The evolution hoax

[Ghosty]

one bit that hasn’t been brought up by anyone pro or con is that evidence pointing to a young earth (such as human footprints inside of dinosaur prints) is ignored entirely by scientists whose theories are not supported by such evidence.

I’m afraid that young Earth theories fall completely flat when taking all evidence into consideration. There’s a piece of evidence for an old universe that I’ve never heard Young Earthers address, and that is the evidence that the Hubble telescope provides. Due to the nature of the speed of light, which is nearly constant, we can actually gauge distance in “light years”, namely the amount of time it takes light to travel that distance. The side effect of this measurement is that when we see something that is eight light years away, we are actually seeing what it looked like eight years ago. With the Hubble telescope we are able to see much further than we ever could before, and an interesting, if expected, thing has been noticed: the universe looks “younger” the further we look. Again, because of the relatively constant speed of light, we can actually gauge what “time” we are looking at based on how distant the object is. Let’s just say we’ve seen WELL past the accepted time-frame of Young Earth, to the range of about 12 billion years.

So while we may ponder whether or not dinosaurs walked with humans, and wonder why their footprints are apparently side by side with ours when they “shouldn’t” be, we can’t argue from that that the universe is “young”. We can literally see back in time, and the universe is billions, perhaps tens of billions, of years old.

 

[JamesD]

"Another Evolution Fraud Exposed"
These facts are both frightening and heartening. They are frightening because they demonstrate the colossal dishonesty of the evolutionary movement, as well as the widespread nature of this dishonesty.

I was thinking of editing your post to show how this same thing could be said about christianity:
False faith healers, Fake crying statues, fabricated testimonials…
But I don’t have the time.
It is also dishonest to conclude that a concept in incorrect by discrediting some of its adherents and/or evidence. When I see this kind of thing from anyone about anything I don’t consider it as evidence and find it counter productive to what the presenter intends.
This does nothing to contribute to the debate.

 

[Stevereeno]

rossum:

Now I want to propose a question to you. If, as you say in your opening post, evolution is a “hoax” then what is your explanation for the fact that DDT used to kill many insect pests but now those same species of insects are immune to DDT. If you don’t like that particular example then feel free to pick another one such as Warfarin resistant rats or bacterial resistance to antibiotics.

rossum

These are pretty weak arguments. The fact is that there has always been DDT-immune insects, Warfarin resistant rats, and antibiotic resistant bacteria. We are only seeing a higher consentration of those traits where the poisons were employed. No spontaneous change occurred in the species. If evolution is true, then there must be an animal today that is in mid-evolution. That is, where are the 4-legged fish of today? How about a horse with wing buds? A spider with a nose?

Look, I don’t claim to know how God created everything (I think you are a fool if you do). I actually find evolution to be somewhat reasonable. I also find it reasonable that the Almighty God does not need evolution for His Creation. However, if you are Catholic, one thing is for certain. Namely, that your scientific beliefs must not contradict Catholic teaching which includes the story of Genesis. Regarding creation, we Catholics must believe that God created, in his own image, two individuals named Adam and Eve. And from these two people were born the entire human race, including God himself.

One last thought. After the resurrection of the body, will evolution matter to anyone?

 

[Orogeny]

Stevereeno:

These are pretty weak arguments. The fact is that there has always been DDT-immune insects, Warfarin resistant rats, and antibiotic resistant bacteria. Those are the decendants of the ones who lived though their poisoning and passed on their immunity.

In other words, natural selection.

Peace

Tim

 

[Stevereeno]

Orogeny:

In other words, natural selection.

Which new species were created?

 

[PhilVaz]

Stevo << Which new species were created? >>

ANSWER: a species of the butterfly / moth genus Hedylepta evolved in less than a thousand years. It feeds only on bananas which we know from the records of Hawaii were introduced there about a 1000 years ago. That’s very rapid “natural selection” working.

http://www.bringyou.to/apologetics/hedylepta.jpg

“Hawaii harbors several moths of the genus Hedylepta that feed only on banana plants. Other species of the genus feed on other Hawaiian plants, and similarities of form demonstrate that one of these that feeds on palms is the ancestor of the banana-feeding species. Each of the banana-feeding species is restricted to high mountain forests on only one or two islands, and the reason they must bear a descendant rather than ancestral relationship to the palm-feeding species is that, while palm trees are native Hawaiian plants, banana trees are not. In fact Polynesians first introduced the banana plant to the Hawaiian Islands only about a thousand years ago. This sets an upper limit for the evolution of the new banana-feeding insect species. For all we know, they evolved in a small fraction of this interval.” (Stanley, Steven M., “Evolution of Life: Evidence for a New Pattern”, Great Ideas Today, Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1983, page 21) ; also see Zimmerman, E.C. “Possible Evidence of Rapid Evolution in Hawaiian Moths”, 1960 Evolution 14(1):137-138

The Firing Line Creation Evolution Debate from Dec 1997

Phil P

 

[Stevereeno]

I always knew that vegetarians were of a different species than myself.

 

[RSiscoe]

Phil]Stevo << Which new species were created? >>

ANSWER: a species of the butterfly / moth genus Hedylepta evolved in less than a thousand years. It feeds only on bananas which we know from the records of Hawaii were introduced there about a 1000 years ago. That’s very rapid “natural selection” working.

Now, maybe I am missing something, but what is the proof that it moth evolved? And what did it evolve from?

 

[Orogeny]

Stevereeno:

Which new species were created?

With enough iterations, a new species of insect, rat or bacteria.

Peace

Tim

 

[Stevereeno]

Orogeny:

With enough iterations, a new species of insect, rat or bacteria.

Peace

Tim

Huh!? You mean if I continually feed a Wafarin resistant rat Warfarin, then I will get a new species of rat?

 

[Stevereeno]

RSiscoe:

Now, maybe I am missing something, but what is the proof that it moth evolved? And what did it evolve from?

True. There is no fossil record. Thus, no evidence.

 

[rossum]

RSiscoe:

In your opinion, what are the three strongest pieces of evidence (three strongest arguments) for macroevolution

These may not be absolutely the three strongest, but they are the three best that I feel reasonably competent to talk about.

Firstly I go for Duplicated Errors in DNA. For more details than I can post here see this webpage. Many of the better arguments for creationism are basically arguments from design. Design is just as good as evolution at explaining why things work. However it is different with duplicated errors. In this case evolution is a better explanation than design. Why would a designer incorporate a disfunctional pseudogene - let alone the same disfunctional pseudogene with exactly the same errors - into multiple species? Evolution says that there was only one error in the gene, and that all descendants of the organism with the error carry the same error. Think of European royalty and haemophilia.

Take the pseudogene for vitamin C. Primates cannot make their own vitamin C, they need to eat it. All primate genomes looked at so far have what looks very much like a vitamin C gene (as found in other mammals) but it has an error in it. This same error is in exactly the same place in all primates, including humans. Evolution says that this error only happened once in the common ancestor for all extant primates. How does a design based explanation account for identical errors? Identical errors are how encyclopedia publishers prevent copying - a duplicated error is accepted in a court of law as evidence of copying.

Secondly I choose The Two Trees. Details here. From the time of Linnaeus (C18) biologists have been classifying and studying living organisms. They have developed a tree to hold all known species. The leaves of this tree are the individual species and the branches are the higher groupings - genus, family etc. These groupings were decided on the basis of similarity. Horses and Donkeys are obviously similar so they were classified together. Although there are some difficulties as to where some organisms fit, there is good general agreement on the bulk of the tree. All this was well established long before Darwin and long before DNA.

With the discovery of the importance of DNA biologists looked at how similar the DNA of different organisms was and made another tree. The DNA tree turned out to be 99.9999% similar to the Linnaean tree. I don’t know how much maths you know, but there a very large number of ways to arrange a group of objects into a tree. The fact that the two trees are so similar is very good evidence that the tree structure is real, and that evolution is the obvious explanation. A designer has no need to stick to a tree structure - a Pegasus is perfectly possible for a designer but evolution would not allow one because mammals and feathers are in different parts of the tree and have different common ancestors.

Thirdly I have atavisms and similar, see here. Why does the occasional whale have a hind leg? Why do some humans have a tail? These things may be as rare as hen’s teeth (another example) but they do happen. The evolutionary explanation is obvious - the ancestors of whales had four legs. We have even found some: both Ambulocetus and Pakicetus have four legs.

If we examine embryos they can show similar effects. Snake embryos start off with four limb buds, as do dolphin embryos. Chicken embryos have tooth buds. Human embryos have tails. In all cases the extra bits are normally reabsorbed. Evolution finds this easy to explain, for a designer it is more difficult - why start constructing something that is only going to be destroyed?

Thank you for the interesting question.

rossum

 

[CreosMary]

rossum:

Really, you will have to do better than this. If you are going to regurgipost without giving any attribution at least try changing the text around a little bit. It took me all of thirty seconds on Google to find this site

where the text bears an uncanny resemblance to the first part of your posting. Please have a bit of respect for your audience. What passes for scolarship in the creationist area is all too often shown to be insufficient when you are not preaching to the choir.

Anyway, to take the points your source makes in order:

Nebraska Man A mistake, corrected within a few years. See here.

Java Man Just one of many Homo erectus fossils. Your source is incorrect about the Gibbon claim.See here. Even AiG has abandoned this one. If you are going to copy then at least copy from up-to-date creationist sites rather than incompetent ones like the one you have chosen here.

Piltdown Man A forgery. Does one forged relic destroy Christianity? Neither does one forgery destroy evolution. There is ample evidence without Piltdown man. Do you have evidence of any current textbook describing Piltdown as anything other than a forgery? See here.

Orce Man Not conclusively identified as human. See here.

Neanderthal Man I am not sure what your source’s point is here. An early reconstruction was wrong, so what is the problem? Perhaps you ought to ask the site what their point is and let us know.

At this point your original source stops. However, once again Google is my friend. You have once again copied your post without attribution, this time from this site. Do you really have such a low opinion of us that you think we are incapable of detecting regurgiposting when we see it? Remember that you are not preaching to the choir here.

Archaeoraptor Yes it was a mosaic of two separate (and interesting) fossils. It was never published in any peer-reviewed journal. National Geographic got a lot of egg on their faces for jumping the gun. It was the scientists who had doubts and were telling NG not to publish, see here. How is this a problem for science? Science was doing what it is meant to, detecting incorrect data.

I shan’t bother replying in detail to your other regurgipost, it would probably be easier to e-mail the site involved directly if I could be bothered. Your post #2 comes from here. The standard response is here.

I think at this point I am allowed to say “These facts are both frightening and heartening. They are frightening because they demonstrate the colossal dishonesty of the creationist movement”.

I was not at all impressed by your ability to regurgipost. Next time please do us all the courtesy of actually writing down your own arguments in your own words.

rossum
My Dear Rossum,
You through out your (potential)credibility with your closing comment about there being no absolute Truth. Well my dear Friend that is whats seperates us from the secular humanist pagans. There IS ABSOLUTE truth it is NOT relative.
I also thought the way you post was written was a little tacky.
As I have said before it takes more faith to believe in basic life arising out of trillions of “accidents” Than in Creation by a Supreme God.

 

[rossum]

RSiscoe:

what are the three biggest difficulties for macroevolution?

Firstly the scarcity of pre-Cambrian fossils. Pre-Cambrian fossils are much rarer than scientists would like. There are a few, such as Halkieria, which are wonderful intermediates. It is a pity we do not have more. Most of the animals around at that time could be categorised as small and squishy; a 5mm worm with no hard parts does not fossilise at all well. Unfortunately it was among those small and squishy worms that the divergences between the major groups of animals mostly occurred. Our common ancestor with the insects is probably just such a worm somewhere in the pre-Cambrian for example.

Fossils only really get going with the development of hard parts, which happened during the Cambrian. The “Cambrian Explosion” is partly due to hard parts that fossilise well developing on animals that were around previously but which did not then have hard parts and so did not fossilise well earlier.

Secondly the scarcity of transitionals between species. As Gould said: “Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.” We do have some species to species transitions, but it would be nice to have more. Many of the examples that we do have are of rather obscure species, such as marine snails, which do not have the visual appeal of large mammmals or birds. On current theories most speciation happens in small groups isolated from the main population in a small geographic area (allopatric speciation). This limits the number of places in which such fossils can be found.

Thirdly the lack of ancient DNA. DNA does not survive well after death. We can go back a few tens of thousands of years, but not much further. Sequencing Neanderthal DNA is certainly worthwhile, but if only we had some DNA from Archaeopteryx, a therapsid or two, Acanthostega and some of the other more interesting fossil species. Since we know that DNA is such a useful tool with modern species, it is a big loss that we cannot look at the DNA of the great majority of fossil species.

Thank you again for two very interesting questions.

rossum

 

[RSiscoe]

rossum:

Firstly the scarcity of pre-Cambrian fossils. Pre-Cambrian fossils are much rarer than scientists would like. There are a few, such as Halkieria, which are wonderful intermediates. It is a pity we do not have more. Most of the animals around at that time could be categorised as small and squishy; a 5mm worm with no hard parts does not fossilise at all well. Unfortunately it was among those small and squishy worms that the divergences between the major groups of animals mostly occurred. Our common ancestor with the insects is probably just such a worm somewhere in the pre-Cambrian for example.

Fossils only really get going with the development of hard parts, which happened during the Cambrian. The “Cambrian Explosion” is partly due to hard parts that fossilise well developing on animals that were around previously but which did not then have hard parts and so did not fossilise well earlier.

Secondly the scarcity of transitionals between species. As Gould said: “Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups.” We do have some species to species transitions, but it would be nice to have more. Many of the examples that we do have are of rather obscure species, such as marine snails, which do not have the visual appeal of large mammmals or birds. On current theories most speciation happens in small groups isolated from the main population in a small geographic area (allopatric speciation). This limits the number of places in which such fossils can be found.

Thirdly the lack of ancient DNA. DNA does not survive well after death. We can go back a few tens of thousands of years, but not much further. Sequencing Neanderthal DNA is certainly worthwhile, but if only we had some DNA from Archaeopteryx, a therapsid or two, Acanthostega and some of the other more interesting fossil species. Since we know that DNA is such a useful tool with modern species, it is a big loss that we cannot look at the DNA of the great majority of fossil species.

Thank you again for two very interesting questions.

rossum

Thank you for the honest answer. I have one more question: I think we both agree that microevolution is a proven fact. But, would you agree with me that macroevolution - because of the lesser amount of evidence - has not been proven? Would you agree that, given the little scientific evidence, macroevolution is still just a theory?

 

[PhilVaz]

Rsis << Would you agree that, given the little scientific evidence, macroevolution is still just a theory? >>

No, macroevolution is not based on “little scientific evidence.” Macroevolution is inferred from numerous and various strands of evidence. We can’t observe a fish turning into a amphibian (tetrapod), or reptiles turning into mammals, or land mammals into whales. That doesn’t mean we don’t have evidence, we have plenty of evidence of fish-like tetrapods, reptile-like mammals, and four-legged whales in the fossil record. The evidence has been brought up literally thousands of times in various threads since May 2004.

And you keep forgetting the definition of scientific theory. Theory defined:

A scientific theory is an established paradigm that explains all or many of the data we have and offers valid predictions that can be tested, OR

A set of statements or principles devised to explain a group of facts or phenomena, especially one that has been repeatedly tested or is widely accepted and can be used to make predictions about natural phenomena, OR

A well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world; an organized system of accepted knowledge that applies in a variety of circumstances to explain a specific set of phenomena, etc.

Theory defined from Wikipedia

Theory defined from Dictionary.com

So Yes, Macroevolution is a scientific theory, since it is backed by tons of evidence. But it is not “just a theory” in the sense of hunch, guess, or speculation. It is no less true because it is inferred rather than directly observed.

Take the time to print out and read this entire article please

Or my Cliffs Notes version

You’re the guy who started the thread with this “hoax” stuff. Will you admit you were at least wrong there? Evolution, micro and macro, is not a hoax, but has plenty of evidence in support.

Phil P

 

[ISABUS]

In my mind the hoax of it all is the misconception that people think they know God to the extent that they can speak on behalf of God. God doesn’t need microevolution to prove the existance of ‘intelligent design’. As human beings we need to understand that God is beyond our comprehension. For heavens sake, God is God! We can’t allow God to be connected to any theory whether it be evolution or microevolution for God exceeds all human intellect and creative imagination ~

Peace,

Mary

 

[rossum]

RSiscoe:

But, would you agree with me that macroevolution - because of the lesser amount of evidence - has not been proven?

There is a saying: “Proof is for mathematics and alcohol.” No scientific theory is ever “proven”. Because every scientific theory is always open to the possibility of being replaced by a better theory, no scientific theory is ever final. Obviously some theories have a gret deal of evidence behind then - the heliocentric theory of the solar system for example - so it would be very difficult indeed to find a better theory. Nevertheless, the possibility exists.

Certainly there is more evidence for microevolution than for macroevolution, mainly because microevolution is easier to observe. Macroevolution may not have as much evidence, but that in no way means that it is false. There is more than enough evidence to support macroevolution as a good theory. I have already referred you to the talk.origins.org article giving “29+ Evidences for Macroevolution”. If you want to replace macroevolution with an alternative theory, then you are going to have to come up with a similar volume of evidence.

rossum