Evolution, Critical studies, and the Canon

[Paraleptopecten (Timothy Campbell)]

@Burrawang

what mutations do you believe are examples of mutations that produce new complex information of the type that is absolutely required for evolution in the microbes to mankind sense?

Every. Single. Mutation. That. Has. Ever. Happened. created “new complex information of the type that is absolutely required.” Mutations are “new complex information” by definition. Whether that information is useful information is a completely separate issue from whether it is information. A large cloud contains more information than every human genome on the planet.

@Burrawang

I don’t think anyone has ever stated that ALL mutations are harmful

That may be, but to imply that all mutations are harmful is still deceptive.

@Burrawang

invisible, unobserved stuff

That’s exactly the lie in question! They are observed by their effects. Dark matter is "there is extra mass causing directly measured effects on gravity, but we can’t tell what the mass is. Dark energy is “whatever is causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate”. To claim that direct measurements are “fudge factors” is a lie.

@Burrawang

in the Big Bang myth

I still do not comprehend how arguing against the Big Bang is a useful argument in favor of anything except the arguer looking silly. It is a theory of the physical process through which the universe formed. How that is a problem with Genesis is beyond comprehension for me–the Bible says that God spoke creation into existence. It says absolutely nothing about the minutia of physical steps through which the physical universe went before life existed.

@Burrawang

physically associated

And that’s the lie in question. Redshift was calibrated using Type 1a supernovae as standard candles. If those changed significantly in brightness, it would require changes to physical constants that would render the current existence of life impossible. Astronomers have checked whether those are translational speed through space, and they aren’t.

@Burrawang

This type of bend and folding without breaking brittle rock means that maybe it wasn’t brittle rock at the time of its formation. These might have been much softer materials after all they were laid down during Noah’s flood, had been compacted down, and started off horizontal but tectonic movements occurred that shifted them and folded them while they were probably still soft.

That’s still an untruth.

@paleomalacologist

The YEC claim was that 1. the rocks were bent without cracks and 2. that such bending shows that the rocks were still all wet sediment from the flood, not solid rock, when they formed. Both of those can be proved to be false. The photos already posted show that the rocks do have cracks which were concealed in the poor quality photo supplied to “prove” that the rocks did not have cracks. The video I posted shows a rock bending without visible cracking. The claim that bending without cracking must indicate unconsolidated sediment is also definitely untrue.

@St.Roymond

The characteristics of stratified sediments are such that if you even gently bend layers of soft sediment there will be density and layer-surface changes that will result in ‘eruptions’ of more liquefied material into less liquefied as well as the other way around. If you bend the sediments really, really slowly these phenomena can be limited to the layer contact surfaces, but the phenomena can’t be eliminated. One aspect of the problem is that if you tilt sediments, at some point they will try to flow, and the more dense portions will flow through the less dense portions.

@Burrawang

Where are the intermediates at the Family, Order, Class and Phylum levels?

In the same list of ones that I linked.

@Burrawang

it is dishonest to attempt to use three Sea Snails of the same Genus as an example of an evolutionary transitional form in the Big picture evolution sense required for microbes to become microbiologists.

No, it is not. I am stating that this is an example of a small transition. Therefore, transitions between species exist. Those are examples of transitional forms. As you seem to want transitions between larger groups than species, here are the ones I listed above that are between larger groups than genera:

@Paraleptopecten

myllokunmingiids; stem-tetrapods that have lateral lines and labyrinthodont dentition, like certain fish, but no modern amphibians; Pakicetus, which has clearly amphibious features, and Basilosaurus-like dentition

@Paraleptopecten

placoderms

@Paraleptopecten

gorgonopsids, and rostroconchs

@Paraleptopecten

However, there are some tranbsitions which we have very good evidence for, like rostroconchia to bivalvia and scaphopoda, early ungulates to cetaceans, early archosaurs to birds, etc.

@Paraleptopecten

radiodont arthropods

@Paraleptopecten

the long series of non-mammal synapsids.

@Paraleptopecten

And an obvious case for transition to a family would be Echinofulgur and the busyconids. And given that Busyconidae seems to fall out closest to Fasciolariidae on genetics, Echinofulgur makes perfect sense as a transition.

I count 10 sets of them just from the ones that I have mentioned before on this forum that I can easily find.

@Burrawang

“When we look at the geology of the Earth, we find that present processes do not explain what we see, rather what we see points to catastrophic processes in the past and when we think about what those could be, it fits exactly with the account in Genesis of Noah’s flood which destroyed the whole Earth.”

That again is a lie. No one has given a coherent, detailed explanation of how typical Cenozoic shallow marine deposits could form in less than a few hundred thousand years.

@Burrawang

where in this brilliant and honest Christian Documentary Film has anyone, “implicitly accuse[d] all honest biologists, geologists, paleontologists, and cosmologists of being incompetent;”

By making statements that require all of them to be wrong in ways so spectacular as to make it utterly obvious to a lay audience. That implies that they are not competent in their fields of expertise. That is a slander.

@Burrawang

even just 10 genuine clear examples of an evolutionary transitional form where a less complex creature has evolved into a more complex creature with greater information on its DNA?

No, because that is an impossible demand for something that cannot be verified. This is the Nirvana Fallacy, demanding a higher standard of evidence than is possible. I have given multiple examples of transitions that show a creature evolving into a different one. Whether or not they have greater information in their DNA is an impossible standard of evidence, and is not actually predicted by evolution. Most of the means for significantly increasing the total information in a genome are rare events that don’t immediately show obvious changes, like whole genome duplication or novel allopolyploidy (both of which have been observed).

@Burrawang

As yet I have NOT seen even one

I have listed a number of them. You have changed the definition of “transitional” to something very different from the normal one (and committed a Motte-and Bailey Fallacy in the process).

@Burrawang

Do they demonstrate the BIG changes as demanded by evolution that allegedly claims a single cell evolved to the biodiversity we now see in the world?

Yes, but not to the impossible standard of evidence that you are using.

@Burrawang

I don’t accept the premise that clades exist in reality as defined by evolutionary theory.

Now you’re contradicting yourself and saying that observed realities don’t exist: either the species-level intermediates I listed above are parts of a single clade or “kind” (as you have claimed previously), and clades exist; or clades do not exist, which is about as blatantly untrue as any claim that I have ever heard promoting anything–Bread Wheat is a clade, my family is a clade, Homo sapiens is a clade, etc., etc. Any set of individuals which share a common ancestor is a clade.

@Burrawang

what makes you believe the examples you have listed are anything more than examples of individual diversity within a genus or species as the case may be?

The fact that they are morphologically intermediate between taxa that no one considers to be below family level.

@Burrawang

there are likely many other explanations besides your conclusion that they are intermediates.
Do you recognise that very real possibility?

Yes, and I’ve checked it for the ones that I have studied. None of the other possibilities that have been put forward are a better explanation.

@Burrawang

of course, all the while hoping to find an intermediate you can publish as yet another paper of ‘proof’ of evolution

That has nothing to do with my motivation. My goal is to accurately identify what I work on, not to prove evolution. If anything, evolution makes my job more difficult, and if I could ignore it, it would make my work easier. Ed Petuch has made dozens of claims about evolutionary intermediates, but I don’t get excited about them because of all of the problems in his papers (see this thread for examples: Similarities Between Poor Quality Scientific Papers and Pseudoscientific Essays)

@Burrawang

what are these alleged, " demonstrable lies in the “documentary”?

The ones that I listed above, to name a few.

@Burrawang

Please provide specific examples from the very good Christian documentary, ‘Evolution’s Achilles Heel’s’ where information is ‘dishonest’ and where ‘demonstrable falsehoods’ are promoted?

See above.