Tales of a Recovering Answer Addict: From Young-Earth Apologist to Evolutionary Creationist

I think you will find that the earliest Tetrapod STILL represents a transition form from fish to land. The geological time frame for various phases of evolution frequently get updated. But it doesn’t invalidate the process of moving from one transitional phase to another.

It is this exact same phasing that explains why LARGE MAMMALS (elephants, giraffes, etc) are found ABOVE all dinosaurs - - marine dinosaurs and land-based ones … not because they can tread flood waters better than marine dinosaurs could.

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No frame shift and duplication mutations don’t make complex systems. But frame shift and duplication mutations can make gene changes: switch on or off. The accumulation of these mutations can lead to significant phenotypic changes, such as elongated bone structure: the kind of structural changes that we see occurring in fish fin > land limb evolution.

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maybe yes and maybe not. but we need to check how much time it will need to this change. first- we need a lot more then a change in a bone structure to make a fish a tetrapod. even if its need only one new system to this change (lets say a system need for a land living). it will need at least 3-4 new parts (mutations). so even if each part appear one in a bilion mutations then it will need more then 10^30 mutations to make a fish into a tetrapod.

so even if tiktaalik appeared about 10 my ago you will still be claim that its a missing link?

Quite possibly. Because tiktaalik could have survived even up till the present day, and maybe we just didn’t find any fossils of it yet dating from when it first showed up on earth.

What would be surprising would be finding lots of Homo sapiens remains legitimately situated within, say, Ediacaran rocks, and showing signs that they really belonged in that stratum.

I don’t think it will take 10^30 mutations to make a fish into a tetrapod as the same genes can perform many different functions. For example didn’t gills evolve into the inner ear bones? Same genes involved in both functions. We have the difference between a fish and a tetrapod genome. How many differences are there? Much less than 10^30.

2 posts were merged into an existing topic: Is evolution “God-guided”?

5 posts were merged into an existing topic: Is evolution “God-guided”?

Evolution doesn’t predict ANY evolutionary form - - it is impossible to make predictions … without nearly God-like knowledge of the environment, the competition, the underlying genetic options that are disguised by what we actually think we see in the life form.

George

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Hardly. I’m not a journalist. Journalists love the term “missing link.” Scientists? Not so much.

Because paleontologists don’t share the public’s misunderstanding of “transitional forms” and “missing links”, they aren’t concerned about the straw man argument you are making. As has already been explained, minor adjustments in timelines (yes, 10 million years can be quite minor) does NOTHING to undermine the playing out of evolutionary processes over time.

Dcscccc, it sounds like you’ve picked up the popular but inaccurate idea of what I call “cities and routes evolution.” When people talk about “transitional forms” versus “fully functional organisms”, [see footnote] they think the latter are the major destinations of evolution (i.e., the cities) while for short periods (allegedly) there are various “transitional forms” along a road between major destination species. And that is why you’ve convinced yourself that if Tiktaalik evolved earlier and survived in a relatively unchanging form for many millions of years, that would somehow throw the whole “evolution chart” into chaos.

No. The problem you think you’ve identified is simply your own dissatisfaction with the straw man version of evolution you’ve created which, admittedly, you based on straw man versions of evolution you heard from various anti-evolution sources who have no idea what evolution is nor how it operates. (Those sources are also what convinced the general public that evolution is “one species turning into another species” and even “a cat turning into a dog”. You won’t hear many of them talking about changes in allele frequencies in populations over time. That would require actually learning about evolution theory.)

I have great empathy for your plight. I was in exactly the same mindset for many years because—despite being an anti-evolution speaker and debate—I had never bothered to sit down with even one evolutionary biology textbook used at a major university, and working through it page by page. When I finally did so, I was terribly embarrassed by the sudden realization that I had previously had nothing but a straw man concept of the Theory of Evolution.

Yet, I shouldn’t have been surprised. I got my information about evolution from people who were entirely ignorant of the science—and just as clueless about evolution as I was. Yet, because they were beloved ministry leaders who shared my evangelical theology and view of the Bible, I simply assumed that I could trust everything they told me. At the very least, I assumed that they had done their homework. They hadn’t. (Indeed, so much of what they had taught me came directly from one of SDA Prophetess Ellen White’s most devoted followers who knew little more about science than she did.)

Nothing is easier to debunk than the straw-man version of evolution. Of course, I know from personal experience that it was fun (and very self-flattering) to think that I was so easily exposing and debunking such simple errors in evolutionary biology that a planet full of PhD’s in that field so recklessly missed. (Yet, as the youngest professor on the entire university campus, I already had an oversized ego. So when I got by far the most applause and “votes” coming out of most of my debates against “evolutionists” [I wonder if the busloads of church congregations in the auditorium helped that???], it was very easy to convince myself that all of the best science was on my side! Yes, my booking agent even added that boast to the “Introduction Card” in the Guest Speaker Kit which was mailed to pastors who would be introducing me when I preached at their churches. You might say that the “product” we were selling to young earth creationist churches was essentially “We know more than those evil atheist science professors who brought the godless religion of evolution to our nation’s university campuses. You can know more too. Everybody can.” Yes, it was hubris in a can for the average pew-sitter! (And yes, I still feel extremely ashamed of myself. I was young and foolish—with an ego the size of the Creation Museum.)


@FOOTNOTE:
I’ve often asked those who speak of “fully-formed, functional organisms” to define and give me examples of “non-fully-formed functional organisms.” Nobody ever gives me a solid answer, but in conversation with them it is easy to see that they have the straw man view that evolution is believed to produce lots of “failed monsters”. You know: the “transition” between a fish and reptile which looked kind of like a hybrid of the two, with random tries at structures like the half-fin/half-leg with a randomly-positioned extra eye at the end. After all, it is obvious that a “transitional, non-fully-formed” animals with a “trial leg” as an third appendage at various locations on their bodies didn’t survive because they weren’t “fully formed” (at least, not like the four-legged destination animal of that evolutionary path would eventually be!) They hear phrases like “random mutations” and they imagine random monsters which weren’t “fully formed”.

For years I’ve told students: "If you want to understand the straw-man versions of evolution taught by many anti-evolution ministries, all you have to do is look at their arguments against the Theory of Evolution. If you know the argument, you will know their concept of evolution. Yes, most of their arguments are only successful at debunking their own straw-man versions of evolution, all of which sprang up naturally from their own misunderstandings of evolution.

By the way, Dr. Todd Wood, an anti-evolution Young Earth Creationist, has written many outstandingly honest and pleading exhortations to his “creation science” brethren begging them to abandon their straw-man arguments. It is interesting to see how he has largely been ostracized by all of the YEC ministries even though he earned a legitimate science PhD in a relevant field, something in extremely short supply among creation science leaders. He eventually had to raise his own support and become an independent scholar and speaker, pleading for honesty and integrity in the anti-evolution ministry community.

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Wow Mario! You write as if YECers are not familiar with what you say - as if they do not know how to approach the Bible - or as if they don’t understand hermeneutics at all. You have said nothing new - not a thing that YECers do not know or do not consider in their approach to the text. They do exactly what you said that you did and that is exactly why they are YEC.

By the way, what seminary did you attend? Just curious.

Tokyo Guy - - is this a question for @marusso (aka, Mario)? Or for me? I’m not quite sure what you are addressing in your post…

I’m wondering where Mario is too! I located that graphic especially for him and still look to his comments on it …

For Mario. Sorry.

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even if it appear first in a 10 my layer?

hi mr molinist. ok. so lets check the evolution theory. when i talk about evolution i do talk about change in the family level and not species. so- first: if evolution isnt true, what kind of fossil we will need to find to disprove the theory?

b)can you show how a complex system evolve step wise?

Yes, of course. :smile:

Any animal species, once created, is not obliged to go extinct, even if it winds up being “transitional.”

An example. Maybe it’ll help? In nature’s record of God’s creation, we see a progression in how animals gave birth:

  1. Eggs that need to stay in the water (fish, amphibians)
  2. Eggs that can stay out of the water (reptiles, birds, monotremes)
  3. Marsupials who give live birth to premature babies & grow them for a while in pouches
  4. Placental mammals

There is a clear temporal succession here. If you start in the oldest rocks and work forward, you’ll find first fossilized animals of only type 1, then fossilized animals of only types 1 and 2, then those of types 1 and 2 and 3, then those of types 1 and 2 and 3 and 4.

Top rock layer: 1, 2, 3, 4
Lower layers: 1, 2, 3
Even lower layers: 1, 2
Really far down there: 1

Technically, marsupials (#3) like kangaroos and opossums constitute a “transitional” stage, between monotremes like the platypus (mammals who lay eggs, part of group #2) and placental mammals (like us, #4). Yet we see marsupials in rocks of any age from when they were first created through to the modern era. So yeah: Just because something is transitional doesn’t mean it’s obligated to go extinct.

I hope this helps clear things up for you.

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Hi Mario,

Very interesting testimony. Your observation that there is a driving need to provide answers to every possible issue in creationist circles is a very good one. I had always wondered why Ham’s organisation settled on the weird and not all that catchy name “answers in genesis” (especially since they are otherwise so marketing-savvy), and I guess this answers my question…

I suspect that a part of growing up for all of us (spiritually anyway) is getting comfortable with unknowns, problems and discrepancies; realizing that they can’t all be solved once and for all and to everyone’s satisfaction and coming to terms with the fact that God has placed us in a universe where unsolved mysteries are a fact of life. A part of that process involves learning to see problems and questions as non-threatening, developing a faith that is less insecure and defensive.

I always enjoy hearing these accounts, since it gives me hope that even those who are the most defensive about their faith positions (like many YECs) can end up opening up to different ways of understanding their faith and their universe. I get the sense that for you, this couldn’t have happened through biology, since all of your defenses were thrown up on that front, but it had to happen through something like hermeneutics, since you were less defensive in that direction. Would that be accurate? If so, it seems like a good principle for how to get into a fruitful dialogue with someone who is entrenched in their views; constantly challenging someone where they’ve set up their own personal maginot line is a bad idea, but entering into a discussion about their views from a less defensive subject might be a good idea for introducing a more open and constructive dialogue. My approach of meeting YEC assertions head-on might be a dumb policy after all…

Anyway, thanks for the testimony!

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Well said! I think you’ve probably pinned down the reason why creationists can get so indignant; in their view of what evolution is, it is a ridiculous idea and they are amazed at how stubbornly atheists cling to such an obviously bad theory and what people pleasers TEs must be to agree with them. What they don’t realize is that it is their completely faulty vision of what evolution actually is that is at fault and not the reasoning that they use to destroy the strawman that they mistake for the real thing. Their reasoning is sound and they know it, but they never get the message that they are attacking a view that scientists don’t actually hold to. This is helpful since it makes some of us more sympathetic with where they are coming from and why they sometimes act like they are facing off with some crazy conspiracy against common sense.

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but a missing link need to be in the right geological period.

now about the fossils progresssion. first- i dont think that the systems of stage 3 or 4 is less complex then the other. so if its true then it isnt a real progression.

now- we can arrange also cars in hierarchy. but it doesnt prove any evolution.

I’m probably wasting my breath here, my friend, but let me try to help you understand.

“Missing link” is not a technical or scientific term. A missing link is just a species like any other that God gave life to at some point in history. God gave it breath and it lived where He put it, and He provided for it food to eat and when it died it left fossils and maybe it stuck around for 1,000 years or maybe for a million or, heck, maybe it’s still alive today, with only minor modifications. So no, it doesn’t have to be found in the “right” geological period because it’s not a “missing link.” It’s a “species.”

Tiktaalik, to your point, is a species that God created at a certain point. Wikipedia tells me it was discovered in rocks from 375 million years ago, which is right where we’d expect it for the transition to land vertebrates. Great! But if they found a Tiktaalik swimming around the Arctic Ocean alive tomorrow, that would not disprove evolution! It would just prove that this species was a lot more resilient than we thought, and we just haven’t found all the fossils for Tiktaaliks from 374 Ma up till the present. No biggie. And no big reveal of how evolution isn’t scientific.

I didn’t say stages 3 or 4 were more or less complex. That’s not what makes them a progression. Evolution does not always get more complex.

I don’t understand what cars have to do with anything, but feel free to elaborate if you care to.