This is by no means a definitive argument against evolution, but I offer it to put the “time, chance and random mutation” theory in perspective.
Everyone knows that micro-evolution occurs, such as dog breeding and bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics. But macro-evolutionists believe that with enough time an amazingly complex single cell of unknown origin could make lots and lots of small changes, develop reproductive capacities and eventually become humans, elephants, caterpillar/butterflies, chameleons and so much more.
Let’s consider something very simple. Imagine that you shuffle a deck of cards. If you shuffled it one time per second, how often would all the cards go back into their original order? (Ace of spades, King of spades, etc.) The math is simply 1/52 (the odds of the Ace of spades being on top) times 1/51 times 1/50, etc. I left out the Jokers to make it easier.
Guess how many years it takes? I’m not kidding: 2,557,653,956,460,680,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
If everyone on the planet shuffles the cards instead of just one person, it only takes 393,485,224,070,873,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years. That is still 87,441,160,904,638,500,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 times the age of the earth, and even more times the period that life has existed here. You are much more likely to win the Lottery seven times in a row. We even have a term to describe the practical probability of that happening: Zero.
I make it so easy — you didn’t even have to create the cards or the people to shuffle them. But when you’re done, all you have is a particular card sequence. You haven’t brought anything to life. You haven’t created new cards. You haven’t developed different sexes of cards that can make new cards that evolve to a computerized version of Monopoly. Most importantly, you just created a pattern, not information. DNA is full of information, not just patterns.
The odds of all that would be enormously higher. This is a very simple view of the requirements for structural changes:
- Many genes must change at once.
- A change to any one gene affects many functions.
- The probability of a genetic mutation being beneficial is very low. Harmful or insignificant mutations are far more likely.
- Significant changes require many simultaneous beneficial mutations.
When you extend the odds of each of these things it becomes quite fantastical that, as some evolutionists claim, a mammal would go from exclusively consuming fresh water to salt water and more.
And remember, even if macro-evolution proved to be true it still wouldn’t disprove God. Evolutionary theory doesn’t explain where the universe came from or even where life begins. Its proponents just assume that there is no God and work overtime trying to prop up their massive non sequitur and stifling the speech of those who dare to disagree. Their theory is so transparently false and ridiculous that even with their crushing of academic freedoms, their monopolies in public schools and the complicity of the media, most people still don’t believe it. It reminds me of a quote by J. Budziszewski:
Though it always comes as a surprise to intellectuals, there are some forms of stupidity that you must be highly intelligent and educated to commit.
Meditate on the figures above the next time someone tells you that the universe came into being with no creator and that chemicals came to life and organized themselves to all we see today.
Macro-evolutionists must think the Lottery is a sure thing.
Also see the Wintery Knight’s post on this, which addresses how the formation of a single protein is vastly more complicated than this example.
A typical protein isn’t made of 52 parts, it’s made of around 200, and there are 80 possible amino acids, not just 26! And in the case of proteins,the vast majority of the possible sequences that you can make won’t have any biological function at all! (And there are many more problems besides, such as chirality, cross reactions, and bonding type). Even if you filled the whole universe with reactants and reacted it all at Planck time, you still wouldn’t be likely to get even one protein!
And this link is a keeper — Could life have emerged spontaneously on earth?
Eternity Matters 
Why? I dispute this entirely. Speciation is a result of changes in gene frequency with time. There is no requirement that many genes need to change at once (they don’t, in fact).
No. A change may affect only the function of the protein that that gene encodes. It may affect developmental gene on/off timing, producing morphological modifications. It depends on the gene.
True, but you don’t seem to grasp that seriously deleterious changes are weeded out by natural selection and those which prove to be beneficial accumulate because they tend to be selected for. Nor does a mutation which is neutral necessarily not become part of the gene pool. Even slightly deleterious mutations can have a significant impact on population genetics through a mechanism known as ‘genetic drift’. This was very important in the Lenski experiment which showed that the genome of E. coli could be primed to allow the bacteria to feed on citrate (which they normally are incapable of doing) by a single mutation (neither beneficial nor deleterious) which spread through the population Lenski was observing. Once this mutation spread through the population, a second mutation in the same gene allowed the bactera to start feeding on the citrate in the culture medium. A third mutation later on allowed greater efficiency of making use of citrate as an energy source.
Same as the first point. I dispute it in its entirety. Signigicant change can occur from a simple change in transcription factor concentration gradients. I won’t go into detail here. If you really want to learn more, I suggest Sean B. Carroll’s books on Evo/Devo, namely “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” and “The Making of the Fittest”. He goes into great detail on how significant morphological changes can be had by changing only a very few genes.
You’re right. There are some very notable Christian evolutionary biologists, including Ken Miller and Sir Simon Conway Morris. But noneof this has any bearing on the veracity of evolutionary theory.
Of course not. It doesn’t explain gravity, either. Who said it does? Those questions are being answered by other fields, namely cosmology and abiogenesis, and we know more than enough to demonstrate that the supernatural will be unnecessary in the final synthesis for each. Heck, most of the problems of abiogenesis are already worked out.
Who is doing such a thing? The problem with creationists is that the only thing they bring to the table is griping about evolution. Their attacks are disingenuous (if not downright lies, as in the case of Answers in Genesis) and feeble. Pointing that out is not stifling free speech. A hypothesis must stand on its own merits, and creationism is simply incapable of doing that. “God did it” is not an explanation in the absence of explaining just exactly how said god did it. It just begs the question.
Not sure where this comes from. Mutation is indeed random, but it provides the genetic variation from which the more successful variants are nonrandomly selected. Natural selection most certainly is not random and is a very powerful process.
Contrary to what you might think, there is absolutely no controversy within the scientific community as to whether evolution took place. Evolution is established fact. It is, rather, up to us to determine how evolution occurred. This is where are the scientific arguments are, but no one questions that we did evolve simply because it would be like saying the sky is brown.
Darwin made great strides in this direction with his insights, and in broad strokes he was largely correct. But he was wrong on a number of points. For instance, he did not know about genes and thought inherited characteristics came about through a kind of ‘blending’. But our own genome is chock full of signs as to our evolutionary history.
If you are really interested in learning about evo, Jerry Coyne’s “Why Evolution is True” and Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show On Earth” are excellent starting points. Carroll’s books can be a bit technical for the lay person, though he does his best to minimize that.
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Hi SA,
My answer to that comment and many others is to do some more study. I highly encourage you to read “Signature in the Cell” by Stephen Meyer — http://www.amazon.com/Signature-Cell-Evidence-Intelligent-Design/dp/0061472786/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256851649&sr=8-3 .
Thanks for the bedtime story.
It matters a lot when people like Dawkins and countless others conflate the two. I’d take evolutionists more seriously if they would critique their own a little more. I spend a lot of time whaling on fake and misinformed Christians here. I’d rather get to the truth than prop up some bogus sense of ecumenism.
Again, people like Dawkins assume it.
Abiogenesis = massive FAIL.
Go see Expelled! And that is a straw man and conflation (not all IDers are Young Earth Creationists, though Dawkins et al are either too ignorant or disingenuous to acknowledge that. Evolutionists use the “science of the gaps” way more than anyone uses the “God of the gaps.”
Typical conflating of macro and micro, not to mention the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
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Okay, if you read books on evo from people who clearly don’t understand evo (like Meyer), then you will yourself not understand evo. And it is clear you don’t. It is YOU who needs to read something by someone who actually does research on the subject. Again, my comments stand. I know far more on the subject that Meyer, believe me.
So, centimeters exist but not kilometers? Wow. That’s just- wow.
Seen it. It is the largest collection of eggregious lying I have ever seen. For instance, Gonzales was not given tenure becuase he was simply not putting out papers. That will always get a tenure refusal. Same for the rest. And the comparison of Darwinism to Naziism was so ludicrous that I would have laughed my guts out if I hadn’t been so offended.
It makes little difference what kind of creationist one is when all are demonstrably wrong.
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You know more than Meyer? Hee hee. Credibility going . . . going . . . gone. What a joke.
You’re kidding, right? You think the centimers / kilometer thing is an argument? You think that is a valid analogy to dog breeding vs. a single cell of unknown origina eventually becoming a human being with two sexes?
I’m glad you linked to your website. I’m afraid someone would accuse me of posting fake comments here to make atheists / evolutionists look foolish.
Ha. Sure, Gonzales denial of tenure had nothing to do with his ID view. What a liar. I know of many people interested in ID who are afraid to go to conferences because people like you would deny them tenure over it or fire them. You have so little confidence in your views.
Re. the Nazi reference — Oh, poor boy was offended? But why? In a molecules to man worldview you have no reason to be. No grounding whatsoever for your morality. Your evolution must be faulty.
Of course, I know why you know the Nazi’s are wrong. My worldview can explain yours — your suppression of the truth in unrighteousness — but yours can’t explain mine. Remember, your beloved evolution is responsible for all religions.
Question begging. You all cheat and lie constantly. You haven’t proved how the universe came into existence without a creator and how life began. What a pathetic bluff.
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Isn’t it a bit odd that you say a certain individual doesn’t understanding evolution… and then go on to describe micro and macro as merely centimeters/kilometers?
Friend, I suspect you are the one not fully informed on the subject.
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Eugenics is a completely logical conclusion of an evolutionary worldview. If you are repulsed by that — and you should be — then perhaps you should find a worldview a little more consistent with your moral intuitions. And don’t deny that Hitler didn’t favor eugenics or use Darwinistic philosophy.
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I think just about everyone is repulsed by eugenics, and anything of the sort. By the way, what is Darwinistic philosophy? Was his theory a philosophy? Is that why it bothers you?
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As I replied to Fox, everyone has a way they view the world. If you think that life came from non-living chemicals and evolved to what we have today you will see the world in a radically different way morally and otherwise. Your belief in Darwinian evolution should inform your philosophy of life.
I think many aren’t repulsed at all about eugenics (see http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/eugenics for a definition). ~90% of Down Syndrome human beings are destroyed in the womb. Pro-aborts think you should be able to have gender selection abortions. Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood with those philosophies. She is more extreme than the KKK (oddly enough, they are pro-life). And on and on.
And in a Darwinian worldview, who is to say they are wrong? Why waste the disproportionate resources on these people? And why not kill ’em outside the womb as well? Yes, we both know that is wrong, but your worldview can’t explain why.
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What I’m trying to say is that Darwin’s theory is purely about the ways life forms change from generation to generation. It’s not philosophy. It does not say anything about morals, and it does not say anything about how we should act. It is merely a scientific theory about how the diversity of life came to be.
Anyone is free to believe that morals came from God, or that morals came from evolution, or that God used evolution to give us morals.
Yes, Darwin’s discoveries tested his faith, but is that evidence that he was wrong?
His theory has no more influence on my philosophy of life than does Einstein’s or Newton’s.
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Please. It absolutely drives the philosophy of those who hold it. It says everything about morals for them.
Re. Darwin’s discoveries testing his faith: You should research that a bit more. His family was as non-believing as he was. His religious enterprises were pure politics and pragmatism. He didn’t find things that undermined his faith, he went into it with presuppositions. Don’t drink the Darwinist Kool-Aid. Go learn for yourself.
Of course, that doesn’t make him right or wrong. He was wrong, but for evidential reasons.
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Your belief in Darwinian evolution should inform your philosophy of life.
No, it shouldn’t. Where the hell are you getting this from.
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Well, Darwinian thought is Hellish, but Satanic would be a more accurate description.
If you really think that is how life came about that would inform your worldview. The inconsistency of Darwinists is due to two things:
1. Whether you believe it or not, God wrote the law on your heart. You know what things are wrong but suppress the truth in unrighteousness.
2. The culture still has fumes of Christianity in it which atheists mistake for their own morality.
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AHHHHHHHHHHH!
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Was that “AHHHHHHHHHHH!” as in “Oh, now I see what you meant” or “AHHHHHHHHHHH!” as in, “Wow, Neil is crazier than I thought.” I’m guessing the latter :-).
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Yeah it was the latter. You know how Charlie Brown yells? Yeah.
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“Evolutionary worldview?” Care to elaborate on that?
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Everyone has a way they view the world. If you think that life came from non-living chemicals and evolved to what we have today you will see the world in a radically different way morally and otherwise.
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Great post! Great! I have to remember that one. Unfortunately, that ginormous number looks like our national debt by the day 🙂
I wouldn’t for a moment want to think my life is a product of time plus matter plus chance. I like better being a creature in the image of God.
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@SA:
Re: centimeters/kilometers conflation.
In 1937, Theodosius Dobzahanshy wrote in Genetics and the Origin of Species:
“There is no way toward an understanding of the mechanism of macroevolutionary changes, which require time on a geological scale, other than through a full comprehension of the microevolutionary processes observable within the human lifetime. For this reason we are compelled at the present level of knowledge reluctantly to put a sign of equality between the mechanisms of micro- and macroevolution, and proceeding on this assumption, to push our investigations as far ahead as this working hypothesis will permit.”
This is where the conflation of mac-evo and mic-evo began. The problem is that mic-evo isn’t simply smaller doses of mac-evo, though many evos scoff that we believe in small changes but not big changes [ie – your current centimeter/kilometer feint].
To really comprehend the difference between the two, we have to take into account that mic-evo is observable, horizontal variations within a kind of animal. Dog breeding is the common example used, by both evos and real scientists; basically, be it a wolf, German shepherd, English bulldog or chihuahua, a dog is still a dog is still a dog and recognizably so. It is never observed to have been anything else and it has never been observed to transmogrify into something that is not a dog. In other words, speciation occurs within stasis.
By contrast, mac-evo is not observable, as Dhobzansky lamented. That should be a giant red flag for any thinking individual. Evos can beg off that, of course mac-evo is unobservable; it happens over long ages and humans have only been observing things for a few thousand years. But as Stephen Jay Gould noted, “The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism [ie- traditional evolution]: 1. Stasis. Most species appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; A dog is still a dog and recognizably so. 2. Sudden appearance. A species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; by traditional evolution, No, it appears all at once and `fully formed.’” (Gould, Stephen J. [Professor of Zoology and Geology, Harvard University, USA], “Evolution’s Erratic Pace,” Natural History, Vol. 86, No. 5, May 1977, p.14).
This observation is confirmed in present biology and is consistent with the Creationist theory of variation within fixed created kinds. The dots are only connected in their minds, not in the fossil record nor in observable biology. Rather than seeing new kinds of animals appear, we’re seeing species go extinct! 150 years after the publication of Origins, rather than the innumerable transitional forms predicted by Darwin’s theory, we have only a handful of disputable candidates when our museums should be full of them!
Their answer for why mac-evo is unobservable over long ages? The fossil record is imperfect, but they’ll find the missing links eventually. They assume the links are missing; they see nothing, but presume something should be there instead of nothing.
The bottom line is that vertical particles-to-people mac-evo is not observable either in the fossil record or in contemporary biology, while horizaontal mic-evo within kinds is observable. This contradiction is why Dobzhansky was reluctantly forced to conflate the two as he did.
No creationist disputes what we observe [mic-evo]; we simply disagree that the evidence even suggests the dots deserve to be connected. darwin and all who follow him simply extrapolated too far beyond the evidence.
For example, you stated “no one questions that we did evolve simply because it would be like saying the sky is brown,” but you miss the fact that the color of the sky is in fact observable but mac-evo is not; hence your retort is nothing more than a straw man.
But back to the subject of the odds. If you believe in the long odds required of mac-evo, know that Vegas is laughing.
I’ve explored a specific aspect of this topic at http://siriusknotts.wordpress.com/2008/08/27/darwins-dyke-monkeys-and-their-typewriters/
-Sirius Knott
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Great points, Sirius, and thanks for the monkey / typewriter link.
I did some quick math once. Not only will the 1,000 monkeys not type Shakespeare, but it would take 123,000 times the age of the universe just to get “Mary had a little lamb.”
I’ll wait here.
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Neil,
do you really believe wht you are writing?
Surely you must know that that monkey-typewriter-analogy is utter nonsense, spread by people who are willfully ignorant of science.
Make it this way to make more sense: You have a very large bowl full of billions of letters. The letters have the ability to stick to each other. Several letters form syllables, several syllables form words, several words form sentences, several sentences form paragraphs, several paragraphs form chapters, several chapters form a novel.
But other than your crazy monkey-typewriter business there is no pre-determined outcome of the novel, it could be anything, any topic, any genre. No need to copy a book that already exists, which indded cannot be expected from random mutation and non-random natural selection.
If evolutiuon could start from scratch once again, chances are that the outcome will be entirely different, there is not even a guarantee that intelligent life would evolve again.
Read real scientists like Coyne and Dawkins if you want understand anything about evolution and stay away from liars like Meyer.
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It doesn’t matter how you pull the letters. You won’t get anything with real information. Don’t forget that Darwinists use the typewriter argument themselves.
Spare us pointless ad homs about Meyers being a liar. Dawkins has been caught in lies. Search this blog.
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I do not place myself in the creationist category, but I think logic demands that we consider the evolution issue very critically:
If it is already predetermined that evolution is correct, we arrive at an interesting situation:
1) Lack of evidence is proof of evolution
2) Evidence found that points to position A is proof of evolution
3) Evidence found that points to position B, mutually exclusive to position A, is proof of evolution
We have a situation where anything found, or nothing found, is regarded as proof.
If Christians tried to make that argument, that 1, 2 and 3 are ALL proof of Christianity, we would rightfully be laughed at and called unreasonable.
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Excellent point. It is like the “Junk DNA” issue, where initially the Darwinists crowed about how it supported their theory. No intelligent designer would have such a thing, right?! What fools!
Fast forward.
Oops — heh heh — turns out that Junk DNA isn’t junk like we thought. Well of course, that supports Darwinism because of blah blah blah. Reminds me of Kevin Nealon from SNL: “What I really meant to say was . . .”
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Oh, and recall that we “give” you the monkeys and typewriters. The example demonstrates just how ridiculous the theory is even if you get to assume the most complex parts of all, including the creation of life.
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Darwinists try to disrupt ID conference — http://theconstructivecurmudgeon.blogspot.com/2009/10/attend-learn-despite-attacks.html
How pathetic. Yeah, they are all about the scientific method and free exchange of ideas.
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I understand the theory. You don’t. I’m not ignoring the theory. I know it require multiple changes at once. Your bedtime story ignores that. End of story.
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It often does, but one change can happen first, and lie dormant (if it does not effect the organism, and most mutations do not) until the second change occurs. This has been shown i a lab where e.Coli has evolved to be able to eat citrate. This require two completely unrelated mutations to happen before any benefit could be obtained. And it happened.
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Neil,
Glad to see you link to Groothuis, he has some really good stuff over there.
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@LCB:
Good points. I explored the question of consequences for scientific inquiry if God is excluded a priori from all consideration once.
http://siriusknotts.wordpress.com/2008/06/15/there-is-no-science-but-naturalism-and-darwin-is-its-prophet/
@Ryan:
Re: “Sorry, but if you use the monkeys/typewriters analogy, you don’t know the theory, and specifically, you are ignoring natural selection of progressively beneficial traits. That’s pretty basic evolution.”
The monkeys and typewriters analogy was used by Richard Dawkins as my post pointed out. I’m sure you’re not implying that dawkins doesn’t know his evolution, right?
As for the the assertion that there is a natural selection of progressively beneficial traits… um, where do we observe that again? More specifically, where do we observe a natural selection of progressively beneficial traits AND the INCREASE in genetic information and complexity required of ebola-to-evolutionist vertical mac-evo? Natural selection is observed to select by a net loss of information, not the gain in new information required for goo-to-you evo to work.
Dawkins cheated [ie. he cheated, fudged, stacked the deck] by allowing his monkey shakespeare program to select [ie. – know beforehand to keep] the characters and letters required to make the sentence “methinks it is like a weasel.” Yet he says that natural selection is a blind watchmaker and evolution is completely unplanned. Hence the contradiction between his beliefs and his analogy.
Also, he failed to account for those aforementioned increaes in DNA information. His analogy [with its fudge factor] might account for order out of randomness and complexity out of chaos, but it cannot make “me thinks it is like a weasel” increase in length to form the entire collected works of Shakespeare [microbe-to-man vertical mac-evo].
Finaly, since a program is required to recognize language elements and keep the beneficial ones, his analogy fails completely to show undirected, random evolution. Instead his analogy with its telling amount of implied programming demonstrates intelligent design.
How embarrassing! Poor Dawkins… will he ever get it right? I still have hope for him. After all, there was this Saul of Tarsus fellow once…
-Sirius Knott
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He mentioned the analogy as a false one. He did not “use it”. The analogy assumes that with every new generation of species, you start from scratch, with no information about the DNA of the parent. If you had your monkeys changing a few letters here and there and keeping the letters that looked like a Shakespeare play, you might be on to something, but it assumes that evolution has a goal, which it does not. Dawkins program shows the first flaw by allowing letters to be kept with each iteration, but he says that program still does not work for the second reason. If you must criticize a respected scientist for trying to teach you something, at least listen to what he says first.
Lenski’s 20 year long e.Coli experiment.
Absolutely wrong wrong wrong. Here’s an example of an increase in “information” (information is actually an incorrect term to use here, since even a random set of genes is information).
An organism has 20 chromosomes, but one of those chromosomes splits due to a mutation. The organism now has 21 chromosomes, but two are exact copies. They each evolve slowly to change independently. The organism now has 21 chromosomes, all at least the length of the 20 it had before. You consider that a loss of information? All of these things can happen. Down’s Syndrome is an example of a mutation that produces an extra chromosome.
No, he didn’t. He approximated the probability that a mutation would be beneficial, and would give an organism an advantage. Nature selects traits. Evolution is blind in the sense that it has no foresight, but it is most certainly guided by the environment.
If you believe that “micro” evolution exists, you must understand that nature guides it. How is it that nature could not keep guiding micro-evolution to the point where an organism changes enough to become a new species? How does nature know these boundaries? In biology, the boundary between species is purely arbitrary.
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In Dawkins’ program he established a goal which was the target phrase. When comparing the random sequence to the target, it preserved certain letters — but the string of characters remains gibberish so the match is only preserved for the value of a future success. Intermediates are not selected for what they are (gibberish) but for what they will be (Dawkins’ intelligently-selected sentence). The computer is matching letters to a template — and that is nothing like Darwinian evolution claims. Evolution supposedly occurs without a goal, so there should be no way to preserve non-functional mutations for some potential value in the future.
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I’ll give you that. It was a bad example to demonstrate evolution. I think he was just pointing out the even worse example of monkeys and typewriters.
Can we just agree that both were bad examples?
Evolution does occur without a goal, and this can be shown by the fact that divergent species often follow completely different paths, usually related to the different environments in which they end up.
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@Ryan:
Re: Dawkins as a respected scientist trying to teach me something.
Was that an appeal to credentialism? Dawkins stated in Chapter 3 of The Blind Watchmaker that:
“I don’t know who it was first pointed out that, given enough time, a monkey bashing away at random on a typewriter could produce all the works of Shakespeare. The operative phrase is, of course, given enough time. Let us limit the task facing our monkey somewhat. Suppose that he has to produce, not the complete works of Shakespeare but just the short sentence ‘Methinks it is like a weasel’, and we shall make it relatively easy by giving him a typewriter with a restricted keyboard, one with just the 26 (capital) letters, and a space bar. How long will he take to write this one little sentence?”
After admitting there isn’t enough time for single-step selection, he made an attempt to lead us to believe that cumulative selection [this time using a computer program performing the monkey work] could do the job in an adequate amount of time. Of course, as he admits “Our model, in other words, is strictly a model of artificial selection, not natural selection,” since it included a selecting agent to make sure everything turned out as planned.
Here’s where the cheat comes in – and it’s the same one Charles Darwin used: Using observable artificial selection as an analogy for undirected, directionless natural selection. It is essentially comparing apples to oranges but trying to slip this one by on the ground sthat they are both fruit.
Dawkins takes a program that shows how artificial selection works and pretends as if this would somehow account for natural selection.
Re: Lenski’s e Coli experiment:
You’re oversimplifying: http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/aid/v4/n1/beneficial-mutations-in-bacteria
Re: “How is it that nature could not keep guiding micro-evolution to the point where an organism changes enough to become a new species? How does nature know these boundaries? In biology, the boundary between species is purely arbitrary.”
Wow. A complex question. A false question at that.
Again, what we observe are horizontal changes within a kind of animal [NOT analogous to a species, btw; Creationists do observe speciation but a dog remains a dog and recognizably so, as I stated] allowing an animal to adapt to its environment by becoming more specialized at the expense of an observable trend of loss of adaptive genetic potential/information. What we do not observe either in biology or the fossil record is vertical microbes-to-man evolution where one kind of creature becomes an entirely different kind. Again, we’re not refering to speciation, but common descent.
In fact, your note that “Evolution does occur without a goal, and this can be shown by the fact that divergent species often follow completely different paths, usually related to the different environments in which they end up.” is simply speciation. A fruit fly remains a fruit fly. A dog remains a dog. A virus remains a virus. It becomes nothing else. It wasn’t preceded by anything else. The dots are only connected in your mind, bro.
I like your second question: “How does nature know these boundaries?” It seems to be programmed into our genetic potentiality. You imply that nature would not know such boundaries and therefore would cross them. This is even more damning to your case, since again this limitation of variation within fixed limits is observable in both biology and the fossil record.
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Can you let me know what you think the difference between natural and artificial selection is? It might help me find where we differ. Artificial selection is simply humans making choices about who survives, instead of nature making that choice. As far as the mechanisms causing the mutations, beneficial and otherwise, there is no difference.
Re: Lenski’s e Coli experiment: Are you really doubting his results? He has offered samples of every single one of his bacteria strains collected over the past 20 years to whomever would like to verify or replicate his work. If there is a scientist who can claim he is wrong, where is the published paper?
Land mammals to whales, verified in the fossil record with numerous transitional fossils, and in the genetics of mammals living today (and made more obvious by the existence of a pelvis in whales, which seems about as useful for the whale as a bicycle).
Dinosaurs to birds, verified in the fossil record, and in the genetic comparison between reptilians and modern birds.
Early primates to humans, verified via the fossil record and genetic comparison between chimps and humans (specifically shown to have happened with the extra chromosome in apes that has fused in humans)
As for natures boundaries, I’m referring to the fact that as species have evolved, there is no exact boundary between when one species becomes another, but since you won’t believe that happened, you may as well disregard it.
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Dawkins breaking his own commandment, again, and dodging issues and debates — http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2009/10/will-richard-dawkins-debate-stephen_31.html
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Dawkins is a scientist. I don’t know why he should be expected to debate others who have not earned credentials in his field, and have not published peer reviewed papers on the subject.
I may actually check out Meyers book. I’m not really familiar with his arguments. I’m a little disappointed, after looking him up, that he is another Discovery Institute person. Why are all these guys associated with the same “think tank”? I’ve heard DI people in debates, one in particular last summer with PZ Myers, and he had not even heard of the species Myers brought up. It wasn’t that his arguments were bad, he just hadn’t heard of much of the science that was discussed.
ID people claim that their argument are completely sound and obvious. I just find it so hard to believe that when so few people who have looked at the evidence take their side.
I’ll read Meyer’s book, but better have some good science in it.
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Ryan, that is why your comments about this are simultaneously amusing and a waste of time. I’ve given you some rope on this, but it is short.
Meyers does have credentials in his field. I’m pretty sure he was the one published in a peer reviewed journal that drove the petty, under-confident, vicious Darwinists to try and destroy the man who approved the publication. Their claim? You shouldn’t publish ID in a peer-reviewed journal because it isn’t science. Why isn’t it science? Because the Darwinists who control the press won’t publish it. Cute trick.
Your isolated claim against the ID guy is ironic considering the inanities that come from Dawkins.
Yes, you should read Meyer’s book.
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Aren’t you treating me the same way you claim Dawkins is treating Meyer? Are you willing to have a debate with me? You’ve told me you’re not willing because my arguments are not valid.
I said I’m willing to read the book, and I think that’s quite generous of me, since Meyer has zero biology credentials. as far as I can see. I can’t see any claim of any by him at least. His paper was withdrawn from a publication because his buddy slipped it in without the normal review process. Unless you can tell me who reviewed it of course.
I’ll overlook all of this, and give him a soapbox in my head, and will actually put money in his pocket against my better judgement.
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You’ve had way more comments published here than Dawkins has taken seriously. And I note quite specifically why some are wrong. After much repetition, I say, “Enough.” Big difference.
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