One-third of Americans reject evolution, poll shows

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Peter_Plato said:
Doesn’t that mean their chances for survival are lessened? That elephants are less fit? In response we should see more genetic change, is that right? So the elephant species should begin to “splinter” in terms of likeness. Perhaps giving rise to many new species. Which leads back to my question.
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Given that the particular environmental pressure is coming from big-game hunters of the last couple hundred years and modern ivory poachers, those without tusks are at an advantage, and their chances for survival are increased.
Peter_Plato said:
So why hasn’t genetic change led to more divergence? Less and less of each population until numbers dwindle out of existence.
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Give them a few hundred or a few thousand years with no change in the environmental pressure in question, and that’s what we’d see. It takes a bare minimum of almost 10 years for an elephant to reach sexual maturity from initial conception. Almost two years of gestation plus another eight years of growth and development post-birth.
Peter_Plato said:
After all, evolution can’t be purposeful in selecting new traits or the rate at which they arise. It can only use selection to determine which will actually survive. It cannot strategize to meet new pressures so there is no way of governing the changes that do occur nor their frequency.
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The “strategy” comes from the process of selection: Which animals die before they can widely spread their genes? If a bull with large tusks is killed after fathering only 1 or 2 children while a bull with no tusks lives to a ripe old age, fathering 8 or 9 children, whose genes will be more widely spread?

New simple questions for creationists: Why don’t we find modern animal fossils alongside those that conventional science claims as their ancestral forms? If these present animals have always held the same form, then there should be fossils of fully-modern Blue Whales alongside those of Dorudon. They share the same preferred environment, so logically they should be found alongside each other.

Why don’t we see these ancestral forms running around today? By the logic of those who state that “macro-evolution” is impossible, then even taking the Flood as a literal account, we should still have specimens like Megalodon and Balsilosaurus swimming around.
 
Judas_Thaddeus said:
You seemed to have missed me saying that “I’ve revised my position there (see
bold), for it appears that there are a few examples of soft tissue found in fossils.”

Actually some early Christians (even Church Fathers), such as **St. Augustine **in his
De Genesi ad Litteram, have warned about Bible literalism, and that we can know so
much about the physical world by reasoning and experience( /experiments), but we
tend to make ourselves look stupid if we attempt to make literal interpretations.

Remember, Creationism and Intelligent Design and the like are rather novel, deriv-
ing from the 19th-20th Century (particularly in America) in response to the rise in
popularity of Evolution, as an alternative to what others THOUGHT was contradic-
tory to the Bible.

Indeed, “Religion can purify science from idolatry and false
absolutes,” so cease with your absolute position that Evol-
ution Excludes God.
What would impress me would be that a team of Creationists and a team of Scientists
(who don’t deal with the Bible in their field) made a discovery together that proved may-
be something like the Flood or whatever. Now that would be cool.

I do believe that Creationist claims ought to be backed up, for you like you and
Pope John Paul II said “Science can purify religion from error and superstition.”
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Again, how Catholics interpret scripture.

It is raining cats and dogs.

The literal - what the author is intending to convey - it is raining hard
The literalistic - cats and dogs are falling from the sky.

I have yet to hear an at length of how evolution includes God from any scientist. The closest is theistic evolution is God started it and let her go.

The question again. - Did God know what Adam would look like? Yes
Did Adam look as God planned? If yes, then God guided evolution. If so, eliminate blind unguided chance. This I submit would be design. If Adam did not look as God planned, then God made a mistake ?

All claims need to be backed form every side. Absent proof (empirical) then we look at the evidence and come to the best conclusion. Evolutionists claim theirs is the best conclusion without invoking God. (because science cannot address the supernatural by definition). I object when they try to claim they have eliminated God because of scientific conclusions. They have no authority to do this as it is outside their scope by their own definition. This is where evolutionism comes into play. They make religious claims. ID the science is bound by the same issues. It searches for evidence of design then makes a reasoned conclusion whether or not it happened by chance or was designed. If design is concluded as the best explanation, then philosophers/theologians try to posit who the designer is. A design conclusion by ID the science does not automatically conclude God. Suppose we were designed by aliens?
 
vz71 said:
So can anyone list any sexually reproducing animal that produces viable offspring that are not their species?
And viable is an operative word here. I am well aware that there are hybrids, but I also understand these animals are a genetic dead end as they cannot reproduce.

Right. I believe that evolution supporters call this transition species.

method of gene transfer is important here. Not just gene transfer.

thanks.

Just following my experience with.
It has been my experience that no matter the genetic abnormality, the parent loves their child and considers the child a gift from God.
Of course, I know this is not a universal axiom.

An omnipotent God has no problem designing everything on the fly.

You think God allows randomness. Perhaps. I would not be opposed to that.
But I would disbelieve it as a vehicle of changes.
But I do not believe it possible to work out a grand design using randomness as a tool.
The two are mutually exclusive.

I understand.
And I agree with all that had to happen. And I see the hand of God in every step.

Like I stated before, it is elegant.
So let me throw something into the mix.
We simply do not have all of the information.
I am reminded of an interesting cartoon involving ice cores being used to study the climate. The scientists are all looking at their data in astonishment and alarm at what the climate was, and the next frame shows someone a few thousand years earlier relieving themselves in the place where the ice core will be drilled.
Or…
I watched an interesting show on the science channel purporting to show evolution.
They went into great detail describing one animal or the other, and then they showed the next iteration in the fossil record that apparently one had evolved into.
And I am left wondering…OK, what of the various animals between one and the other? Where are these fossils?
And also, what of the genetic code? How do we know these animals were related instead of simply looked alike?
So much is hung up onto a genetic code and genetic transfer and so much of the evidence has no DNA to show for it.
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It is my belief that over the next few years a genetic “tree of life” will be formulated, displacing the current one based on features. We now know features and traits have shown up over and over again in unrelated species. This leads to the front loaded scenario where life has already built in the building blocks and code to form all the features. All “at once” from the mind of God was this setup (breathed) as in the prime matter of St Augustine with potentiality.
 
Judas_Thaddeus said:
Oh thank you for the correction. :blushing:
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Elasticity is common in the soft tissue.

T.Rex Fossils Yield Soft Tissue

Not only is the tissue intact, it’s still transparent and pliable. Tiny interior structures resembling blood vessels, and even cells, are still present in the tissue, according to a university press release.
While examining the T.rex, Schweitzer and her team noticed tissue fragments that lined the marrow cavity of the animal’s femur. When they dissolved mineral deposits in the tissues, the flexible, stretchy material was left behind.
Schweitzer then duplicated those finding, using at least three other well-preserved dinosaur specimens: one 80-million-year-old hadrosaur and two 65-million-year-old tyrannosaurs. Every specimen displayed preserved vessels, cell-like structures, or flexible material that resembled bone collagen from modern specimens, according to the press release.

http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/dinosaur_main_pop.jpg

Stretchy
  • Below see red blood cells
http://media.smithsonianmag.com/images/dinosaur_1.jpg
 
Peter_Plato said:
Neither have I.

It represents the number of Planck time units (smallest possible unit of time) per second roughly 10^−43 seconds.

Dembski is accounting for every Planck moment in a second 10^45 multiplied by the number of seconds since the Big Bang 10^25 times the number of all particles in the universe 10^80 to arrive at the total number of possible interactions since the universe began.

10^80 x 10^45 x 10^25 = 10^150.

At least part of his reason for doing this is to determine the likelihood of any event (such as forming one functional protein from a chain of amino acids in a cell) compared to the total possible events since the Big Bang.

If the chance of, say forming a functional protein, far surpasses the total number of theoretically possible events (UPB), in the universe since t=0 then such an event taking place would be almost impossible.

So for example,
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I think the 10^150 is actually a conservative value. When calculating design with CSI the numbers are magnitudes higher.
 
Peter_Plato said:
This was answered previously.
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No, you said what it was, but it wasn’t clear at all how Dembski calculated the number and it didn’t say if he included all the items I talked about.
I don’t have the time to do all your research. I don’t think its fair to keep asking these questions or continue to be critical of Dembski if you are unwilling to look into the matter yourself. Your prima facie questions have been answered. Do some reading in a fair minded way and you will get your answers. If you want to remain critical just because you want to remain critical then that is a mindset I refuse to help you with.
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If you want the truth, seek the truth. If you want to reinforce your own views then do that, but from here on you are on your own regarding UPB.
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Well, that’s the issue. You and Buffalo are throwing this in like it’s a fact and, by using this fact, you can say evolution can’t happen. But you don’t have the slightest clue where at least one of the three numbers came from and since the final number used is the product of three numbers then if you don’t know why one of them came about, then you really don’t understand the whole thing.

So, by the standards set in this forum for evolution, not understanding 1/3 of a problem is a fatal error in the idea and thus can’t be true.
 
buffalo said:
I think the 10^150 is actually a conservative value. When calculating design with CSI the numbers are magnitudes higher.
Click to expand...
Explain 10^45, since Plato can’t. After all, if it is a well founded theory, then 10^45 makes sense and can be explained.
 
Crossbones said:
No, you said what it was, but it wasn’t clear at all how Dembski calculated the number and it didn’t say if he included all the items I talked about.

Well, that’s the issue. You and Buffalo are throwing this in like it’s a fact and, by using this fact, you can say evolution can’t happen. But you don’t have the slightest clue where at least one of the three numbers came from and since the final number used is the product of three numbers then if you don’t know why one of them came about, then you really don’t understand the whole thing.

So, by the standards set in this forum for evolution, not understanding 1/3 of a problem is a fatal error in the idea and thus can’t be true.
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Well not only this, but add this in. The time it would take. Evo has run out of time.

http://www.blogger.com/goog_1096933095

When Theory and Experiment Collide

…As other scientists have found with other enzymes, it turned out not to be a snap. The technical details are reported in a paper just published in BIO-Complexity. [2] Here we’ll keep it simple.
Based on our experimental observations and on calculations we made using a published population model [3], we estimated that Darwin’s mechanism would need a truly staggering amount of time—a trillion trillion years or more—to accomplish the seemingly subtle change in enzyme function that we studied.
Now, if I were a Darwinist a result like this would bother me. I’m sure some of my fellow Darwinists would try to dismiss it as irrelevant… but that would bother me all the more.
The excuse for shrugging it off would, I expect, be that the transition we examined isn’t actually one that anyone thinks occurred in the history of life. That’s true, but it badly misses the point. As Ann and I made clear in the paper, our aim wasn’t to replicate a historical transition, but rather to identify what ought to be a relatively easy transition and find out how hard or easy it really is. We put it this way in the paper [2]:
Whether or not a particular conversion ever occurred as a paralogous innovation (or the direction in which it occurred if it did) is not the point of interest here. Rather, the point is to identify the kind of functional innovation that ought to be among the most feasible …] and then to assess how feasible this innovation is. So, if I had a Darwinist alter ego, here’s the problem he’d be facing right now. To dismiss our study as irrelevant, he’d have to say (in effect) that he sees no inconsistency between these two assessments of the power of Darwin’s mechanism:
 
Crossbones said:
No, you said what it was, but it wasn’t clear at all how Dembski calculated the number and it didn’t say if he included all the items I talked about.

Well, that’s the issue. You and Buffalo are throwing this in like it’s a fact and, by using this fact, you can say evolution can’t happen. But you don’t have the slightest clue where at least one of the three numbers came from and since the final number used is the product of three numbers then if you don’t know why one of them came about, then you really don’t understand the whole thing.

So, by the standards set in this forum for evolution, not understanding 1/3 of a problem is a fatal error in the idea and thus can’t be true.
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I am all ears to how the chance/design threshold should be calculated
 
Crossbones said:
Explain to me why 10^45 is correct.
Click to expand...
How about plugging in 10^100 to be really really safe?

Two sources:

physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?plkt

astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/P/Planck+Time
Planck Time
Code: 
                 The [Planck time](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/P/Planck+Time) is the fundamental unit of time in the system of   [Planck Units](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/P/Planck+Units).  It has the value:
  *tp* = 5.39 × 10-44 s
  In [SI units](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/S/SI+Units), measurements of time are made in seconds (usually given the symbol **s**).   Although using seconds is convenient for everyday life,   such as  measuring the time it takes for an athlete to sprint 100 metres or   the  duration of a phone call, it becomes less practical when we discuss the  sequence   of events that happened in the very early [Universe](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/U/Universe) (such as the onset of   inflation that occurred 10-35s after the [Big Bang](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/B/Big+Bang)).
  A consequence of using seconds to measure time is that the    fundamental constants take on values that are not always convenient for  including in equations:
 
Peter_Plato said:
No, he didn’t use atoms, he used every elemental particle - all the particles individually that together comprise other particles to the most elemental level (no substructure.)
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If he didn’t use atoms, then his number is wrong, as, again 10^80 is the number of atoms in the universe. If he meant more basic particles, then his number should be a lot bigger. But this still doesn’t answer the question - why did he pick that? Its arbitrary. And what about light? Light is a wave. And what about dark matter? Or anti-matter? And again, what about various forces - gravity, weak and strong nuclear force, etc. There’s a ton more stuff out there that he didn’t factor in.
Peter_Plato said:
Nope. And I’ll leave you to work it out.
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I DID work it out. contrary to your insinuation, his “formula” was not difficult to grasp. The problem is that it is faulty. Wrong numbers (as shown above), failure to factor in forces, and he multiplied instead of divided by “moments”. Its all very horribly done, really. And simply saying “nope” is not a response. Clearly I believe I already worked it out. Telling me I need to work it out is thus silly and pointless and only really makes it look like you don’t have a counter argument but don’t want to admit it. If i worked it out wrong, then please, explain why. Why do you think all the “moments” available for an “event” to occur should decrease the chances for that event to occur instead of increase them.
 
buffalo said:
I already gave you ID peer reviewed papers list. Here it is again.

Peer-Reviewed & Peer-Edited Scientific Publications Supporting the Theory of Intelligent Design (Annotated)
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Uh…most of those aren’t peer reviewed journals, and for those that are, they seem to mostly be in irrelevant fields. The first one is a medical journal. Bio-complexity is open source, not peer reviewed, and is not run or operated by experts, but rather by the ID advocates themselves.
 
buffalo said:
Elasticity is common in the soft tissue.

T.Rex Fossils Yield Soft Tissue

Not only is the tissue intact, it’s still transparent and pliable. Tiny interior structures resembling blood vessels, and even cells, are still present in the tissue, according to a university press release.
While examining the T.rex, Schweitzer and her team noticed tissue fragments that lined the marrow cavity of the animal’s femur. When they dissolved mineral deposits in the tissues, the flexible, stretchy material was left behind.
Schweitzer then duplicated those finding, using at least three other well-preserved dinosaur specimens: one 80-million-year-old hadrosaur and two 65-million-year-old tyrannosaurs. Every specimen displayed preserved vessels, cell-like structures, or flexible material that resembled bone collagen from modern specimens, according to the press release.
Click to expand...
none of this refutes the fact that it is fossilized and not soft tissue anymore. The geology museum at my university has flexible sandstone in it. Are you going to suggest that its not actually a rock because its flexible? Of course not. These things are astoundingly well preserved, but they are still fossilized - still mineralized. No amount of ranting or raving or showing pictures will change this fact.
 
Crossbones said:
He used the number of quarks? How does he know the number of quarks? Does his calculation include dark matter? Does it include gluons or photons that interact with matter? If not, why not? If so, how does he calculate the number of these? Does this seem reasonable?
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I answered…
Elementary Particle (or Fundamental Particle)
A particle with no substructure (i.e. not made up of smaller particles) and which is therefore one of the basic building blocks of the universe from which all other particles are made. Quarks, electons, neutrinos, photons, muons and gluons (along with their respective anti-particles) are all elementary particles; protons and neutrons (which are made up of quarks) are not.
Click to expand...
So, to spell it out, he included Quarks, gluons and photons along with their respective anti-particles. The numbers are from current and available knowledge.

You can’t play the game of “Dembski is wrong” because I don’t answer every conceivable question you come up with that may or may not even be relevant. Much of his work is available online or through Amazon. You can’t dismiss the entirety of his work just because you have unanswered questions that YOU refuse to find answers for. :rolleyes:

Take it up with him. But your ignorance (as in lack of answers to your peculiar questions) is not an argument against Dembski, it merely shows that you haven’t sought for yourself what Dembski would say. Don’t assume HE hasn’t answered them just because I refuse to be your research assistant. If you really propose questions for the sole purpose of remaining in denial, you are free to do so, but don’t blame Dembski for that (and I refuse to partake in your enterprise.)

Persistence raising questions that you wrongly believe are unanswered might give you the assurance of being “right” in your thinking, but you know as well as I that you will not have done your own “due” diligence in the matter. Off-loading is not a viable method in good scholarship, nor in science.
 
buffalo said:
How about plugging in 10^100 to be really really safe?

Two sources:

physics.nist.gov/cgi-bin/cuu/Value?plkt

astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/P/Planck+Time
Planck Time
Code: 
                 The [Planck time](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/P/Planck+Time) is the fundamental unit of time in the system of   [Planck Units](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/P/Planck+Units).  It has the value:
  *tp* = 5.39 × 10-44 s
  In [SI units](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/S/SI+Units), measurements of time are made in seconds (usually given the symbol **s**).   Although using seconds is convenient for everyday life,   such as  measuring the time it takes for an athlete to sprint 100 metres or   the  duration of a phone call, it becomes less practical when we discuss the  sequence   of events that happened in the very early [Universe](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/U/Universe) (such as the onset of   inflation that occurred 10-35s after the [Big Bang](http://astronomy.swin.edu.au/cosmos/B/Big+Bang)).
  A consequence of using seconds to measure time is that the    fundamental constants take on values that are not always convenient for  including in equations:
Click to expand...
Yes, I know what Planck time is, as Plato has already done a Google search and provided links. So, why is it reasonable to apply here? Why are there only 10^45 states a second?

Are you willing to say that you can’t explain why this number makes sense to apply to this calculation? After all, you are suggest 10^100. Why 10^100? Because the results you get later are still to your liking. That’s not good enough. You have to have a reason for this number that makes sense. Can you do that?
 
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