Follow along with the video below to see how to install our site as a web app on your home screen.
Note: This feature currently requires accessing the site using the built-in Safari browser.
Republicans are showing us they can't destroy science. But their ignorance is destroying them.
If there is any ignorance of science it is the folks like you who disagree with the OP...but have no answers to the questions in post #32...
...why is that?
Could it be you are simply indoctrinated not to question, but merely to repeat?
You list these "hard questions" because to right wingers, everything is a "hard question".
Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so.
Then right wingers will say, "Oh you blindly follow scientists". The truth is, at some point, I do. We all do.
If you get sick and go to a doctor, you don't know what someone who has studied for 15 years knows. Not unless you also studied that for 15 years.
If you go on a roller coaster, are you blindly trusting the engineer who designed it? The people who built it? The people who maintain it? Do you know what acceleration the materials can handle? The body? At what point does it become unsafe?
What leads you to trust is the "record". Scientists have a pretty good record. Right wingers don't.
1. I noticed that a recent thread tried to base support for Darwin's theory on the work of neo-Marxist Stephen J. Gould......
Gould used, as a basis for his attempted defense of Darwinism, Karl Marx's theory of history, and called it 'Punctuated Equilibrium.'
Gould danced around the fact that he could find no evidence to support either.
Rather than attempt to classify the new and different organism found in the Burgess Shale, Stephen Gould actually characterized the creatures as being so exotic as to defy affinity in classification with any modern groups. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7258/full/460952a.html
2. The Burgess Shale attests to an extraordinary profusion of new animal forms, including unique anatomical structures not seen before in earlier life forms, and new arrangements of body parts.
Whatever their classification, it is their origin that requires explanation.
How, exactly, does the biological information necessary to produce new characteristics originate?
a. Darwinians can not explain where all the DNA information came along in such a short period of time
Jun-Yuan Chen and Cambrian explosion
3. The puzzle is made more dense when it seems likely that at least some of the near ancestors of the many arthropod animals that arose in the Cambrian would have left as least some rudimentary remains of exoskeletons in the PreCambrian fossil record if such proof existed, and if arthropods arose in the gradual way Darwinian theory states.
So...what conclusion should a scientists draw....if the individual being relied on for said conclusion is....objective?
4. Although it requires an extensive understanding of anatomy, this itself argues against Darwin's thesis. The arthropod exoskeleton is not the only part that had to develop, since it is merely one part of a tightly integrated system which is necessary in order to allow molting and exoskeleton growth....think of a crab. The system, the 'endophragmal system'-
A Text-book of Zoology - Thomas Jeffery Parker, William Aitcheson Haswell - Google Books
- involves muscles, tendons, tissues and sensory organs and the special mediating structure between the soft tissue of the arthropod and the exoskeleton itself.
So....for Darwin to be correct, there should be signs of each, of all, of these distinct structures evolving prior to the fully-formed organism being found in the fossil record.
Should be such evidence....or, an explanation posed as to why there is none.
5. Let's not forget that the order of events is critical, and therefore limited by the timeframe. Consider this complication: such a system must be fully in place before it could work at all, a property called irreducible complexity.
This means that it is impossible to be built by natural selection working on small changes.
6. DNA is by far the most compact information storage system in the universe. Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 letters,humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See The programs of life, for an explanation of the DNA letters.)
DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess?
7. The amount of information that could be stored in a pinheads volume of DNA is equivalent to a pile of paperback books 500 times as high as the distance from Earth to the moon, each with a different, yet specific content Gitt, W., Dazzling design in miniature, Creation 20(1):6, 1997
Putting it another way, while we think that our new 40 gigabyte hard drives are advanced technology, a pinhead of DNA could hold 100 million times more information.
a. Werner Gitt, professor of information systems, puts it succinctly: "The basic flaw of all evolutionary views is the origin of the information in living beings. It has never been shown that a coding system and semantic information could originate by itself [through matter] . . . The information theorems predict that this will never be possible. " (Gitt, p. 124). [See Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information, 2nd edition (Bielefeld, Germany: CLV, 2000), p. 88.]
To short-circuit the expected criticism.....let's remind all that there is no reference to, nor reliance on, religion, nor the Bible, in this well-constructed destruction of Dawin's theory of evolution.
This critique is based purely on the science behind Darwin's theory....or the absence of same.
Of course, if any would rather attack me rather than confront the OP....I do love attention.
Dear PC: NO ONE can "explain" how either creation happened or evolution
since we weren't there when these steps happened to witness them with our own eyes.
Both are faith based, and both can be argued as proven to different people by different systems or sources of proof.
People's faith or lack thereof
CANNOT be dependent on either thing, nor on any assumption either has been proven or disproven.
I believe we are better off studying something that CAN be proven such as by statistics:
EXample: proving that the common factor in natural spiritual healing, the degree of FORGIVENESS correlates with the degree of healing mind, body or relations with others.
proving that forgiveness invokes spiritual changes that improve mental and physical health, relationships and quality of life CAN be measured and documented with statistics over repeat studies and diverse populations; and provides more practical benefits by real life healing that results, rather than wasting time and ruining relations arguing over creation or evolution that may only have relative proof, and not universal proof all people can accept.
1. I noticed that a recent thread tried to base support for Darwin's theory on the work of neo-Marxist Stephen J. Gould......
Gould used, as a basis for his attempted defense of Darwinism, Karl Marx's theory of history, and called it 'Punctuated Equilibrium.'
Gould danced around the fact that he could find no evidence to support either.
Rather than attempt to classify the new and different organism found in the Burgess Shale, Stephen Gould actually characterized the creatures as being so exotic as to defy affinity in classification with any modern groups. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v460/n7258/full/460952a.html
2. The Burgess Shale attests to an extraordinary profusion of new animal forms, including unique anatomical structures not seen before in earlier life forms, and new arrangements of body parts.
Whatever their classification, it is their origin that requires explanation.
How, exactly, does the biological information necessary to produce new characteristics originate?
a. Darwinians can not explain where all the DNA information came along in such a short period of time
Jun-Yuan Chen and Cambrian explosion
3. The puzzle is made more dense when it seems likely that at least some of the near ancestors of the many arthropod animals that arose in the Cambrian would have left as least some rudimentary remains of exoskeletons in the PreCambrian fossil record if such proof existed, and if arthropods arose in the gradual way Darwinian theory states.
So...what conclusion should a scientists draw....if the individual being relied on for said conclusion is....objective?
4. Although it requires an extensive understanding of anatomy, this itself argues against Darwin's thesis. The arthropod exoskeleton is not the only part that had to develop, since it is merely one part of a tightly integrated system which is necessary in order to allow molting and exoskeleton growth....think of a crab. The system, the 'endophragmal system'-
A Text-book of Zoology - Thomas Jeffery Parker, William Aitcheson Haswell - Google Books
- involves muscles, tendons, tissues and sensory organs and the special mediating structure between the soft tissue of the arthropod and the exoskeleton itself.
So....for Darwin to be correct, there should be signs of each, of all, of these distinct structures evolving prior to the fully-formed organism being found in the fossil record.
Should be such evidence....or, an explanation posed as to why there is none.
5. Let's not forget that the order of events is critical, and therefore limited by the timeframe. Consider this complication: such a system must be fully in place before it could work at all, a property called irreducible complexity.
This means that it is impossible to be built by natural selection working on small changes.
6. DNA is by far the most compact information storage system in the universe. Even the simplest known living organism has 482 protein-coding genes. This is a total of 580,000 letters,humans have three billion in every nucleus. (See The programs of life, for an explanation of the DNA letters.)
DNA: marvellous messages or mostly mess?
7. The amount of information that could be stored in a pinheads volume of DNA is equivalent to a pile of paperback books 500 times as high as the distance from Earth to the moon, each with a different, yet specific content Gitt, W., Dazzling design in miniature, Creation 20(1):6, 1997
Putting it another way, while we think that our new 40 gigabyte hard drives are advanced technology, a pinhead of DNA could hold 100 million times more information.
a. Werner Gitt, professor of information systems, puts it succinctly: "The basic flaw of all evolutionary views is the origin of the information in living beings. It has never been shown that a coding system and semantic information could originate by itself [through matter] . . . The information theorems predict that this will never be possible. " (Gitt, p. 124). [See Werner Gitt, In the Beginning Was Information, 2nd edition (Bielefeld, Germany: CLV, 2000), p. 88.]
To short-circuit the expected criticism.....let's remind all that there is no reference to, nor reliance on, religion, nor the Bible, in this well-constructed destruction of Dawin's theory of evolution.
This critique is based purely on the science behind Darwin's theory....or the absence of same.
Of course, if any would rather attack me rather than confront the OP....I do love attention.
If there is any ignorance of science it is the folks like you who disagree with the OP...but have no answers to the questions in post #32...
...why is that?
Could it be you are simply indoctrinated not to question, but merely to repeat?
You list these "hard questions" because to right wingers, everything is a "hard question".
Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so.
Then right wingers will say, "Oh you blindly follow scientists". The truth is, at some point, I do. We all do.
If you get sick and go to a doctor, you don't know what someone who has studied for 15 years knows. Not unless you also studied that for 15 years.
If you go on a roller coaster, are you blindly trusting the engineer who designed it? The people who built it? The people who maintain it? Do you know what acceleration the materials can handle? The body? At what point does it become unsafe?
What leads you to trust is the "record". Scientists have a pretty good record. Right wingers don't.
"Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so."
So, none of you who resent criticizing Darwin's theory can explain the lapses and counter-indications that I've highlighted....
....but you are totally certain that it is correct?
For clarity.....would that be an example of indoctrination....or stupidity?
PC, the party's over. No one of consequence takes creationism seriously. And the Theory of Evolution is accepted worldwide. Like Newton in physics, Darwin was the seminal scientist in that field, but, also like Newton, not the last word, for the world of science moves on, and Theories get refined as new evidence comes in. People like you that somehow think they can change the facts by denigrating great minds of the past only prove the smallness of your own mind.
If that's the case, Rocks, post #32 should be a piece a' cake for you.
Bet you won't even try it.
If there is any ignorance of science it is the folks like you who disagree with the OP...but have no answers to the questions in post #32...
...why is that?
Could it be you are simply indoctrinated not to question, but merely to repeat?
You list these "hard questions" because to right wingers, everything is a "hard question".
Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so.
Then right wingers will say, "Oh you blindly follow scientists". The truth is, at some point, I do. We all do.
If you get sick and go to a doctor, you don't know what someone who has studied for 15 years knows. Not unless you also studied that for 15 years.
If you go on a roller coaster, are you blindly trusting the engineer who designed it? The people who built it? The people who maintain it? Do you know what acceleration the materials can handle? The body? At what point does it become unsafe?
What leads you to trust is the "record". Scientists have a pretty good record. Right wingers don't.
"Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so."
So, none of you who resent criticizing Darwin's theory can explain the lapses and counter-indications that I've highlighted....
....but you are totally certain that it is correct?
For clarity.....would that be an example of indoctrination....or stupidity?
PC, the party's over. No one of consequence takes creationism seriously. And the Theory of Evolution is accepted worldwide. Like Newton in physics, Darwin was the seminal scientist in that field, but, also like Newton, not the last word, for the world of science moves on, and Theories get refined as new evidence comes in. People like you that somehow think they can change the facts by denigrating great minds of the past only prove the smallness of your own mind.
If that's the case, Rocks, post #32 should be a piece a' cake for you.
Bet you won't even try it.
The Ediacaran Period
Online exhibits : Geologic time machine : Proterozoic Eon
The Ediacaran Period
When Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, he and most paleontologists believed that the oldest animal fossils were the trilobites and brachiopods of the Cambrian Period, now known to be about 540 million years old. Many paleontologists believed that simpler forms of life must have existed before this but that they left no fossils. A few believed that the Cambrian fossils represented the moment of God's creation of animals, or the first deposits laid down by the biblical flood. Darwin wrote, "the difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is very great," yet he expressed hope that such fossils would be found, noting that "only a small portion of the world is known with accuracy."
Since Darwin's time, the fossil history of life on Earth has been pushed back to 3.5 billion years before the present. Most of these fossils are microscopic bacteria and algae. However, in the latest Proterozoic a time period now called the Ediacaran, or the Vendian, and lasting from about 635 to 542 million years ago* macroscopic fossils of soft-bodied organisms can be found in a few localities around the world, confirming Darwin's expectations.
You list these "hard questions" because to right wingers, everything is a "hard question".
Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so.
Then right wingers will say, "Oh you blindly follow scientists". The truth is, at some point, I do. We all do.
If you get sick and go to a doctor, you don't know what someone who has studied for 15 years knows. Not unless you also studied that for 15 years.
If you go on a roller coaster, are you blindly trusting the engineer who designed it? The people who built it? The people who maintain it? Do you know what acceleration the materials can handle? The body? At what point does it become unsafe?
What leads you to trust is the "record". Scientists have a pretty good record. Right wingers don't.
"Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so."
So, none of you who resent criticizing Darwin's theory can explain the lapses and counter-indications that I've highlighted....
....but you are totally certain that it is correct?
For clarity.....would that be an example of indoctrination....or stupidity?
You, obviously.
You list these "hard questions" because to right wingers, everything is a "hard question".
Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so.
Then right wingers will say, "Oh you blindly follow scientists". The truth is, at some point, I do. We all do.
If you get sick and go to a doctor, you don't know what someone who has studied for 15 years knows. Not unless you also studied that for 15 years.
If you go on a roller coaster, are you blindly trusting the engineer who designed it? The people who built it? The people who maintain it? Do you know what acceleration the materials can handle? The body? At what point does it become unsafe?
What leads you to trust is the "record". Scientists have a pretty good record. Right wingers don't.
"Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so."
So, none of you who resent criticizing Darwin's theory can explain the lapses and counter-indications that I've highlighted....
....but you are totally certain that it is correct?
For clarity.....would that be an example of indoctrination....or stupidity?
Stupidity on your part.
"Go to an actual evolutionary scientist and what you get is a dissertation. And rightfully so."
So, none of you who resent criticizing Darwin's theory can explain the lapses and counter-indications that I've highlighted....
....but you are totally certain that it is correct?
For clarity.....would that be an example of indoctrination....or stupidity?
Stupidity on your part.
I'm happy to leave that analysis to the reader.
Don't be upset with their conclusion.
Yeah, you're right,I let her lies piss me off to the brink of silliness. Not worth it at all. I'll move on, thanks.
BTW....I never lie.
Yeah, you're right,I let her lies piss me off to the brink of silliness. Not worth it at all. I'll move on, thanks.
BTW....I never lie.
I think your post, especially in the version I first read, displayed an annoying degree of arrogant intellectual dishonesty.
I say arrogance because you come off like you are personally firing artillery shells into the heart of evolutionary biology, "destroying Darwinism" while at the most you're spraying luke warm yellow tinged fluid ineffectively in the general direction of. As to dishonesty I've said this a couple of times already, the obvious raison d'etre for your post is as Christian Apologia and you've quoted extensively from creationist websites to further that goal. Yet you continue to insist the post does not rely on "religion or the Bible or creationism". I don't know why you can't see the inherent dishonesty in that.
And in the version of the post that I first read the paucity of links and attribution of sources suggested you were the principle author. ( plagiarism, dishonesty?) I assumed on first glance you were the author. However as I dug a little deeper I did find creationist sites from which you have copied and pasted the bulk of the text in your post. (I see you have since added a link to Creation.com, thank you.)
BTW the links you have now supplied are not very helpful.
The link to Nature.com requires a $199 membership or payment of a rental fee.
The Cambrian Explosion link leads to a Youtube video that has been removed because of copyright issues.
The textbook of zoology link gives you an ad in Amazon.com with zero information on topic. (And it was published in 1897?)
The absence of information in these links makes me wonder how you actually derived anything from them, if in fact you did.
Speaking of information. Information theory is a deep and esoteric field. I certainly have no delusions that I understand any of its complexities. That doesn't make it any less fascinating of course but until scientists more fully understand how it relates to the ability of DNA to replicate and communicate I think it is of little value as argument to either creationists or evolutionists. Werner Gitt, a "scientific creationist", may or may not have made some advances in this area. You can certainly find profound criticism of his theories on the web if you chose to research.
The search for knowledge in the whole arena of life sciences is an ongoing endeavor. There are gaps in theory and evidence that may never be filled completely. From my point of few there is no point in "throwing the baby out with the bathwater". Nobody is talking about "destroying Newton" because General Relativity replaced his fundamental
description of gravity. Darwin will still be viewed as an immense influence on Biology even if his ideas have to be tweaked, to one degree or another, to match newly gained knowledge.
Now listen, I am not a strident or confrontational atheist/evolutionist. I see nothing wrong with a Christian engaging in Apologetics, it is a branch of philosophy with a long history and with some very smart people actively involved. Yet you have so little confidence in your own motive and strategy you find it necessary to misdirect and conceal. I do find dishonesty in that.
Self-delusional egocentric drivel.
Empty, non-coherent, scatter-brained, scatter-shot blathering. Standing on a soap box muttering "blah blah blah blah...." for hours would have communicated an equal amount of (non)information. That's my response to all your posts in this thread. And that's more of a response than they merit.
Ugh. The same, stale, boring logical canards thrown out by the enemies of the Scientific Method that have been quashed soooooooo many time get re-introduced to the naive who think they are novel and insurgent counter arguments.
Congrats PoliChic, no one has ever approached this argument from the basis of the questioning the Cambrian Explosion or that claiming that the fossil record isn't just complete enough....
I won't waste time and bandwidth regurgitating peer reviewed literature that covers all of this. You can find that yourself if you are truly interested (which I doubt).
What is your alternative hypothesis? It's not sufficient just to cast stones without offering a counter theory.
If that's the case, Rocks, post #32 should be a piece a' cake for you.
Bet you won't even try it.
The Ediacaran Period
Online exhibits : Geologic time machine : Proterozoic Eon
The Ediacaran Period
When Charles Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species, he and most paleontologists believed that the oldest animal fossils were the trilobites and brachiopods of the Cambrian Period, now known to be about 540 million years old. Many paleontologists believed that simpler forms of life must have existed before this but that they left no fossils. A few believed that the Cambrian fossils represented the moment of God's creation of animals, or the first deposits laid down by the biblical flood. Darwin wrote, "the difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is very great," yet he expressed hope that such fossils would be found, noting that "only a small portion of the world is known with accuracy."
Since Darwin's time, the fossil history of life on Earth has been pushed back to 3.5 billion years before the present. Most of these fossils are microscopic bacteria and algae. However, in the latest Proterozoic a time period now called the Ediacaran, or the Vendian, and lasting from about 635 to 542 million years ago* macroscopic fossils of soft-bodied organisms can be found in a few localities around the world, confirming Darwin's expectations.
1. I used to give you more credit for intelligence, Rocks....but if you are satisfied with this sort of analysis:
"Many paleontologists believed that simpler forms of life must have existed before this but that they left no fossils.".....
....they you are more suited to be in charge of valet parking at the hospital emergency room.
"...believed...' '....must have....' '....left no fossils...'
2. "THE ABRUPT manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palæontologistsfor instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwickas a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection."
Darwin, "On The Origin of Species," p.302
3. " ...macroscopic fossils of soft-bodied organisms can be found in a few localities around the world, confirming Darwin's expectations."
False on the face of it.
4. Charles Doolittle Walcott was an American invertebrate paleontologist.[1] He became known for his discovery in 1909 of well-preserved fossils in the Burgess Shale of British Columbia, Canada.
Charles Doolittle Walcott - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
a. Already director of the Smithsonian Institute, he is remembered today for the most dramatic discovery in the history of paleontology, a treasure of middle-Cambrian fossils, many previously unknown animal forms. The detail found was remarkable, proving a far greater diversity of biological form and architecture than had been previously imagined!
5. You quote 'fossils of soft bodied organism...."
Watch this:
"Some of these animals have mineralized exoskeletons, including those representing phyla, such as echinoderms, brachiopods, and arthropods, and each represent clearly distinct and novel body plans."
Meyers, "Darwin's Doubt," p. 34.
So.....you accept that 'soft bodied organisms' remain, but mineral exoskeletons do not????
Rocks....be serious.
Self-delusional egocentric drivel.
Empty, non-coherent, scatter-brained, scatter-shot blathering. Standing on a soap box muttering "blah blah blah blah...." for hours would have communicated an equal amount of (non)information. That's my response to all your posts in this thread. And that's more of a response than they merit.
You're a lying coward trying so very hard to hide the fact that you aren't equipped to handle the subject.
Dismissed.
PC said:Respond to #32
A well constructed scientific critique of Darwinian evolution reveals the weaknesses that have make a number of experts discard said theory.
