Edgar, could you elaborate on this a bit? I want to better understand your thought process here because I think it’s shared by many. Would you say that humans made through biological processes of embryology are less “fearfully and wonderfully made” than those created ex nihilo?
4 Likes
And yet Gould doesn’t agree with you.
That would include the gaps by the way.
2 Likes
Medicines and treatments are based on the validity of Evolutionary assumptions. Big Pharma loses billions if their assumptions are wrong, and people die. Either Speciation is a normal part of life on Earth… or it isn’t.
Perhaps you will grudgingly admit that speciation can and does happen. But it seems you reject Evolution on the grounds that nobody can show you a 5 million-year video showing a population of ground dwelling reptile producing new generations with increasingly smaller limbs until they don’t have any limbs at all.
So… what to do for your “evidential neediness”? You want to see the “big jumps” ! - - how do we satisfy that yearning?
Well, there is always this. The video discusses laboratory work where the researchers accidentally created a brand new Virtual Species!: A one-celled organism that feeds on algae swallowed an algae cell that just wouldn’t die! And the new sub-group of Animal+Algae were more resistant to food shortages (as long as there was light to keep the algae cells alive).
So imagine a pond where such creatures could live … and because of conditions in the water, all the one-celled creatures that didn’t contain their new “algae pets” died. One species dies. A new Virtual Species lives on. Long Live the New Species! … for now.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
THREAD: [One-Celled Life Swallows Algae … Model for how we have Mitochondria!]
I think this is a pretty important finding … buried within one of the hundreds of YouTube videos on Evolution !
Protists that fed on algae cells swallowed some that would not be digested and did not die… and they were lucky they did! Those algae cells helped the Protists survive starvation - - and provide an exquisite parallel to the acquisition of proto-mitochondria by one celled life ages ago…
What? Ha.
Either way, there are going to be fossil gaps.
But now you have the unenviable task of explaining why God created a template for Chimps with a broken Vitamin C gene… and then did it exactly the same way with Humans. Gee… it’s almost as if God was trying to PROVE that humans and chimps shared a common ancestor with a broken gene!
You seem quite oblivious to the fact fossil evidence, buried in your so-called flood layers, follow the phylogenetic hierarchy of life to a “T” !!! Don’t you think it is odd for God to intentionally drown these animals and then cover them up … in exactly a way that mimics evolutionary processes?
Plus the fact that a Global Flood would have happened during one of the early dynasties of Egyptian civilization - - and yet we find no interruption to Egyptian continuity … and we certainly don’t find a few million humans fossillized in the Nile Valley … along with all those other fossils. In fact, we don’t find millions or even thousands or even hundreds of humans fossilized in the same layers as all the other animals that the humans owned.
Your data is dead on arrival, I’m afraid.
1 Like
Tunicates, aka protochordates, are relevant to immunology, the most applied discipline of biology. You claimed that I wasn’t referring to “empirical stuff,” hence my question. What was unclear about it?
I do get it. We already know that, despite you telling us repeatedly that you are talking about evidence:
We now know that you misrepresent your position as revealed by the evidence when actually, you run away from the evidence:
How can you question evidence when you won’t look at the evidence directly? How can you understand the importance of evidence when you misleadingly embellish your claims to make them look like they are based on the evidence, while at the same time you deny any importance of evidence when you formulate your conclusions?
I am fascinated by your massive cognitive dissonance. Wouldn’t faith drive you to look at the evidence for yourself?
1 Like
We’re not talking about vague commonalities or similarities, though. We’re talking about mathematically-derived nested hierarchies that are superimposable. Your creationist web sites aren’t addressing those.
I don’t see how that would work mechanistically. Why are you even trying to explain evidence that you won’t examine? That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Finally something correct! What makes them disappear is more fossil finds, not theorizing.
It’s the dishonesty of quote mining and the pretense that someone has read whole books when in fact, it’s just a cut-and-paste from a creationist web site.
1 Like
Why are you asking questions that are addressed in detail in the books you claimed to have read?
Which books and papers have you read, Edgar?
1 Like
Would you describe the evolution of all vertebrates, from fish to humans, as microevolution because it does not involve microbes?
2 Likes
God could have created life so that it doesn’t fit into a nested hierarchy and was non-contiguous. So why would you predict that God would create life so that it looked like it evolved when God could have created life in so many other ways?
The only way you can find gaps is if evolution is true. If life didn’t evolve then we wouldn’t expect to see gaps because there would be no reason why one species would be separated from another species by a gap.
This is completely dishonest since you refuse to accept the fossils that do fill these gaps.
2 Likes
Why are you pretending that you have read works by Gould and Eldredge when all you are doing is copying and pasting quote mines from creationist websites?
3 Likes
Quote mines are not conclusions.
Thanks for being honest. Doesn’t it feel better?
1 Like
@Edgar - You have never acknowledged this point, much less addressed it.
What is your level of familiarity with stochastic models in biology, chemistry, climate studies, and physics?
I suspect that you are simply unfamiliar with stochastic models, and thus you completely misunderstand Gould’s work.
It is not a problem to lack knowledge about something due to lack of training and exposure. I am sure that you could gain enough familiarity with stochastic models to be able to understand Gould, if you are willing to work at it. You may or may not agree with Gould after going through the exercise, but at least you will understand enough to have meaningful conversations.
As it is, the conversation has been in vain for all parties. You do not give the impression of being willing to learn about stochastic models. Instead, you seem to prefer to just keep repeating the same misunderstanding of Gould to everyone you meet here.
I hope you prove me wrong, @Edgar. If you want some pointers on learning about stochastic models, let me know. I can’t promise the journey will be painless or short, but it will be exciting and fruitful if you are curious and persistent.
Blessings,
Chris
2 Likes
How would the flood have killed fish, whales, and other aquatic organisms, including some other mammals, that were in the water and not on the ark?
2 Likes
This is not a fruitful approach, Edgar. Evolution as a theory does not exist because scientists first were convinced that all life evolved from a microbe. The conclusion that all life evolved from a microbe was one of the last conclusions made from the entire body of Evolutionary theory.
So… clever debating technique. But terrible way to approach truth.
Let’s re-word your question. Your version: “I want you to provide an example of how the “information” that all life on earth evolved from a microbe is practically useful in applied science.”
The sentence takes on some validity if we re-word it to something more like this:
“I want you to provide an example of how the “information” serious infectious agent, like Ebola, can be better treated or mitigated by knowing that primates that harbor Ebola share the same ancestral population that humans do.”
Does this sound like a question you can get behind, Edgar?
The conclusion currently does not specify a single microbe, nor a single species of microbe.
It also doesn’t specify any ladder-like direction of increasing complexity, as Edgar claimed.
Agreed, @Haywood.
And your latter point about Evolution not having to increase (or decrease) complexity is so difficult to advance even within some Evolutionist circles. @Casper_Hesp and I went around and around a couple of times on this precise point.
I don’t know what an “Evolutionist circle” is, sorry. Is it like a drum circle?
2 Likes
More like a “crop circle” in that it just appears but it is obvious that it developed over time. Some feel they are spontaneous, but many accept there is intelligent design involved, though difficult to prove.
3 Likes
Many thanks to all comments, its a fascinating arm wrestle.
I’m back to the view that attempting to reconcile science (living by sight), with historical bible records is not reasonable.
An example of this arm wrestle is here - start of excerp.
A good synopsis within this is: An interpretation of the “first” rainbow.
See the main article on this topic: Rainbow
In Genesis 8, shortly after the flood, God created a covenant with man saying that he will never again send a flood to kill all life. To seal this covenant, the Bible claims God created the rainbow, implying that there never was a rainbow before the flood.[38] To the ancient Hebrew authors of this narrative, who were completely ignorant of modern science and believed the rainbow to be a physical object, this would have seemed perfectly plausible, but under the scrutiny of modern science this idea makes no sense. There are only three possible scenarios that create an environment where rainbows would not form.
There was no rain:
The Biblical text states that a dew would water the ground each morning. This would imply that it did not rain within the time frame of the narrative. A scientific manner to test this assertion would be to prove or disprove the arising implications such statement would have.
There was no sunlight:
The overwhelming share of terrestrial life is dependent on sunlight; in this scenario, all this life would obviously have died. The remaining few species of microbes that get their energy from hydrothermal vents would have been killed by the turbulence.
Light did not refract:
If light did not refract, sight would be impossible. It is light refracting in the lens of the eye that allows sight by focusing the light onto the retina.[39]
The only other possibility would be that, somehow, God managed to make it so that light did refract, just not through water. How this is at all possible is anybody’s guess.
End of excerp.
Science ‘proves’ that rainbows have existed as long as water and sunlight have. That is the indisputable truth, God was not required to enable it according to science. This is an ideal example of the evolutionary v creation debate.
As a Christian however, prior to giving consideration to this topic, i have simply accepted that God switched on rainbows, as a stunning reminder of his existence and grace - but i can only accept this by ‘faith’, not by the ‘sight’ of science. Rainbows are also a reminder of God’s soveignty over His creation.
Its ultimately the same with the story of the Noah flood, and the impossibility of it all outlined in the above referenced article. However, if God did indeed instigated the flood, he was the project manager that overcame the scientific impossibility of it all to achieve His objective.
Perhaps seeking evedence of the flood is the same as when the Pharasees ask Jesus to do a miracle to prove his claim of being God. Jesus said no, except to point to his impending death and resurection as proof.
As an aside, i wonder if God might have enabled Humans to actually see rainbows for the 1st time, when they had been there all along?
Im also leaning towards the interpretation that tbe fllood was not Global, but localised to the known ‘Land’.
1 Like
Perhaps a bit cheeky, but regarding this quality takedown of the Noah flood:(Global flood - RationalWiki).
Is there not a strong case of irony, regarding all the impossibilities that must have been overcome for post flood life to have continued to this day?
Does not the scientific sequence, i.e, sunlight, water, plantlife, sea, bird and animal life, then human existence, strike a familiar pattern with the Genesis creation story?
1 Like