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Jody
Mountain climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 18, 2004 - 10:50pm PT
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Crotch, I think we are talking about the same thing here. In your salamander example, you mention "subspecies" within a "species". I am not denying that that happens. There is still no indication that the development of subspecies within a species can eventually create a whole new species.
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Terry
climber
Spokane
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Feb 19, 2004 - 01:54am PT
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Anyone know how many total species exist in the world? Apparently there are between 8,000 and 28,000 of just birds. So if you throw in vegetation and all the other forms of life its gotta be one hell of a large number - in the millions? Hundreds of Millions? Seems to me that even with only a partial fossil record there should be thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of links showing the development of species from species.
Doesn't that strike anyone as odd?
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dirtbag
Trad climber
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Feb 19, 2004 - 10:41am PT
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Fossils are hard to become preserved, and even harder to find. Then, we need scientists to spend the time to study them and figure things out. Also, fossils only usually preserve the hard body parts, i.e., skeletons. In the case of the salamanders, the differences--behavioral, soft-body anatomy, physiology, etc.--would not likely be preserved in the fossil records. Many of the fossils that are found are only fragments. So no, it isn't surprising that there are gaps in knowledge. The human fossil record is becoming better understood.
No one really knows how many species exist, or how many are being destroyed right now. I’ve heard estimates ranging from 3,000,000-30,000,000.
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 01:06pm PT
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I strongly suggest you guys read "The Demon Haunted World," by Carl Sagan. Pay special attention to the chapter titled, "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection." It's probably somewhere on the web; that chapter. Just type in "The Fine Art of Baloney Detection" in Google.
And being a geologist, I trust that either the Earth is a vastly old object, or Allah did an incredible job of faking us out.
If it is intelligent design, then which deity was it? There are quite a few creation stories floating around.
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Jody
Mountain climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 01:11pm PT
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Let's look at some numbers, shall we?
Note:10(17) means 10 to the 17th power.I couldn't figure out a way to do the little numbers.
10(17) seconds in the history of the universe (average age estimated by evolutionists)
10(84) particles in the universe (counting baryons)
10(20) events per second (maximum number of conceivable interactions between subatomic particles)
10(121) total events (10(17) x 10(84) x 10(20) = 10(121)
10(100,000,000,000) events necessary to produce a single living cell (estimate by molecular biologist Harold Morowitz)
The equation would be thus:
Probability of evolutionary start = 10(121) / 10(100,000,000,000) = 1 / 10(99,999,999,879) = ZERO!
Who is Harold Morowitz? No scientific slouch, that's for sure!
Born in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., in 1927, Harold Morowitz earned his Ph.D. at Yale University in 1951. From 1951-1953 he was a physicist at the National Bureau of Standards. Morowitz was on the staff of the National Heart Institute from 1953-1955 before joining the faculty of Yale University in 1955. At Yale, he was associate professor of biophysics (1960-1968), professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry (1968-1988), and master of Pierson College (1981-1986). He joined the faculty of George Mason University in 1988 as a Robinson Professor. Also in this university, Morowitz has directed the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study since 1993.
If you folks want to base your existence on odds like that, go ahead.:)
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Jody
Mountain climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 01:15pm PT
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I still don't understand why there are not oodles and oodles of missing links in the fossil record.
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dirtbag
Trad climber
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Feb 19, 2004 - 01:26pm PT
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When an organism dies, it will be subjected to earthquakes, eruptions, rain, wind, chemical changes, burial, fire, floods, animals, erosion, rockfall, etc., etc., etc., occurring repeatedly over millions of years. Preserving hard-bodied organisms is very difficult (and preserving soft-bodied creatures occurs even less frequently). Think of it this way: if fossils were so easy to preserve, then how come we aren't literally tripping over the trillions of organisms that have died over the last three billion years? How many fossils do you find in your backyard? For that matter, how long do recently killed organisms remain intact before they “disappear”? The bottom line is that fossils are rare. What we find in the fossil records are snapshots: moments in time, but not the entire story of life. That is why oodles and oodles of "missing links" have not been found. There are many that have been found, though.
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Matt
Trad climber
SF Bay Area
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 01:30pm PT
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reposted:
you say you want to know what is so annoying about creationism? i will tell you...
evolution itself doesn't have to conflict w/ religious beliefs, only interpretations of biblical text. why couldn't some creator have endowed upon all life the ability to adapt to it's own surroundings? why can't all the complexity and awesome beauty of the natural world be something that we all appreciate together, and seek to understand together?
the answer, my friend, is a simple one.
your belief in one literal interpretation or another of the bible conflicts w/ conclusions that various scientific observations may logically lead a thinking person toward, and so you summarily reject them to protect yourself from the need to examine those interpretations (interpretations of others that you have chosen to accept).
instead of including your own religious beliefs and their contexts within the conversation, you cling to your faith and parade a succession of BS that doesn't meet any widely accepted threshhold of the scientific community (other tennets of actual "science" include the processes of peer review and the concept of repeatable observation), and you follow in the proud historical tradition of other scholars of faith who passed themselves off as men of science, but who have long assisted and backed the institutional resistance of the ever powerful catholic church to considering now commonly accepted truths such as the earth being round and the planets revolving around the sun, keep in mind that such concepts once threatened the status quo...
you are like a trained parrot, just repeating the often cited by your sheppard(s) and those in your "club" that have spent the time to filter through scientific literature and cherry pick (probably out of context) quotes and other materials that would seem to reinforce the improbability of it all...
what you fail to grasp is that your caucasian/eurasian based creation myths are not the 1st, nor the most likely creation myths. they exist to explain that which is misunderstood and frightening within a culture.
why not stick w/ Zeus?
he was white too...
hello....
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Josh Higgins
Trad climber
San Diego
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Feb 19, 2004 - 01:47pm PT
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Jody, your post of numbers makes no sense. AGAIN faulty logic. Who the hell cares how many SUBATOMIC interactions there are? Atomic interactions are what is important. It's not like quarks and antimatter and photons are what really matter here. It is CHEMISTRY, not particle physics that is important. Also, macromolecules can react with macromolecules. It doesn't have to be built one single atom at a time.
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Stevie Ray
climber
Cali
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Feb 19, 2004 - 01:51pm PT
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Jody-
Nice job citing scientific fact, mathematical formulae and lack of proof of evolution. I'll trust your math is correct because I don't know enough about math to debate your calculations. Your arguments are straightforward, reasonable and it's obvious you've really done your homework, I'm almost convinced.
At the risk of splitting threads, I wonder if you would be so kind as to continue your excellent work by citing some proof of creationism. Any scientific fact, mathematical formulae, statistical supporting evidence would be fascinating. I'm sure you can apply the same passion, dilligence and logic to proving the theory you base your existence upon.
Iook forward to your findings.
SR
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dirtbag
Trad climber
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Feb 19, 2004 - 02:03pm PT
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I don’t understand why you cannot accept speciation. You are comfortable with the idea that organisms can become different enough to become separate subspecies, but for some reason you cannot accept that they might become different enough to become reproductively isolated and thus evolve into separate species. Why is that such a stretch?
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Jody
Mountain climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 02:10pm PT
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dirt bag, I see no evidence of the fact that species have ever become an entirely different species, which would be required to fulfill Darwinian evolution. There are changes within species, sure, but nothing to indicate the "fish to human" scenario.
Stevie, that would take a whole different thread, I am still waiting for the compelling evidence of evolution to come forth on this thread and so far, with a couple of exceptions, I only get ridicule of my beliefs.
Matt, then you don't believe in Darwinian evolution? You believe God could have created life and then let evolution take over? If so, I will answer that in the "Creation" thread in the future.
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Matt
Trad climber
SF Bay Area
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 02:28pm PT
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"Matt, then you don't believe in Darwinian evolution? You believe God could have created life and then let evolution take over? If so, I will answer that in the "Creation" thread in the future."
i believe that simple life forms evolved into complex life forms, not just apes to men and seperation of salamander species, but fish to anphibians and reptiles, etc. there is a fairly extensive record of plant evolution too pal- and adam couldn't have eaten no apples until plants had been evolving for quite some time...
i believe you are reading the wrong books if you want to learn about any of it, jody.
trust yourself enough to go and read some primary texts, not the church's selections of the week.
where does it all start for you jody?
do you believe in plate techtonics(sp?)? that there was once a concentrated land mass which was divided into multiple continents, the distribution of which is still fluid as they move about w/ respect to one another?
do you reject all speciation? do you think every species that ever existed was created by god in 6 days, or do you believe in another specific time frame?
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dirtbag
Trad climber
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Feb 19, 2004 - 02:29pm PT
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Without spending all day writing messages, I'm not sure if I can add anything else. There are some excellent links and posts above explaining the evolutionary process and citing the mountains of genetic, behaviorial, and fossil evidence. In addition, there are many basic biology texts covering evolution and longer books on the topic that can explain the process better than I can. I will just say that without the theory of evolution, very few things in biology make sense. It is the major, underlying paradigm for all of the biological sciences that explains the diversity of life and its adaptations. Nearly every biologist—and every credible one--would agree with that.
I think we are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one.
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Jody
Mountain climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 02:30pm PT
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I'll drink to that dirt bag(geez, I hate calling people dirt bags, unless i am putting them in jail):).
" I will just say that without the theory of evolution, very few things in biology make sense"
You hit the nail on the head! Evolution cannot be proven, yet without it, few things in biology make sense. Which is the foundation pointing towards intelligent design!
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Forest
Trad climber
Tucson, AZ
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Feb 19, 2004 - 02:32pm PT
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"Matt, then you don't believe in Darwinian evolution? You believe God could have created life and then let evolution take over"
This scenario is perfectly acceptable under darwinian evolutionary theory (or at least the modern evolution thereof. no pun intended.) Darwin described the evolution, not the very beginning, despite the name of his text ("Origin of the Species")
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dirtbag
Trad climber
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Feb 19, 2004 - 02:36pm PT
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"You hit the nail on the head! Evolution cannot be proven, yet without it, few things in biology make sense. Which is the foundation pointing towards intelligent design! "
I'm not quite sure what you're getting at, but I think you're putting words into my mouth, no?
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Jody
Mountain climber
CA
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 02:43pm PT
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Sorry dirt, not trying to put words in your mouth...What I meant was this, without an unproven theory, it doesn't make sense, therefore, it makes much more sense to believe in intelligent design, than to base everything on an unproven theory that is full of holes.
By you saying it doesn't make sense, it just led me into my next point...not trying to put words in your mouth.
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Matt
Trad climber
SF Bay Area
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 03:02pm PT
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you want to approach this intelligent design as if it fits neatly, but then you reject speciation? you reject evolution in favor of intelligent design, that is not the same as saying that some higher power could have snapped it's fingers and created the big bang.
"creationism" sexed up = intelligent design
that's just a method to get schools in ohio and kansas to teach creation myth in high school science classes, unless you say that (and you are not saying that) random mutations in DNA occur and, although somewhat infrequently, these mutations can lead to inferred advantages that affect fitness of individuals within a population, and thus these mutations are selected for over time- which is the foundation of the theory of evolution...
you just say that species can never diverge enough to be separate species? what about species that were separated on land masses that became separate continents? that is pretty separate, dood...
now your rigid interpretations of the bible are starting to make the back of your neck itch, right?
so jody- go ahead and tell us all, please, where do YOU draw the line...?
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Degaine
climber
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Topic Author's Reply - Feb 19, 2004 - 03:10pm PT
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The 120+ posts of this thread prove meaningless if Jody simply wants to demonstrate that Evolution is not a fact. Considering that everyone here as well as noted Evolution scientists have cited Evolution as a THEORY(“the Theory of Evolution or Darwin’s Theory of Evolution) then Jody is right. In that respect, Plate tectonics is not fact either, simply a theory with enough supporting evidence to conclude that the theory of the Earth having multiple plates, etc., etc., is logical.
However, Jody, your logic is also faulty, just because evolution is not a fact - or just because evolution has the potential to be disproved - does not therefore prove intelligent design, creationism, etc. You consider disproving the theory of evolution as the foundation for creationism - what was the foundation of creationism before Darwin, blind faith?
Take the following joke:
A professor decides to perform an experiment in front of his class. He has trained a flea to jump through a hoop on command. Every time he says, “jump”, the flea jumps through the hoop. He then proceeds, with tweezers, to pull the fleas legs off. He then yells, “jump,” at the flea multiple times, yet the flea remains stationary and does not move. The professor then concludes to his class: “You see, students, by pulling the legs off of the flea, the flea goes deaf….”
Your logic is similar when you say:
“You hit the nail on the head! Evolution cannot be proven, yet without it, few things in biology make sense. Which is the foundation pointing towards intelligent design!”
and
“...What I meant was this, without an unproven theory, it doesn't make sense, therefore, it makes much more sense to believe in intelligent design, than to base everything on an unproven theory that is full of holes.”
Of course no one has a problem (or at least I do not) with you believing in creationism. I DO have a problem (only as far as the discussion is concerned of course!) with your logic that disproving evolution therefore proves creationism or intelligent design. Where is the step-by-step and link-by-link proof you ask the evolutionists to provide?
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