Questions for creationists

[Big Dave]

Originally posted by lightblue
Well there's a couple of species of fish alive now that might be relics that are similar to the species of fish that first conquered land. There are certain fish that have lungs as well as gills (http://www.gearupchicago.org/Academ...sh/lungfish.htm) . There are also fish that can "walk" around across small pieces of land from one pond to another. Examples of these are the mudskipper (http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/32309.html) or the Climbing Perch (http://www.encyclopedia.com/articlesnew/38187.html).

If they evoloved into something else why are they still around? If they evoloved into something else where are the fossiles of the intermidiate forms? I also notice that you say "might be" but evolution is always promoted as fact, not theory.

I think you are another of these creationists that has no real concept of the timescales involved. I realise that evolution cannot have happened in the timescales desribed by the Bible, which only goes to show that it is a work of fiction (like Dante's Inferno).

We have no idea what timescales are involved in the biblical record. The Sumerian King Record (predating the actual book of Genisis) describes their kings as living for up to 35,000 years. Biblical geneologies will read So-and-so was the father of such-and-such, but frequently skip several generations. So claiming that the Earth is 7,000 years old is not supportable from the Biblical text. The detailed geneologies were kept in separate records. As for the Bible being a work of fiction, research shows it to be an accurate historical work.

Let's use a biblical date as a reference point. JC was supposedly born about 2000 years ago.

There is no "supposed" about it. There are sufficient extra-Biblical references to Jesus Christ that his existance is as much a proven fact as Napoleon's, or Shakespear's.

Amphibians appear in the fossile record about 350 MILLION years ago, ...

Please tell me how you know how long ago this occured?

... which is a 175000 longer ago than Roman times. If you look at the average generation time of amphibians which is about a year or so, depending on the species, then that's is 350 million generations of amphibians since then. Then about 300 M years ago the reptiles appear. Reptiles are basically amphibians that do not rely on water to survive as they are fully able to breathe trough their lungs. Mammals appear a 100 M years later (which is still a 100000 times longer ago than JC).

Now I realise that these timescales are almost beyond the realms of the comprehensible, but that's what they are.

I really want someone to tell me how they know how long ago this happened.

As an example of evolution at work, you only have to look at HIV. Random mutations (due to the inefficiency of it polymerase) result in large numbers of viurses that carry mutations. Most of these mutations are going to be deleterious, some are going to have no effect at all. Now put a heavy selectable pressure on them, for example by giving a retroviral drug that interferes with the HIV protease. At first the viral load drops dramatically, however some virus will have mutated in such a way the protease changes shape, and the drug has no effect anymore. This virus will then replicate, and soon the viral loads are back up again. Which is why nowadays combinations of three or four drugs are used, as the change of a strain developing that can beat all 3-4 actions is infitessmally small. However, at some point such a virus will arise, and the patient will still die. In the mean time billions upon billions of virus particles will have been produced, many of which will not have had the chance to infect another cell, and replicate.

And we are still taking about micro-evolution. Nothing has become another species yet. And we are also talking about virii. The last I heard the jury was still out on whether or not a virus is actually alive.

Evolution is all a numbers game. No need for a guiding hand, and definitely no instant creation a we are now.

Unless of course you are wrong about the age of the earth. And even then evolution is in direct conflict with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.
Respectfully,

David

[Big Dave]

Sorry about the double post....

[mactbone]

Have you ever heard of radiation or the half life of something? If you haven't then you need to look it up.

[Dauphin]

And even then evolution is in direct conflict with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

No it isn't.

Explain why you think it is and I will explain the flaw in your logic.

I really want someone to tell me how they know how long ago this happened.

It is based on the age of the rock the fossils are found in. The aging of rocks is accurate, and the fact the fossils are imbedded in the rock means they were made at the same time.

[lightblue]

Originally posted by Big Dave


If they evoloved into something else why are they still around? If they evoloved into something else where are the fossiles of the intermidiate forms? I also notice that you say "might be" but evolution is always promoted as fact, not theory.

Well I'm not saying they are the direct ancestors, but that they are probably similar to the creatures that first became less dependent on water. Also evolution does not work the same on all the members of a given species. Most evolutionary steps occur when a small subgroup is isolated from the main group and thus has to go through an evolutionary bottleneck.
There are fossils that show intermediate steps of these, but as I am not an evolutionary biologists I can't find the references that fast. I did find a link to a story about a fossil that shows an intermediate between the landbased mammals that whales descended from and proto-whales. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci...00/1553008.stm This also links through to the Science website so you can read the whole paper if you have access.
As for "might be", I don't know the exact route that evolution has taken, but it is with very high probability through something like these fish.

We have no idea what timescales are involved in the biblical record. The Sumerian King Record (predating the actual book of Genisis) describes their kings as living for up to 35,000 years. Biblical geneologies will read So-and-so was the father of such-and-such, but frequently skip several generations. So claiming that the Earth is 7,000 years old is not supportable from the Biblical text. The detailed geneologies were kept in separate records. As for the Bible being a work of fiction, research shows it to be an accurate historical work.

Sure, you don't believe in evolution, but you believe in humans that can live thousands of years. You shouldn't undermine your credibility like that. As for the Bible, I think it was based on facts, but that it was "dramaticised" later to keep the interest of the readers up. You know add some central characters, put them opposite a central "evil" figure (Pharaoh, Herodote, Pontus Pilatus), stick in a couple of twists, add a nice hook, you know usual stuff. Very well written though, but I think it was largely written by the priest caste to stay in power, and to have a good way of tranferring lessons in moralities to the unwashed plebs. Stick it in veineer of mysticism and they'll swallow it hook, line and sinker. Then again, I might just be very cynical.

There is no "supposed" about it. There are sufficient extra-Biblical references to Jesus Christ that his existance is as much a proven fact as Napoleon's, or Shakespear's.

OK, concede this point. Doesn't mean he's the Son of God though (but that's a different thread...), I mean David Koresh declared himself the Messiah as well.

Please tell me how you know how long ago this occured?

I really want someone to tell me how they know how long ago this happened.

You can date rocks with radioisotope dating. You look at amount of radioactive istopes still left, and as you know the half-life from experimental data you can work the time these animals were fossilised. Here's a short easy link on this methodology http://www.enchantedlearning.com/sub...sildating.html

And we are still taking about micro-evolution. Nothing has become another species yet. And we are also talking about virii. The last I heard the jury was still out on whether or not a virus is actually alive.

Viruses are basically Von Neumann machines. They can replicate with the help of a cell. They are parasites, but they are very much alive, as witnessed by the fact that they evolve, and use the same way of carrying data (DNA). (EDIT: Or RNA for that matter, I work on DNA viruses, I occasionally forget about viruses that don't go through a DNA phase)

As viruses don't have sexual reproduction it is hard to talk about species. They are definitely different strains though, with as much as a couple percentage points difference in their coding data (whereas we share 99% with chimps). Same with bacteria.

You could do worse than looking up the examples Darwin used, the finches of the Galapagos. Completely different species evolved on different islands adaptig to the predominant food source on that island. They all derive from the same species that was blown in from the mainland. I suppose you'll call this microevolution as well, but they species do not cross-breed, and can therefore be counted as different species.

(EDIT 2: change radiocarbon to radioisotope. Dumb mistake, sorry)

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by lightblue
You can date rocks with radiocarbon dating.

IIRC carbon dating is only used with fossils, i.e., things used to be alive once. Rocks are dated with uranium.

[Jack the Bodiless]

Once more unto the breach...

Evolution is "taught as fact" because it IS a fact. There is no doubt that evolution is happening, it has been observed many times.

Another fact is common descent: there is no doubt that modern species developed from common ancestors. We have thousands of "transitional forms" in the fossil record, the branching pattern of the evolutionary "tree of life" is obvious in living organisms (it forms the basis of the Linnaean classification system: species, genus etc). And it's supported by DNA analysis. For instance, there was a classic creationist blunder recently when it was claimed that because crocodiles are genetically more similar to birds than lizards, this "disproved" the accuracy of DNA analysis. Actually, it proved exactly the opposite. Crocodiles, birds and dinosaurs all evolved from the archosaurs, a specific subgroup of reptiles which does not include lizards, turtles or snakes, which branched off earlier: crocodiles should be more closely related to birds than to other reptiles, because they share a more recent common ancestor.

It is also false to say that "macro-evolution has never been observed". "Macro" means "a lot", "micro" means "a little". Therefore, inevitably, micro-evolution over a long time IS macro-evolution, and observation of micro-evolution IS observation of a little bit of macro-evolution. Creationists seek to get out of this by redefining these terms, to make macro-evolution a different process than micro-evolution. But they can't make this work, because they cannot come up with any definition of "macro-evolution" which makes it a fundamentally different process which has never been observed. They've tried "beneficial mutation", but that's been observed. They've tried "never-before-seen beneficial mutation", but that's been observed. They've tried "increased information", but that's been observed. They've tried "the formation of new species", but that's been observed. And so on...

[Urban Ranger]

Anybody else has stumper questions for creationists?

[Jack the Bodiless]

I have a question for those who think the Earth might have been recently created "with the appearance of age".

If the entire Universe is supposedly only a few thousand years old, what exactly IS the appearance of age?

Supposedly, no planet has ever naturally aged. Why should "the appearance of age" involve dinosaurs, plate tectonics, fossil bacteria, radioactive decay products sealed into rocks, and so forth? If evolution is false and no planets are old anyhow, why should "the appearance of age" involve "the appearance of evolution"?

[Dauphin]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


IIRC carbon dating is only used with fossils, i.e., things used to be alive once. Rocks are dated with uranium.

Carbon dating only works for young "fossils", anything over ~30,000yrs and I think you're in hazy territory anything over 100,000yrs and its entirely useless, . Half-life is ~6,000yrs IIRC

[Big Dave]

Originally posted by lightblue
Sure, you don't believe in evolution, but you believe in humans that can live thousands of years. You shouldn't undermine your credibility like that.

I did not state that I believed what was written in the Summerian King Records, I merely stated that it existed. Point 2, this is not about my crediblity. This is about the facts concerning evolution. If (and I do say IF) a case can be made for humans living close to a thousand years (cf. Methuselah (sp?)) I will consider the facts pertaining to that and wiegh them on their own merits. But that is not the topic right now.

As for the Bible, I think it was based on facts, but that it was "dramaticised" later to keep the interest of the readers up. You know add some central characters, put them opposite a central "evil" figure (Pharaoh, Herodote, Pontus Pilatus), stick in a couple of twists, add a nice hook, you know usual stuff. Very well written though, but I think it was largely written by the priest caste to stay in power, and to have a good way of tranferring lessons in moralities to the unwashed plebs. Stick it in veineer of mysticism and they'll swallow it hook, line and sinker. Then again, I might just be very cynical.

The evidence is that the Bible was written concurent with the events described in it. We have historical evidence for most of the major players and can date the time of any given book's authorship with a fair degree if certainty. Since the peoples of those times had no study of history or archeology we can also be certain (due to the historical accuracy of the content of the books of the Bible) that they were not written after the fact.

The transmission of these books (actually scrolls at the time) was performed by a class of the priesthood called Scribes. Their job was not only to copy each scroll, but when finished to count the total number of characters in the scroll and make sure that it agreed with how many were supposed to be there. Then pick a letter, say an ayin (pronounce eye-in), and count that. So each scroll had the equivelant of two separate checksums performed on it to make sure that it was an accurate copy of the original. That takes us up to 70 AD when the Romans sacked the Temple in Jerusalem. For the New Testament we have over 10,000 coppies and fragments of scrolls dating back to around 150 AD. Since there are no major differences in all these coppies we can be fairly certain that they are accurate representations of the letters (scrolls, books) of the New Testament. Subsequent translations were based on that, for example the Latin Vulgate. The oldest surviving manuscripts we had were from around 1300 AD (I'm not positive on that date, someone correct me if I'm wrong). This is for the Tanakh (OT). However opening up the caves at Qumran (the Dead Sea Scrolls) and piecing together one scroll of Isaiah we found there revealed fewer than a dozen changes, and none of those changes changed the meaning of the text.

You can date rocks with radioisotope dating. You look at amount of radioactive istopes still left, and as you know the half-life from experimental data you can work the time these animals were fossilised. Here's a short easy link on this methodology

I'm familliar with the concept of radiometric dating. What I want to know is if you walk into a room and see a lit candle on the table, how long has it been burning? You have no idea how tall it was to begin with, so measuring it now, then after 30 minutes will tell you how far it burnt in 30 minutes, but it won't tell you how tall the candle was when it was lit.

Three attempts at radiometric dating of one single rock can yield ages over a billion years apart. You have no idea how much U-235 you started with in that sample, so you can't possibly know what half of it is to determine what percentage of U-235 is left.

Viruses are basically Von Neumann machines. They can replicate with the help of a cell. They are parasites, but they are very much alive, as witnessed by the fact that they evolve, and use the same way of carrying data (DNA). (EDIT: Or RNA for that matter, I work on DNA viruses, I occasionally forget about viruses that don't go through a DNA phase). As viruses don't have sexual reproduction it is hard to talk about species. They are definitely different strains though, with as much as a couple percentage points difference in their coding data (whereas we share 99% with chimps). Same with bacteria.

And where exactly does "strain" fit in with Kingdom, Phylum, etc?

You could do worse than looking up the examples Darwin used, the finches of the Galapagos. Completely different species evolved on different islands adaptig to the predominant food source on that island. They all derive from the same species that was blown in from the mainland. I suppose you'll call this microevolution as well, but they species do not cross-breed, and can therefore be counted as different species.

I've read Origin of Species. Then can still cross breed, they're just not attracted to the different "styles". Just like I don't find Hottentot women attractive, it doesn't mean I can't breed with one.
Respectfully,

David

Edit: Fixed mangled vB code.

[Big Dave]

Re: Questions for creationists

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
This is a thread where evolutionists can post questions for creationists. We will see how many of them reply with satisfactory answers.

Would you change your mind if we could supply "satisfactory" answers? Or is your mind made up?

This is an honest question. I once believed as you do, that there is no God but the Unholy Trinity of Me, Myself, and I. And that Evolution must be true because it proved what I wanted to believe.

I am not a know-it-all. There is at least one microbiologist in here who will know alot more than I do about microbiology. I am a computer geek by profession and an amature historian. I have changed my world view from agnostic/athiest (depending on what day of the week it was), to Christian based on what my historical research revealed. None of which was taught in the US's gov't run schools.

I am going to try to answer the questions you folks pose to the best of my ability, but I will freely admit there will be things I just don't know. Even dealing with computers there is a lot I don't know.

David

[Big Dave]

Re: Questions for creationists

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
Here's a good one: why do humans have the appendix (vermiform appendix)?

I'm trying to figure out why you're asking this. I don't know everything about how God designed us, I am not God. However this "vestigial" could be left over from before the Fall, hanging on as we devolve.

More to the point, why would we evolve something we don't need or use?

David

[mactbone]

The evidence is that the Bible was written concurent with the events described in it. We have historical evidence for most of the major players and can date the time of any given book's authorship with a fair degree if certainty. Since the peoples of those times had no study of history or archeology we can also be certain (due to the historical accuracy of the content of the books of the Bible) that they were not written after the fact.

According to what I've heard, mainly from my history prof., the NT was written mainly after Jesus died. Hmmmmm, doesn't the Bible contain a whole lot of info on that guy?

If half-lifes only work if we already know how much uranium is there then it would br pretty pointless, right? So why would the scientific community as a whole use it?

[Big Dave]

Originally posted by Jack the Bodiless
Evolution is "taught as fact" because it IS a fact. There is no doubt that evolution is happening, it has been observed many times.

When and where? I'm not talking about micro evolution, I'm talking macro evolution. When has one species been observed transforming into another through breeding?

And how can it be observed since we've all been taught that it takes billions of years? I don't know about you, but I'm only 45!

Another fact is common descent: there is no doubt that modern species developed from common ancestors. We have thousands of "transitional forms" in the fossil record, the branching pattern of the evolutionary "tree of life" is obvious in living organisms (it forms the basis of the Linnaean classification system: species, genus etc). And it's supported by DNA analysis. For instance, there was a classic creationist blunder recently when it was claimed that because crocodiles are genetically more similar to birds than lizards, this "disproved" the accuracy of DNA analysis. Actually, it proved exactly the opposite. Crocodiles, birds and dinosaurs all evolved from the archosaurs, a specific subgroup of reptiles which does not include lizards, turtles or snakes, which branched off earlier: crocodiles should be more closely related to birds than to other reptiles, because they share a more recent common ancestor.

Reference a book, point me to a link. Show me some reputable scientific evidence, please. The only transitional forms I have seen are artists conceptions. No fossiles exist that I am aware of.

It is also false to say that "macro-evolution has never been observed". "Macro" means "a lot", "micro" means "a little". Therefore, inevitably, micro-evolution over a long time IS macro-evolution, and observation of micro-evolution IS observation of a little bit of macro-evolution. Creationists seek to get out of this by redefining these terms, to make macro-evolution a different process than micro-evolution. But they can't make this work, because they cannot come up with any definition of "macro-evolution" which makes it a fundamentally different process which has never been observed. They've tried "beneficial mutation", but that's been observed. They've tried "never-before-seen beneficial mutation", but that's been observed. They've tried "increased information", but that's been observed. They've tried "the formation of new species", but that's been observed. And so on...

When has anyone observed a frog becoming a man? Outside a fairy tale I mean. Or any other change from one phylum to another? And what "beneficial mutation" has been observed?

The only definition I am familliar with for micro-evolution is the combining of existing genes within a species to make a new breed. For example the sugar beet. You can breed beets to get more sugar out of them by combining the beets with the most sugar. But you max out around 17% sugar because that is all the genes beets have for sugar. You can't add more genes and you can't change the existing genes. This is micro-evolution. I already referenced the moths (I forget the breed) in England that were light grey (I believe) before the Industrial Revolution. Then when all the polution turned the tree bark dark all the light ones got eaten, so only the dark ones bred. This is another case of micro-evolution, merely a redistribution of existing genes. Darwin's finches on the Galapagoes islands are another example. Just different breeds in the same species.

Macro evolution would be the introduction of new genes. Please give me links/books from reputable scientists to refer to that demonstrate the natural introduction of a new gene into a species.
Respectfully,

David