Evolution on trial again in Kansas

[Larry_OHF]

I don't even know if this is worth posting or not, but TL...here is another link that I thought of, after you reminded me of it. I just thought you'd all find it interesting.

Dinosaur caught in act of evolving

[shamrock_uk]

Great post Lucern, thanks for all those links!

I'll throw up an awkward example for you all now, how can pro-evolution people explain some of the logical flaws pointed out here?

[Lucern]

Very cool linkys to clicky both. You've gotta love those horse predecessor names: mesohippus, miohippus, parahippis, merychippus [img]smile.gif[/img]

It's one of the most complete lineages.

The feathered veggie-saur is a good find, probably in line with old Archaeoptrix that started the bird-dinosaur debate.

[Lucern]

There's a lot of problems with that site Shamrock. One problem is that what is logical is not always correct. He'll (or she'll...who knows) give you statement a and b and make a logical statement, but you won't have any evidence that a, b, or conclusion c are correct.

There are so many misconceptions that it's not worth going through them all, but I'll pick out enough to make you reasonably skeptical of it. I'm no expert on this, but I can spot a few problems with his general evolutionary biology rather than the specifics (which aren't cited, so I don't trust them so much anyway).

Brief summary of the whole site: look at all the astounding complexity in the world; declare that none of this could be natural. Imply supernatural influence.

The idea is to decide something is too complex to have evolved, and throw a temporal aspect in there for good measure, arbitrarily stating one has to come (fully intact) before the other. This is an argument from design, or ID.

He thinks evolution moves towards complexity. Why? We are not the epitome of evolution, and there's no evolutionary direction towards complexity. The only 'direction' is towards survival, and that direction shifts constantly. The author repeatedly says 'more evolved', as an example, which makes no sense outside of that context.

He thinks evolution violates the second law of thermodynamics. This has to do with the first misconception. It is false. See the link for common misconceptions about evolution, as I believe it's there.

As for the animal page, he looks at what he sees in front of him, and is incredulous. He asks, "How could that possibly have happened?" When he can't come up with an answer, he declares evolution wrong. He's going the wrong way though. Wouldn't it make more sense to start from an earlier species to look at a later one?

He also seems to think that evolution has to happen all at once, because he seems to believe that every structure has a perfectly sound use in all creatures, especially transitional ones. I've got 4 wisdom teeth (in a jar), an appendix, and mitochondrial DNA that would tell otherwise. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Many fish have lures of sorts that attract prey. This is a very unrealistic course of evolution that the fish would have portions of it's body that look remarkably similar to it's prey's prey and yet serves no other function than to catch dinner

An adaptation that helps you find food couldn't possibly help you survive to reproduce, right? There is mimickry of all kinds that help thousands of species do exactly that. The arguement from incredulousness is getting old.

To the shock of the scientific community came the discovery that these plants not only do quite well, but thrive without ever touching a single insect. Now one must ask himself why these plants bothered to evolve this system in the first place. It provides no benefit to the plants whatsoever.

Except when an insect lands there, right? It doesn't occur to him that there might be some benefit to catching bugs, well perhaps he hasn't considered that these tend to be short plants in thick forests, where it's a fight to get any sunlight. Capturing insects clearly helped the species out. None of this seems very shocking to me.

How did this slow moving creature catch food before it had evolved the tongue?

Why is it assumed that it shared the exact same characteristics it has now, but didn't have the tongue until it oh-so-quickly evolved in this guy's version of evolution? Why doesn't this guy take his observations to the fossil record if he wants to know about transitional processes?

Read his description of the bombardier beetle and contrast it with this one: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html

Not only are the descriptions different, but the latter takes some of the incredulousness out of it by simply being better informed about it. The first description was borrowed from Duane Gish, creationist extraordinaire, who admitted it was from a bad translation.

And similarly for the woodpecker:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wood...oodpecker.html

I do give him credit for occasionally citing links that prove his ramblings wrong lol. Truth be told, I think he's a young earth creationist, and he's overstepping the limits whatever expertise he has. Looking elsewhere on the site, if it's all one person, he's limited himself to a very young earth, very fast changes that ultimately yield no difference, and the idea that nothing is so simple that evolution could have made a real change. He declares evolution a religion without any evidence on the main page. Wish I had found that sooner, lol

I know I keep referring to talk-origins, but it's huge and accurate on every point I've come across (afaik). It's also more appropriate than citing the information from lectures and textbooks, which is where most of it is coming from anyway

[Chewbacca]

Why not have a class called Creation Myths and teach ID alongside all the myriad creation myths the people of the history of Earth have made? There are many, many, different creation stories.

Why should any one particular myth be put in a seperate category reserved for scienctific things? If one myth gets put in the scientific status should not all the other creation myths get scientific status as well even those can't be scientifically proved either?


Durn.

[Aragorn1]

Originally posted by Chewbacca: Why not have a class called Creation Myths and teach ID alongside all the myriad creation myths the people of the history of Earth have made? There are many, many, different creation stories. Why should any one particular myth be put in a seperate category reserved for scienctific things? If one myth gets put in the scientific status should not all the other creation myths get scientific status as well even those can't be scientifically proved either? Durn.

Called Religious Education over here. Obviously not all are covered, but the basic principle that soem reject scientific explainations, some consider that there is still room for God with in them and that others condiser any kind of GOd to false is explained. ALthough the beleifs of the major religions are focued on, i do know the creation myth of the, IIRC, Chinese, involving a character called Pan Ku i think.

[John D Harris]

Sham, I thunked you'd like that one. [img]smile.gif[/img] I got some more I'll give latter when I get home and can look them up in NGeo.

Lucern, no problem with the cherry pick, I figured some of my questions needed to be answered and It seems that their were not going to be.
You are correct on the differance of HOW vs. WHY. The are two entirely differant things with differing answers. I'll come straight out and say that the fossil record is correct on the HOW, What, and When life begain on this dust ball. I'll even say that the physists are correct on when the big bang happened(something that even they don't agree on. 6 to 10 billion years ago, last figures I read that's a 4 billion year differance, and this is from the best minds the world has.)
The problem I have with the No Hand of God crowd is they are looking at observations, conculsions, theories, plain old fashioned detective work designed to answer HOW(the physicial steps taken to get there), WHAT(Where there is), and WHEN(How long it took to get there). The observers agree on the WHEN, Mostly agree on the HOW, but vastly disagree on the WHAT. Has anyone ever watched the Discovery Channel, TLC, or the Science Channel? all three channels have excellant series on prehistoric life and the origins of said life. But if you spend any time watching their shows you will see a couple of famous noted men in the field of study, I forget their names off the top of my pointed head. One of the guys had a camio in one of the jurrasic park movies IIRC, he's the breaded,hat wearing fellow, he says one thing about the T-Rex, another of the experts, a tall skinny guy grey hair, mid to late 50's, says something entirely differant, a third expert, also wears a hat mustashed, pointy face, says something differant then the other two. They agree on 2 of the 3 things their observations are designed to discover, but their observations are not designed to dicover WHY this thing we call life started. Yet the No Hand of God Crowd takes that evidence designed for HOW, WHAT, & WHEN, conclusions of said evidence that are not fully agreed upon, and try to apply it to the WHY question, a question the observations are not even designed to answer.

And I, or those like me are the ones that are being illogical? Spank my rear end and paint it purple, that beats anything I have seen in my life.

[John D Harris]

Originally posted by Lucern: He declares evolution a religion without any evidence on the main page.

My turn to cherry pick
I'll take your word that he has no evidence on the main page, because I'm to lazy to check it out for myself.

But it does beg the question Why would Evolution not be considered a religion?
Evolutionists have tenents, they got more then one book for the faithful, Lord they got preachers/pastors/priests (damn near every science Profesor/teacher), they don't get a tax break from the gov't, but they do get gov't grants. They got televangelists(see earlier post about TLC,Discovery,Science channels) they hold revivals(Lectures given by the scientists who get the gov't grants) They got houses of whorship(Museums)

Just yanki'n your chain Lucern

[John D Harris]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: Of course it is logical to believe things are larger than we comprehend. The universe is larger than we can ever comprehend, and it too is infinite. Therefore, I feel inclined to just leave it at that.

The Universe is not infinite, the space(the three dimensions Height, width, depth) in which the universe (Matter) can be found in maybe infinite. But space is nothing more then distance traveling through three dimensions.

One of the first laws of phsysics is that Matter can not be created or distroyed. a little farther down the laws of phsysics there's something about nothing can travel faster then light, or it would take infinite power to make anything travel faster then Light. Yet when our best and greastest brains get together and try and figure out HOW the big bang started they can't get any closer then 10-47 power of a second AFTER the big bang. In getting to that point they realize that in order for them to be right, there comes a point in the expansion that everything is traveling(Expanding) faster then Light, many times faster then light. So they concluded that apparently the faster then light road block doesn't apply to space, but it is the matter and all the little bitty pieces parts that make up the matter that is traveling many times faster then light. It takes a while before all those pieces parts come together and from matter, ALL the matter in the universe, that is and ever will be.(Their words not mine.)IIRC the lasp of time is less then a second from when the big bang starts until every atom of every peice of matter in the Universe is formed. There is no more universe it's all been made for 6-10 billion years. The positions that the matter of the universe occupies, inside the three dimension is expanding. But that is location, location, location. The big bang is what everything hangs on, and the best they can do is aknowledge that when it happens nearly every rule of phsyics get broke.

[wellard]

[quote]Originally posted by Stratos:

Originally posted by Spelca: [qb] What is ID exactly? [img]smile.gif[/img] In Slovenia we were taught evolution theory. So they always said it was a theory and not the truth (as it could be disproved).

Though Stratos has answered this, it reminds me of discussions in engineering collage. Why is the theory of flight still called theory? After a hundred years a few trips to the moon and supersonic travel it don’t seem like a theory any more. When does theory become fact?

....

*Cough* carry on everyone