hi there. how have you been? i've been away for a while. gotta admit the seemingly uselessness of arguing with what was available had me a little bit discouraged. but i always finally conclude that it is not so useless since i have learned things. ok, i'm repeating myself
Andrew, about the apes, the men and the birds: i did not mean to be direspectful to you and your question. i can never pretend that this or that question is not worth the time to answer it properly. i apologize if you received my answer this way. it's just that i thought it was easily understandable. what i meant is that birds build nests to protect their eggs, mainly against predators (i guess?) and you could tell me it's not against the cold or anything else, since mommy covers her eggs. i meant this as an analogy, which has always fascinated me: how did such little and, let's face it, not so intelligent animals if compared to us humans, get that wonderful habit that consists in picking small branchs and put them together, thus obtaining a nest? past the first feeling of admiration, we always think the same. well, you will say it's simple adaptation, and it's true, birds adapt to their environment. it is known to be part of what we call "instinct" to build nests. they don't wear any clothes because they can't reach our level of sophistication and can't make clothes, but mostly because they don't need them. most apes i've seen until now had quite a good amount of hair on their bodies. some men have, but not as much
dogs generally have lots of hair too. you know these famous red-faced japanese monkeys we always see on postcards? they can survive in snow because they have hair, and maybe some other things (i don't know much about these animals). if men went naked in wintertime, thay would die because of the cold. i know i'm not talking science here, but i guess it makes some point. anyway the first version of my answer wasn't a way to evade or ignore the
teneur of your question, Andrew.
Robert, it is true that the text i copy/pasted was not virgin of weaknesses. i won't discuss anything about the bible, since i don't know anything about it. that's why i always try to give my sources, in order to make distinction between what i agree with and the rest. maybe i should have made some editing! but i prefered it raw. anyway, i'm still looking for interesting things and i'm sorryt to say that the net places that are the most interesting are the forums such as this one. the following, if it can be posted correctly (quite long, once more...sorry), is a answering post. its author, a paleontologist, it seems, took quite a bit of time to write it, and, as an excuse of the time you might spend on reading it, thinking i'm a lazy dude (just a pinch of truth...), this post that i have read, most importantly, does not quote the bible the way the other did.
"Posted by: Ichthyic |
April 12, 2008 1:14 AM
Originally posted by David in response to the creationist "andria", whose list of "20 questions" pretty much just came straight out of the Index to Creationist Claims.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/list.html
David, with WAY too much time on his hands, apparently took it upon himself to answer each question, in detail.
...and here 'tis, choke on it creobots:
Just for documentation purposes, in cases Andria decides not to post my comment:
===============================================
Here's your monster comment 220 that is for the most part a plagiate. It's a Gish gallop: a debate tactic that consists of spouting so much nonsense in so little time that the opponent is dumbfounded, not knowing where to begin, and knowing that refuting all of it would take several hours.
So what? It'll be easy.
My dear evolutionists, This has been fun. I believe in one kind of evolutionism.
Two mistakes right there.
First, scientific theories aren't something you believe in or don't believe in. They are testable -- falsifiable (otherwise they wouldn't be scientific) --, and that means that if they are wrong, we can find that out, no matter how sincerely and fervently we or anyone else believes in them. Belief is irrational. Science is not.
Second, scientific theories aren't ideologies. They aren't "-isms". To call them such is dishonest. Or would you call yourself a gravityist?
Micro-evolutionism. But Macro-Evolutionism
There is no difference between "microevolution" and "macroevolution". Biologists invented these terms in the early 20th century when evolution wasn't well understood yet. It has since turned out that the terms are useless. Let mutation, selection and drift (if you don't know what exactly these terms mean, ask me or ask Google) go on for long enough, and you'll see "macroevolution" no matter how you define it. That's because there's simply nothing to prevent it from happening.
continues to have nothing but circular reasoning behind it.
So? Explain, if you can.
I realize, though, that this is a dead-end where debate is concerned, because none of you will change, and I will not change.
Wrong. We are talking about science, not about religion. We, and you, will go wherever the evidence leads us, and we -- like you -- will immediately change our minds when our opinions are disproven. This is of crucial importance for science. If we are wrong, we can find out that we are wrong. That's the big advantage of science over any other so-called "way of knowing".
"Sit down before fact as a little child, be prepared to give up every preconceived notion, follow humbly wherever and to whatever abyss nature leads, or you shall learn nothing."
-- Thomas Henry Huxley. Called "Darwin's Bulldog" because he defended On the Origin of Species with more fervor than the ever-cautious, ever-polite Darwin did.
Here I thought I was just randomly posting a query to someone else's opinion on a random blog!
Hundreds like you have come before you. Pharyngula has been among the most widely read blogs in its field for years. Hundreds of creationist drive-by trolls have posted the ever-same talking points, believing they had made an original point.
It's not your fault you didn't know this situtation, but I think you could have easily imagined it.
And it seems I have become the only defender of faith, God, and a divine Creation.
"Defender of God"? Isn't that, like, blasphemy or something? Are you saying God can't defend himself?
Also, you have never answered the question of why you confuse Christianity and creationism. The two are not the same.
I will however give a couple of parting thoughts, because while no one can win at this, what is there to lose in at least saying what you believe anyway?
Your beliefs might be either disproven or shown to be untestable and therefore outside science. That's what.
(Which is apparently what you are doing, and I will continue to do throughout my life).
We don't believe. We test hypotheses.
The only proof of Creation is in the objects of Creation.
All of which can also be explained in other ways -- so they aren't proof. No surprise there. Outside of math and formal logic, nothing can ever be proven.
That's the point of the "flying space monkey" and "Santa Claus" comments I forwarded.
I love examples, so I'm going to use a nice simple example for you guys. Our example lies in the beautiful example of a car (you've probably heard this before). Take your pick which kind of car you'd like to imagine. Okay, even such a normal thing as a car, could not exist, without a creator.
See, that's where the analogy already breaks down. Cars don't reproduce. They don't even grow. Try again.
Evolution is something that happens to populations, not to individuals. It requires reproduction with imperfect inheritance. That means that living beings (including viruses) evolve, languages evolve, and evolution can be simulated in computers, but that basically is it. Oh, universes might evolve, too, but that's very difficult to test and probably not the simplest explanation for the observations it's supposed to explain. (Therefore it's not a very popular hypothesis at the moment.)
Normal plausibility tells us, that things prone to disorder do not HAPPEN upon order. Shake things up in a blender, and you're not going to come up with anything but a shake.
You overlook that order is sometimes the energetically preferred state of affairs. Water vapor is disorder -- liquid water is partial order -- ice is order. That's because of electrostatics: water molecules have a positive and a negative pole, so that they stick to each other in a certain pattern. Destroying that pattern requires energy. Or take the paranut effect. Take random solid objects, put them in some container, and shake that container. If you shake long enough and then open the container, you'll find that the biggest objects are on top and the smallest at the bottom. That's because the shaking creates spaces between the objects -- the small ones can fall through, the big ones can't. Or take well-shaken sandy and muddy water and let it settle. Regular layers will settle on the bottom: the biggest grains will fall out first, so the bottom layer will be coarse sand, and the finest grains will fall out last, so the top layer will be fine clay. Geologists call this a fining-upwards sequence. I've seen several on top of each other in a 10-million-year-old nearshore seafloor in northwestern Austria: every time a storm came, it stirred the water at the shore where it stirred up sand and silt, the water spread offshore to the point where I was, and then the coarsest grains fell to the bottom, then the next coarsest grains, and so on. Coarse sand grading into middle sand grading into fine sand, coarse silt, middle silt, fine silt, coarse clay, middle clay, fine clay. Then the fine clay continues upwards till the next storm layer, which again begins suddenly with coarse sand.
In answer to those of you who demand proof of God - I offer you the very breath you use to speak out against God. Who gave it to you?
This has already been answered on the Pharyngula thread.
Let's put it this way: Those babies who didn't have the reflex to start breathing when they were born have already died, so that nobody has inherited the lack of this reflex, so the trait has disappeared from the population. That's called natural selection.
Don't you even know that most Christians today believe that God's existence cannot be proven? That God is above the understanding of puny humans?
In Austria, all schoolchildren who at least nominally belong to one of the largest local religions get religious instruction in school. My Catholic RI teacher told me that a God who could be proven would be poor! The idea is that 1) God is simply greater than that, greater than a puny human brain; 2) if God were proven, there would be no free will anymore, but God wants us to have free will, so he refuses being provable.
I should also mention what might be the most important point here: Atheists aren't dystheists. Dystheists like Dr. Behe believe that God exists and is evil. They can "speak out against God". Atheists believe that God does not exist. Logically, they cannot speak out for or against God. They speak out against the -- in their eyes delusional -- belief in any deities. Can you speak out against Ea, the Sumerian water god who sent the worldwide flood that only Utnapishtim and his family survived in their ark? No, because you believe he's a fairytale in the first place.
You think I'm going to offer you a proverbial offering of fire like that of Elijah?
Huh?
You think I'm going to say that Leviticus is what all good Christians base their lives around (which, btw to be 'technical', the Old Testament way of sacrificing animals was [...]
Blah, blah, blah. No, the vast, vast majority of atheists are ex-Christians. Everyone knows Leviticus isn't the whole Bible. Everyone knows, for example, the New Testament and what it says.
The only proof in God is when you know him personally.
Do you?
And yes, (thank you for pointing this out) by know, I do mean believe.
Then you should say "believe" rather than "know". By doing so, you would also no longer conceal the fact that a belief cannot be a proof.
Often, as you well know in your own studies, for even the most objective scientist, their bias sneaks into their hypothesis and they will present their beliefs as 'fact'.
See? You didn't follow my link, so you still don't know what "fact" even means. Go read it, and then come back. It's just about 12 lines of text.
"Even the most objective scientist" will occasionally overlook evidence and therefore present a hypothesis that is already disproven, or (more commonly) will overlook an alternative hypothesis and will therefore present their own as the only one that can so far explain the facts when that is not the case. No scientist will ever present a hypothesis as a fact, because hypotheses explain facts. They cannot become facts.
What did Creation and God ever do to you?
Why did Napoleon cross the Mississippi?
Lastly, many of you complained that you wanted me to answer your dozens of specific questions concerning Evolution.
"Specific"! Hah! We were asking you the very basics!
I'm not going to pansy around and pretend I have all the answers. I don't. And you do?
We understand the very basics, yes. We understand what on Earth we are talking about.
But since I have been demanded answers for my beliefs, I have a few questions of my own.
How logical.
And no, they are not original with me (so if you pick them apart, you're picking apart someone else).
So what? Whether something is wrong doesn't depend on who came up with it.
1. Where did the space for the universe come from?
Why did Napoleon cross the Mississippi?
This is yet another wrong question. There is no such thing as "space for the universe". The universe is space, with energy and matter in it.
2. Where did matter come from?
Matter is a form of energy. When you inject energy into a vacuum, you create elementary particles. This is inevitable according to quantum physics, and indeed it is observed. Heating a lightbulb creates photons (particles of light), for example.
Energy... in sum, the universe apparently contains zero energy, because the sum of all energy (including matter) is equal to the sum of all gravity.
3. Where did the laws of the universe come from (gravity, inertia, etc.)?
We don't know. But we're working on it. Spend a few hours in Wikipedia, and you will get a glimpse into this active field of research.
4. How did matter get so perfectly organized?
What do you mean?
5. Where did the energy come from to do all the organizing?
See above.
6. When, where, why, and how did life come from non-living matter?
When? Between 4.4 and 3.85 billion years ago. Where? Somewhere in liquid water, probably on Earth. Why? Because it could happen. Everything that can happen happens sooner or later.
The numbers I got from a paper (which I think I can send you) that showed the Earth already had a crust and an ocean 4.4 billion years ago, and from another (which I don't have, but which is cited in textbooks) that found chemical evidence for life in 3.85-billion-year-old layers. If you don't know how radiometric dating works, just look it up on Wikipedia, it has a good article on that.
7. When, where, why, and how did life learn to reproduce itself?
"Learn"? That's again a wrong question. If you leave nucleic acids alone under certain conditions, they will get copied, because of nothing else than temperature and electrostatics.
8. With what did the first cell capable of sexual reproduction reproduce?
It didn't reproduce sexually. It reproduced asexually. And then its offspring started mating occasionally.
Man, that was easy. Did you really believe that the ability to reproduce sexually automatically makes asexual reproduction impossible? Sorry -- did you even read what you copied from Hovind?!?
9. Why would any plant or animal want to reproduce more of its kind since this would only make more mouths to feed and decrease the chances of survival?
"Want" simply doesn't enter into the question.
(Does the individual have a drive to survive, or the species? How do you explain this?)
It's simple: those who haven't had enough surviving offspring have already died out, and their lack of fertility and/or protection and/or nourishment for the young with them. Natural selection. We are the descendants of those that had enough surviving offspring. It really is that simple.
10. How can mutations (recombining of the genetic code)
This doesn't mean anything. Whoever wrote it doesn't know what a mutation or the genetic code are.
create any new, improved varieties? (Recombining English letters will never produce Chinese books.)
Is that supposed to be a comparison?
Any mutation creates something new. If it manages to change the amino acid in the resulting protein (about 1 in 3 mutations does that), and if this doesn't change an amino acid into a chemically very similar one, then something new will happen to the organism.
What "improved" means depends on the circumstances. The most famous example is sickle cell anemia. If you have two copies of the mutated gene, you die from sickle cell anemia. If you have one copy, you suffer from things like shortness of breath. Bad, no? Not in the region in West Africa where sickle cell anemia is widespread. It just so happens that the malaria parasite cannot enter the deformed red blood cells that result from the mutated gene. So, over there, those who have two copies of the mutated gene die from sickle cell anemia -- and those who have two normal copies die from malaria. Those who have one copy of the mutated and one of the normal version survive.
Or take vitamin C. Normally, vertebrates can make vitamin C. Apes (such as us) and guinea pigs have lost this ability: one of the genes for an enzyme in the chemical pathway has acquired a mutation that disables it. Bad, no? No, because we get enough vitamin C from our food. Not needing to produce all those enzymes, which would require energy, is an advantage: we can invest this energy in growth or reproduction.
(Incidentally, humans and chimps at least have exactly the same mutation in that gene. Why could that be? Guinea pigs have another.)
11. Is it possible that similarities in design between different animals prove a common Creator instead of a common ancestor?
By "prove", you don't mean "prove", you mean "are evidence for". Similarities alone are compatible with both ideas, so we'll have to look for something else.
So let me present the fact that the similarities have a pattern. A tree-shaped pattern. Why are there intermediates between "reptiles" and mammals, but none between mammals and insects? If there were intermediates between everything and everything, the theory of evolution would be in trouble. (I told you it's falsifiable.) The speculation of creation, on the other hand, is compatible with all imaginable scenarios. It can "explain" everything and nothing. If it were wrong, we could never find that out by disproving it. Therefore it is not science.
Simple, isn't it?
12. Natural selection only works with the genetic information available
Yes, but don't forget that the available information changes all the time -- mutation.
and tends only to keep a species stable.
This depends on the enviroment. When the environment is stable and the species (or, rather, population) is well adapted to it, we see stabilizing selection. When the environment changes, a few individuals have traits that fit the new environment better than the majority of the population, and then we see directional selection. By "see" I mean it has been observed in the field; check out e. g. the studies by the Grants on the Darwin finches.
How would you explain the increasing complexity in the genetic code that must have occurred if evolution were true?
Increasing complexity? No, increasing diversity of complexity. Sometimes, being complex is an advantage, so it's selected for. Sometimes, it's a disadvantage, so it's selected against. There is no overarching trend in evolution. It really is just mutation, selection, and drift -- or at least these three factors are enough to explain everything we observe.
13. When, where, why, and how did:
Single-celled plants become multi-celled?
Several times independently: red algae once, green algae twice. (Yellow and brown algae once more each, but they aren't actually plants -- they have red algae inside their cells.) The fossil record of marine plants isn't good, but the oldest known remains of multicellular red algae were 2.1 billion years old last time I read something on the topic.
Where: Somewhere in the sea.
Why: Because cooperation sometimes has net advantages.
(Where are the two and three-celled intermediates?)
Learn about colonial green algae, will you? Google Micraster and Volvox, for instance. Also, what about cell chains that are so common among fungi and green algae?
Really, isn't that taught in biology lessons in the USA?
Single-celled animals evolve?
At least 1.3 billion years ago, probably.
Where: Somewhere in the sea, probably on the floor.
Why: Because filter-feeding sometimes is the easiest way to get food. Compare choanoflagellates and sponges.
Fish change to amphibians?
Not directly. Limbs evolved from fins sometime between 380 and 390 million years ago, probably in a vegetation-rich body of water, perhaps an estuarine swamp. Amphibians ( = everything more closely related to the frogs, salamanders and caecilians than to us) evolved from other limbed vertebrates sometime around 350 million years ago, most likely in a possibly coastal swamp; this has no "why", it's simply a split.
Amphibians change to reptiles?
Never. The closest relatives of the amniotes (mammals, "reptiles", and birds) are not the amphibians, but the diadectomorphs; amphibians and amniotes have a common ancestor that lived sometime around 350 million years ago (see above). By definition, the origin of Amniota is the divergence between the mammal branch (Theropsida) and the bird branch (Sauropsida -- turtles, lizards and crocodiles are on the bird branch); this probably happened sometime between 315 and 335 million years ago, on land. Sorry for not being more precise -- I can't be, because the fossil record consists mostly of holes, and because the formation of Pangea had progressed pretty far at that time.
Reptiles change to birds? (The lungs, bones, eyes, reproductive organs, heart, method of locomotion, body covering, etc., are all very different!)
Congratulations! I am a paleontologist, my specialty are... drum roll... dinosaurs! The "where" of all this questions is easy: on Pangea. The "when" and the "why" are different for each.
Bird lungs are shared by at least one of the two dinosaur branches, as well as by the pterosaurs. So let's say 240 million years ago, for greater endurance. Many of today's "reptiles" have lungs that approach a crude version of bird lungs to various degrees; imagining how the bird-style lungs evolved is very easy. Unfortunately the only good description I've seen is in a very technical book, and it relies heavily on illustrations, so I can't reproduce that here. (I don't even have the book here with me in the first place.)
How do we know? Because bird-style lungs usually leave traces on and in bones: first the vertebrae in the shoulder region, then all neck and trunk vertebrae and ribs, then the sacral vertebrae, then the tail vertebrae (sometimes), then the wishbone, breastbone, and hip bones, then the upper arms and thighs, and so on. This we find in the fossil record in this order.
The eyes? The eyes aren't different. Birds have ordinary vertebrate eyes -- more normal ones than most mammals, in fact. What is your source talking about?
By the reproductive organs I suppose you mean the fact that in most birds only the right ovary is functional and that they lay one egg per functional ovary at once? Oviraptorosaurs, dromaeosaurids and troodontids (close relatives of birds) laid their eggs pairwise: one egg per functional ovary, like in birds. We've found their nests, complete with brooding parent on top and baby skeletons inside. Other dinosaurs, like crocodiles, laid eggs en masse.
The shift to a single egg per functional ovary must have happened between 230 and 170 million years ago (fossil nests are rare), on Pangea, as a shift from r-strategy (lots of cheap offspring, of which a few will survive simply because they're so many) towards K-strategy (heavy investment in a few offspring that get a good start into life and will therefore more likely survive). The shift to a single egg per ovary must have happened between 170 and 70 million years ago, probably at the later end of this span, anywhere on land (birds can after all fly), probably for the same reason. (K-strategy and r-strategy are extremes of a very broad spectrum.) It may also have been an advantage for flying (two ovaries are probably heavier than one).
The hearts of birds and crocodiles are almost identical. This type of heart (4-chambered) differs from that found in lizards (3-chambered with varying degrees of separation of the left & right halves of the main chamber) only in degree. The 4-chambered heart must have evolved about 260 million years ago, on Pangea, and has the advantage of giving greater endurance.
"Method of locomotion" means "flight", I suppose? How flight evolved is an active field of research, but a few things are clear. For example, feathers and probably wings were already present; it is also logical that wings had evolved for something else (like sexual selection or brooding) before they were first used for flight. Around 180 to 160 million years ago, on Pangea. The advantages of flight are self-evident.
Feathers are scales that are lengthened, split down the middle of the underside, and in most cases opened. The first bristle-like feathers must have appeared between 170 and maybe 200 million years ago (they don't fossilize normally) and had advantages like insulation, but may have first appeared as something that sexual selection acted on.
14. How did the intermediate forms live?
Between what? In most cases it's self-evident how intermediate forms lived. Be more precise.
15. When, where, why, how, and from what did:
Whales evolve?
About 55 million years ago, from chevrotain-like even-toed ungulates. (So did the hippos, the whales' closest living relatives.) Probably on the shores of the Tethys ocean, maybe in Pakistan. How? Here you are asking for a treatise because we are have discovered a whole tree of intermediate forms in the last 20 years!!! Spend a few hours in Google. Why? Because they had no competition in the sea -- the mosasaurs had died out 10 million years earlier.
Sea horses evolve?
No idea. I'm not an ichthyologist.
Bats evolve?
Also about 55 million years ago. Their closest identified relatives are the odd-toed ungulates plus the carnivorans plus the pangolins (together called Zooamata). The last common ancestor of all these animals must have looked like a shrew. The bat branch took to the trees and perhaps started gliding and using its arms to grasp insects... the fossil record is poor here. Only two weeks ago it was found out that flight appeared before echolocation in bats. The advantages of flight to a tree-living insectivore are obvious.
Eyes evolve?
Whose eyes? Eyes evolved several times independently from light-sensitive cells. (Those cells, however, are very old.)
Ears evolve?
Whose ears? A cricket's?
Hair, skin, feathers, scales, nails, claws, etc., evolve?
Skin is, basically, simply the outer -- or upper -- cell layer of a two-layered animal.
Feathers -- see above. Hair, feathers, scales, and claws including nails are all just outgrowths of the skin. You'll be surprised to learn that the same gene, called Sonic hedgehog (no joke), is involved in all outgrowths from animal body walls, all the above as well as teeth, taste buds, and limbs.
Which evolved first (how, and how long; did it work without the others)?
The digestive system, the food to be digested
The food came first. Not all organisms even eat other organisms, you understand.
the appetite
Very late.
the ability to find and eat the food
When you swim in a watery solution of your food, and when the food diffuses through your cell membrane, you don't have this problem.
the digestive juices
See above.
or the body's resistance to its own digestive juice (stomach, intestines, etc.)?
Must have evolved in tandem with the digestive enzymes and the acid production. Step by step.
The drive to reproduce or the ability to reproduce?
Cell division comes automatically.
The lungs, the mucus lining to protect them, the throat
The throat. Lungs are just an outgrowth of the esophagus. The mucus came last, because when you live in water, you don't dry out.
or the perfect mixture of gases to be breathed into the lungs?
"Perfect mixture" is ridiculous. We have adapted to the mixture that is there.
Of course, oxygen was dumped into the air long before lungs evolved.
DNA or RNA to carry the DNA message to cell parts?
RNA. Pretty obviously. Go read Wikipedia.
The termite or the flagella[te!] in its intestines that actually digest the cellulose?
First the "flagellates" which were originally free-living. I bet lots of such free-living organisms still exist."
continued on next post. i know, too long...
