes the silt, sand, ash, and other geological implements to shift and change pattern. This shifting makes it difficult to accurately date the strata at the sampling location. Steen-McIntyre’ colleagues, as well as other academics, expressed disagreement and argued that there might be problems with the dating obtained, due to the shifting at the sampling site.
Wikipedia

She was obviously between a rock and a hard place with this. On one hand, geologists warn against trying to date objects in such deposits, because they often give false dates. On the other hand, the artifacts were there, and if one didn’t date the deposits, there was no way to get a date.

Probably, in retrospect, it would have been smarter to at least consult with a geologist who was experienced in this kind of difficulty.

 

[Wolseley]

I guess now is the time to step up and show us, then. If you don’t actually know of any, what makes you think it exists?

No, I’m not playing, Barbarian. You know the examples and the authors as well as I do. There is little point to this, as you will simply label them “unscientific”, “amateurs”, “crackpots”, “fortune-seekers”, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum et absurdum et nauseam. It exists, well enough, but the old saying about leading a horse to water applies here in spades.
Barbarian:

I’m pretty sure even you don’t believe that one.

You’d lose your bet.

Steen-McIntyre is a Darwinist.

Yes, she is. And an embittered one, I might add. She has never recovered from the way she was treated by her “impartial” collegues.
Barbarian:

And her claims were not about evolution but about the earliest date for humans in the Americas.

Take her evidence as fact, and it plays hob with more than one established timeline, and we both know it.
Barbarian:

Probably, in retrospect, it would have been smarter to at least consult with a geologist who was experienced in this kind of difficulty.

Uh-huh. Once again, attack the researcher, not the evidence. “She was young, inexperienced, and probably not real sure of what she was doing…” That’s an easy out, isn’t it? It certainly cleanly disposes of the problems the evidence stirred up.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of cases like this. Again, I’m not playing any more, so I won’t bother to enumerate them (I’m already an idiot, gullible, uneducated, and uninformed, why add fuel to the fire?) but we both know about the cases. You follow the Standard Party Line and loftily dismiss them, and I take them at face value.

(shrug) Either way, it doesn’t matter. I have achieved my B.S. Saturation Point with these threads, as I always eventually do when talking to Darwinists, so I’ll be bowing out now, as I said I soon would be. So rejoice in the fact that you have one less ignorant fool to suffer; keep preaching to the choir; and view this as yet another victory for old Chuck, if you want to.

But as you dance in the streets, keep the little thought in the back of your mind that you haven’t convinced me of anything, not by a long shot----me, or a lot of other people as well.

Bye, now.

 

[rtconstant]

Your argument was incoherent; that’s why I asked you to reformulate it. But I’m content to move on.

No, it was a simple concept I think you might have been reading into it. You don’t have to agree with it of course but it was hardly a new concept. God being reflected in nature does not put nature above Him any more than we being made in His image are above Him.

 

[rtconstant]

Barbarian, my objection is to the Cartesian dualism implicit behind a theology in which “all-humans-and-only-humans-have-immortal-souls.” That sort of radical body-soul dualism has been discarded for some time now, and theology needs to rethink Christian anthropology if it is to remain cogent.

It was made painfully clear to me at the Evolutionary Epic conference in Hawaii last week that some non-theists hold Christianity in derision in part because of incoherent Christian theologies of body and soul. Of course, we needn’t feel compelled to rearticulate theology to please atheists, but we must rearticulate it to make the faith intelligible to believers in each generation, as in Anselm’s dictum of theology as “faith seeking understanding.”

You will find it you attend the meetings of the Catholic Theological Society of America (CTSA) that my proposal of the idea of the evolution of “soulishness” is squarely in the theological mainstream. John Haught speaks eloquently to it in his “Deeper than Darwin.”

Petrus

I agree you that dualism of Soul and Body is a problem. However (and I’m not trying argue just stating an observation) it seems like trying to explain the origin of something that science can’t even qualify or quantify ends up basically creating another “magic happens” (I don’t mean that mockingly) scenario that theistic evolution is rather famous for. Of course your description was put in non-supernatural terms to be sure.but still why would a atheist or agnostic even consider it?

Certain doctrines seem to butt heads with science currently. I believe that one day that won’t be the case but as it stands today I don’t see how it is avoidable. I think this is proven by the fact that Christian are constantly more or less inventing concepts to try and bridge the gap.

 

[rossum]

As I pointed out with an example about the so-called evolution of beetles, what happens very often is that fossil species is that they appear in the fossil record suddenly and then remain unchanged (they don’t evolve).

Evolution is a way to adapt to the enviroment. If the environment does not change then the species living in it will not change. It is also worth pointing out that some changes do not fossilise - for example skin colour does not fossilise - so not all changes will appear in the fossil record.

Evolution does not predict that the rate of evolution is always the same. The rate is variable and can be fast or slow.

**Most species appear all at once in the fossil record fully formed **

Since half an animal is not viable, this is rather a truism. New species tend to evolve in one place, and spread from there to other locations. Humans arrived in America “fully formed” because they migrated there, not because they evolved there. We see the early evolution of humans in Africa, not in America. If you look in the right places then you can find the fossils.

"All but one of the phyla in the fossil record appeared within the first 5 million to 10 million years"

This is false. I suspect that your source is talking about “the first 5 million to 10 million years” of the Cambrian period, the Cambrian Explosion. Whatever period is meant your source is wrong, the origins of the different metazoan Phyla are spread out over geological time.

There are over forty known phyla. Thirteen phyla do not have a fossil record so we do not know when they first appeared. For the rest the figures are:

Period           # phyla
------           -------
Eocene              2
Cretaceous          2
Jurassic            1
Triassic            3
Carboniferous       5
Devonian            4
Silurian            1
Ordovician          1
Cambrian            9
Vendian             4

Source: Phylum Level Evolution

Phyla originate in the Vendian, which is before the Cambrian, up to the far more recent Eocene. Quoting erroneous sources will not win you many arguments.

"For millions of years species remain unchanged in the fossil record"

Agreed. This is not a problem for evolution. Sometimes things evolve quickly, sometimes they evelve slowly, sometimes they hardly evolve at all.

**Darwinists have no good explanation for the Coelacanth **
"So, we have stasis.

No. Fossil Coelacanths are of many different species, none of which match the living species. Fossil Coelacanths are about 20-30 cm long, modern Coelacanths are about 1 m long. There is no more stasis among Coelacanths than there is among sharks, and we have known about sharks for a long time.

The interest in Coelacanths is not because they are representatives of a very old lineage - sharks are also an old lineage. It is that Coelacanths were previously thought to be extinct are are closely related to the Osteolepiform fish from which all land vertebrates probably evolved.

rossum

 

[The_Barbarian]

No, I’m not playing, Barbarian. You know the examples and the authors as well as I do. There is little point to this, as you will simply label them “unscientific”, “amateurs”, “crackpots”, “fortune-seekers”, etc., etc., etc., ad infinitum et absurdum et nauseam. It exists, well enough, but the old saying about leading a horse to water applies here in spades.

I was just seeing if you were confident enough of them to put them forward for discussion. Guess not. It’s a common creationist ploy. “There are serious problems with evolution, but you’ll just make fun of them, so there’s no point in discussing them.”

Sure.

Barbarian observes:
I’m pretty sure even you don’t believe that one.

You’d lose your bet.

Since you lack the confidence to even put this stuff on the table for discussion, I think not.

Barbarian observes:
Steen-McIntyre is a Darwinist.

Yes, she is. And an embittered one, I might add. She has never recovered from the way she was treated by her “impartial” collegues.

Geologists? Her work was criticized for using deposits known to cause erroneous dates. I didn’t think she was a geologist.

Barbarian
And her claims were not about evolution but about the earliest date for humans in the Americas.

Take her evidence as fact, and it plays hob with more than one established timeline, and we both know it.

That’s happened many times before, and often the timeline was adjusted to fit the new evidence. And the people playing hob were given honors and respect. The difference was the evidence. Someone here mentioned a revision in the date for the earliest known beetles. Another on this board concerned a revision in the dates for the appearance of various phyla. The people responsible for the revisions were honored and respected for it.

Barbarian observes:
Probably, in retrospect, it would have been smarter to at least consult with a geologist who was experienced in this kind of difficulty.

Uh-huh. Once again, attack the researcher, not the evidence. “She was young, inexperienced, and probably not real sure of what she was doing…” That’s an easy out, isn’t it?

Notice the difference in the way her research was received, and the way the research of other people doing the same things was recieved. They upset the timeline, too. And the revision of the evolution of some phyla back into the Precambrian was a much greater change. But they had data which was not suspect, and which was quickly backed up by other researchers trying to reproduce the results.

It certainly cleanly disposes of the problems the evidence stirred up.

Reproducibilty is a big issue with scientists, yes.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of cases like this.

And not just in biology. The “cold fusion” fiasco was a similar case.

Again, I’m not playing any more, so I won’t bother to enumerate them (I’m already an idiot, gullible, uneducated, and uninformed, why add fuel to the fire?)

Someone called you an uneducated idiot? Or did you just do that to yourself?

You follow the Standard Party Line and loftily dismiss them, and I take them at face value.

That, in itself is your Standard Party Line. If you can’t see why this happened, then I’d have to say you are simply refusing to accept reality.

(shrug) Either way, it doesn’t matter. I have achieved my B.S. Saturation Point with these threads, as I always eventually do when talking to Darwinists, so I’ll be bowing out now, as I said I soon would be. So rejoice in the fact that you have one less ignorant fool to suffer; keep preaching to the choir; and view this as yet another victory for old Chuck, if you want to.

But as you dance in the streets, keep the little thought in the back of your mind that you haven’t convinced me of anything, not by a long shot----me, or a lot of other people as well.

The fact that you no longer want to bring out your “proof” for inspection is a step in the right direction. You may not want to admit it, but it’s a sign you know that creationism isn’t an accurate depiction of reality.

 

[The_Barbarian]

Barbarian, my objection is to the Cartesian dualism implicit behind a theology in which “all-humans-and-only-humans-have-immortal-souls.” That sort of radical body-soul dualism has been discarded for some time now, and theology needs to rethink Christian anthropology if it is to remain cogent.

I don’t know that humans are the only ones to have immortal souls. I would not, for example, kill an ape unless it was absolutely necessary. I just don’t know.

Moreover, I don’t know how body and soul are together, except that I believe that each person is given a soul by God. Dualism isn’t quite what I believe, but then I’m not a theologian or a philosopher.