Reconciling RTB and BioLogos Biblical Creation Models

Ah, so you googled.

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Yes. So you and/or anyone else who thinks they can find better numbers are free to improve my calculations. But again, last time even when I let the evolutionists themselves provide the numbers the result was highly problematic for the idea that evolution alone is solely responsible for what we see in animal life. Well, I only let them provide the numbers for the number of families which existed since the Cambrian Explosion. I claimed the date for that event was around 543 million years ago, which I hardly think needs to be justified. After that, its just division.

Do you have something else besides an argument from incredulity? Can you explain why this many new genes can not arise in these lineages through natural processes?

It shows that the DNA sequence differences between the two genomes are consistent with the pattern of changes that would be produced by natural processes of mutagenesis. For example, CpG mutations are by far the most common naturally occurring mutations, and they also make up the majority of mutations that separate humans and chimps.

It proves we share a common ancestor with chimps because the pattern of differences is exactly what we would predict if we shared a common ancestor with chimps.[quote=“Mark_Moore, post:38, topic:37468”]
If a common Designer used a lot of the same code in both and mutations crept into the code over time you would get similar results.
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That would require the genomes of almost all primates and mammals to start out nearly identical to one another. It also doesn’t explain why there are more mutations separating orangutans and humans than there are between humans and chimps. It doesn’t explain why chimps share more DNA with humans than they do with other apes. The only explanation that explains both the pattern of mutations and the number of mutations is evolution and common ancestry.[quote=“Mark_Moore, post:38, topic:37468”]
What I am looking at is the number of NEW genes in each group and LOST genes and deciding how plausible it is that known evolutionary mechanisms are the only explanation.
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You don’t seem that interested in determining if it is plausible. You just claim it is impossible without even looking into it.

Selective pressure is only one part of the equation. The other part is mutations, and it takes many generations for mutations to accumulate.[quote=“Mark_Moore, post:36, topic:37468”]
And yet no new families have arisen even though reasonable estimates of the number of animal families since the Cambrian Explosion / Years since that time would indicate that new families came along once every 1,500 year or so.
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Animal families didn’t exist until the 1700’s when Linnaeus invented them. You keep forgetting that taxonomic groups don’t exist in nature. They are human inventions.

Again, humans can put whichever species they want in whatever families they want. Humans could put chimps and humans in the same genus, and there has even been discussion of doing so. Taxonomic groups are arbitrary, human invented groupings that simply don’t exist in nature.

Yes, and organisms are reassigned all the time.

I have an argument from math. More than one actually.

If you saw an inchworm on my fence one morning and then saw it on the neighbor’s fence that afternoon, you would accept that it crawled there by natural means. But if you see the same worm in another city, it got some help.

That is simply too many genes being created and subtracted from entire populations of relatively long-lived creatures with low reproduction rates even given six million years worth of time. Maybe there is some other mechanism that is natural that we have not found yet, but attributing all the change to the known mechanisms despite their rate issues is dogmatism, not science. Any person with a reasonable credulity threshold should question it- unless they have an agenda which causes them to not WANT to go there.

and

That first one reported how hard it was to fix even ONE advantageous mutation into a population over a span that would equal to 12,000 years. In fact they failed to pull it off even under controlled conditions. Yet it was supposed to have happened 700 times from chimps to humans and even more amazing, a LOSS of the same kind of numbers in EVERY chimp on the planet? Yes, I am incredulous, but I should not have to explain why. You should have to explain why you are not.

They don’t exist in nature but they are not arbitrary. Not at the family level. The classification system worked so well for so long because it said something that was useful in reality- it reflected the categories which actually existed. Some new data may come in which changes things from time to time, we may quibble about closely related species, but the system is describing discrete difference which reflect realty. Those categories are real even if humans did not give a name to them.[quote=“T_aquaticus, post:46, topic:37468”]
Again, humans can put whichever species they want in whatever families they want.
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If it were close, you may have a point. It’s not close. Evolution, as an explanation for ALL animal change, has a severe time and distance problem.

Not at the family level. Previously you wanted to see my numbers. Once you saw them you want to claim the data is arbitrary? You could have mentioned that earlier, I mean it is not true anyway. But why bother to ask me for my calculations on the categories if you are now going to argue that the categories are so arbitrary as to make such calculations meaningless? I hope that is not where you are going with this.

I don’t know how you determined that. Especially since I had to inform you of the issue. AND I posted a link with the fly studies showing how hard it is to fix even ONE mutation in a population. But common sense alone makes this implausible. Even if genes could be fixed, it would take many many generations for one to become fixed in the entire population and I imagine if anything longer for one which was previously beneficial to be completely lost. To a population with long life spans, and low reproduction rates especially. To say it happened 700 times in humans since the split with chimps, and 700 more times with them? Maybe if all changes happened immediately after the split instead of averaged out over time you could get it done, but with sudden changes over short time you are right back into “miracle” territory.

There may be more explanations than you have heard of or are willing to consider. From a guy who has done quite a bit of cutting and pasting of code, I can see quite easily how it could happen in an intelligent design scenario.

More evidence mitigating against your hypothesis is that a big slice of our DNA is closer to Gorillas than Chimps!

Some researchers say that we are more closely related to Orangs based on physical traits and challenge the DNA evidence you are citing…

And some Orang genes are closer than chimp genes anyway.

Has it occurred to you that “new families” start out simply as “new species?” They are not nearly as different when they first diverge as they are when we see them much farther on down the road! There is no “great leap” necessary. Ancestral canids and felids would have been much more similar to each other than modern cats and dogs are; if you examined them in their ancient context, you’d put them in the same genus at least if you didn’t just consider them subpopulations of the same species. It’s only after a great deal of time goes by that the accumulation of differences and the extinction of neighboring variations makes the large categories seem so distinct from each other.

This article may help you visualize what’s going on in evolution better:

Of course I understand that this is the claim. I taught science in the public schools for twelve years. But we have not seen that, what we have seen is species exhibiting variation within a range. The argument has always been “well we just haven’t been looking long enough”. So I wanted to see “how long is long enough? How long should it take at the average historical rate for some group of organisms to change enough for them to fairly be considered a new family?” And the numbers show that, given the number of families on earth and what we think has happened in prior ages, that if evolution can really change things that much then we should have seen changes of that magnitude within historical times The numbers are not adding up.

And yes I appreciate the irony of Ham embracing evolution in an effort to fit all the animals on the ark, but its not relevant to anything I am claiming. I embrace a model ( a Christ-centered view of early Genesis) that features a local flood with global consequences…

That isn’t what I argued and you aren’t taking it in context. The fact that you get all your info from google tells me what I need to know.

Sorry I misread your original statement.

The classification of families has only existed for about 400 years so we still have 1,100 years to go before we can say you were right.

" The fact that you get all your info from google tells me what I need to know."

If I got it from Harvard it would not make any difference. Either you, or someone else on this board, can address that evidence, or you can’t. If you can’t, the best you can do is try to dismiss it because its not from one of your preferred sources- and the reason that is the best you can do is because your preferred sources can’t come up with anything that seriously undermines the conclusion.

Good one! I don’t know if the classification system would even have been a viable way to categorize animal life if the changes were of that magnitude though. I mean the system was developed after accumulating 1,000 years of knowledge about animals, so maybe I only have 100 years to go, and I am starting to like my odds!

If I am reading you right you are wrong. If new families only show up every 1,500 years (your number) there would probably never be a change that would invalidate the entire system.