Summer is coming to an end, and my family and I went to Elko speedway for the first time last night. I had no idea of what to expect, but we had a blast. They have a great community feel to it, where it seems like there are a lot of people who know each other, who support their drivers, and who enjoy partying. On to today's post, which is my attempt to explain the main difference between those who believe in unguided evolution (Darwinism) and those who believe in Intelligent Design. So let's get started:
- Intelligent Design. Most of those who believe in Intelligent Design start with the foundation that there is some sort of Creator responsible for our universe, Who I will refer to as God. All evidence is then viewed in light of the assumption of God's existence and direct responsibility for the creation of our world and life around us. With this foundation, we have the following evidence to support our acceptance of the Intelligent Design position:
- Big Bang. The universe has a start, and the best explanation for this start is that there is a Creator God who caused this to take place. The massive amount of energy squeezed into an impossibly small space sounds like a supernatural event to most people. Energy doesn't just appear out of thin air, right? And the resulting order that came out of the Big Bang which led to the creation of a life-sustaining planet, again points to God. Anyone who looks at the start of our universe and does not assume God's Hand as the cause of it, must do some serious mental gymnastics to get around all of the surrounding problems where random forces are assumed as the cause;
- Fossil Record. Sudden appearance, sudden disappearance. No intermediate transitions. This is the fossil record. And this is the record that caused the now departed Harvard Professor /Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould to come up with his theory of punctuated equilibrium. Darwinism is supposed to make small changes over great periods of time, resulting in things even as great as a species change. But Professor Gould's theory looked at the evidence and postulated that some unknown force caused a great deal of change to take place in a very short period of time, which could explain the creation of new structures (like an eye or brain) and even new species. The fossil record evidence is a serious problem for anyone who holds to traditional Darwinist beliefs;
- Mutation Rate / Complex Structures. E Coli has been studied for over 44,000 generations by Professor Lenski. Malaria infects 500 million people a year, and the malaria replicates in an ill person until there are 1 trillion malaria cells. And science has thoroughly studied what happens when these cells reproduce over their short life-spans. Especially with malaria, given the number of these cells and the number of people effected, it is an easy analogy to make for those who hold to an Intelligent Design viewpoint that over the whole lifespan on Earth, we are able to see in the battle against malaria what the Darwinist force of random mutation can actually do, as if the history of life was being replayed before us. And the result? Not much. Mutation can create a resistance to an anti-biotic designed to fight malaria. But the mutation rate is far too low to do anything useful. As an example, in order for the malaria cell to develop resistance to chloroquine ( a common early drug used to fight malaria), it takes a change in just two amino acids. How easily does this take place? Oh, about 1 in 10²⁰ of the malaria cells that have reproduced. Infinitesimally small, right? There just isn't enough mutations taking place to cause what Darwinists think evolution can do.
And the problem of complex structures was analogized by Professor Behe to a mousetrap. Darwinism believes small changes take place that can lead to create something new. But inside the cell, even the simplest of structures require many parts, self assembled, and all working together at the same time. And the addition of 1 piece provides no benefit to the organism, until all 10 (or however many are needed) pieces are put together. Darwinist belief is that any improvement or benefit will be passed on to the next generation. But without a benefit, the change will be lost. You know, like a mousetrap. You can't catch a mouse with just a board and a spring. It takes all of the parts assembled before there is a working mousetrap. In other words, there is no benefit to a creature to just having 2 of 10 pieces. Adding this to the extremely low mutation rate, and it is hard to see why anyone would believe in random mutation as the creative force behind Darwinism.
- Darwinism. Which leads me to Darwinism, which has the following foundation:
- Naturalism. According to Darwinists, every cause has a natural effect. Claimed Supernatural events are unproven, and cannot be repeated.
- Similarities in Structure / Chromosomes. You look at an ape and it kind of looks like a less 'evolved' human. A fin looks like a wing which looks like a hand. I get it. And there is similarity in the chromosomes of humans and other animals. For example, humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than chimpanzees – a human has 23 pairs, while a chimpanzee has 24. Scientists can look at the chromosomes and say that the chimpanzee chromosome 2 a and 2 b somehow fused together into a large chromosome 2 in humans. And this genetic evidence supported the Darwinist's belief in common descent, that in the Tree of Life all species came from one ancestor. And the crowning claim of Darwinism that humans are nothing but evolved monkeys.
But the Darwinists were tied to the theory Darwin's mechanism for change by Random Mutation, which science has shown to be impotent. The mutations in the genome take place too slowly, and certainly cannot account for the large differences in life. And so, this is the essence of the differences between Darwinists and Intelligent Design – Darwinists see similarity and assume a natural, non-supernatural connection will be found that accounts for this similarity, and all of the changes in the life around us. While in Intelligent Design, we see the evidence before us, and make the claim that natural mechanisms cannot account for these changes. Darwinists have theory, and rely on circumstantial evidence. While in Intelligent Design the evidence of the fossil record and the limitations of change within the genome show that something else is responsible for the difference between a monkey and a human, as well as the other life in the world around us. And although it is not part of Intelligent Design, most assume it can point to God as the responsible Agent.
So that is my conclusion, Darwinists have theory, and rely on circumstantial evidence. While in Intelligent Design the evidence of the fossil record and the limitations of change within the genome show that something else is responsible for the difference between a monkey and a human. And although it is not part of Intelligent Design, most assume it can point to God as the responsible Agent. Let me know if you would like to add or correct anything for either of the positions discussed. Thanks. /s/Tom Wolff
29 comments:
I received an email response to my original post. It is too long to post as a single comment, and so I will break it up into different sections. I will show his (referred to as ANON) comment, and then my reply. Here is the first -
Post: Most of those who believe in Intelligent Design start with the foundation that there is some sort of Creator responsible for our universe...
ANON’S RESPONSE: In science (incl. evolution), one observes facts, from which one develops a theory that explains the facts.
On the other hand, ID proponents mistakenly work backwards: they start with the theory (that God created the Universe) and then search only for facts that support the theory. How did the ID (God) create the Universe and living organisms? No one knows.
TEW’s Reply – Your comment is partially true. Those who believe in Intelligent Design do look for God in all things. But I hope you also accept that those who believe in Darwinism (like you) look for only natural explanations. And they then play the game that if something is shown to be impossible by using a natural explanation, Darwinists then use the crutch that we just don’t have the explanation YET. Here are a few examples of where Darwinists use this – the first living cell, the creation of DNA, and the Cambrian Explosion’s sudden appearance of most creatures, described as different as “worms, and flies, mice and fish”. The silliness of the Darwinist position is shown by this – they attack those who believe in God for believing in a ‘God of the Gaps’, where we invoke God only where something happens that is beyond our current understanding. Yet the Darwinist’s dismissal of any possibility of action by God, causes them to have a much larger “Gap”. The Darwinist Gap, where Darwinists insist a natural explanation will one day be found, continues to grow larger and larger. And their one mechanism that they’ve discovered, random variation/mutation, is shown by science study after study as a very limited tool that is unable to accomplish anything close to what Darwinists were hoping for. See my previous posts on E Coli and Malaria for a discussion of these studies.
#2) Post: With this foundation, we have the following evidence to support our acceptance of the Intelligent Design position.
ANON’S RESPONSE: Where is the evidence supporting ID? The evidence you present consists entirely of perceived problems with evolution. Discrediting evolution does not automatically support ID.
"Also known as the fallacy of negation or the false dilemma, this is the tendency to dichotomize the world so that if you discredit one position, the observer is forced to accept the other. This is a favorite tactic of creationists, who claim that life either was divinely created or evolved. Then they spend the majority of their time discrediting the theory of evolution so that they can argue that since evolution is wrong, creationism must be right."
-- Michael Shermer, "How Thinking Goes Wrong
http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/sherm3.htm
TEW’s Reply – I’m not sure I understand your point here. In a murder case, if you have only two suspects, then evidence showing one of them did not do it, is also evidence that the other suspect did commit the murder. I use this analogy because in explaining life on Earth there are only two explanations on the table: Darwinism and Supernatural Creation. That’s it. And so, if Darwinism’s natural explanations cannot work, then that is circumstantial evidence that God did it.
#3) Post: The universe has a start, and the best explanation for this start is that there is a Creator God who caused this to take place...
ANON’S RESPONSE: Anyone, that is, except the greatest physicist in today's world, Stephen Hawking, who wrote in his new book, "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the Universe going. ... Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist. ... [The discovery of other planets and solar systems outside of our own] makes the coincidences of our planetary conditions -- the single sun, the lucky combination of Earth-sun distance and solar mass -- far less remarkable, and far less compelling as evidence that the Earth was carefully designed just to please us human beings."
-- New York Daily News - 2 Sep 10
TEW’s Reply – The “Universe can create itself from nothing” because there is a law of gravity? Last time I checked the law of gravity applies in my living room where I am writing this. And I don’t see new Universe’s popping up around me. Perhaps his explanation has more meat to it, but what you provided on Professor Hawking’s explanation is something that does not make sense.
In case you need someone with a science background’s explanation for why Professor Hawking is wrong, here is one that I like:
“…Similarly, the laws of physics could never have actually built the universe. Some agency must have been involved.
To use a simple analogy, Isaac Newton's laws of motion in themselves never sent a snooker ball racing across the green baize. That can only be done by people using a snooker cue and the actions of their own arms.
Hawking's argument appears to me even more illogical when he says the existence of gravity means the creation of the universe was inevitable. But how did gravity exist in the first place? Who put it there? And what was the creative force behind its birth?
Similarly, when Hawking argues, in support of his theory of spontaneous creation, that it was only necessary for 'the blue touch paper' to be lit to 'set the universe going', the question must be: where did this blue touch paper come from? And who lit it, if not God?...” (article by Professor John Lennox is here.)
#4) Post: Sudden appearance, sudden disappearance. No intermediate transitions. This is the fossil record. And this is the record that caused the now departed Harvard Professor /Darwinist Stephen Jay Gould to come up with his theory of punctuated equilibrium. ... The fossil record evidence is a serious problem for anyone who holds to traditional Darwinist beliefs"
ANON’S RESPONSE: Stephen Jay Gould wrote, "But paleontologists have discovered several superb examples of intermediary forms and sequences, more than enough to convince any fair-minded skeptic about the reality of life's physical genealogy."
-- Natural History, May 1994
New Scientist online: "No transitional fossils. There isn't a nice way of saying this: anyone making this claim is either appallingly ignorant or an outright liar. In fact, there are far too many fossils with intermediate features to count -- trillions if you include microfossils. These fossils show the transitions between major groups, from fish to amphibians, for instance, as well as from one species to another. New discoveries are continually made, from the half-fish, half-amphibian Tiktaalik to an early giraffe with a shorter neck than modern animals."
-- http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13717-evolution-myths-yet-more-misconceptions.html
TEW’s Reply – While I like to eat, I am not so fond of having words put in my mouth. :-) No one said that there is “No transitional fossils…” I merely quoted Harvard Professor Stephen Jay Gould’s description of the fossil record: Sudden appearance, sudden disappearance. No intermediate transitions. Here is the prime evidence I rely on, the Cambrian Explosion where most animal groups appear for the first time. The fossils are found in a number of fossil formations, including the Lagerstatte of Cambrian time, the Burgess Shale of Canada and Chengjiang, in Yunnan Province, China, and even in the Wheeler and Marjum Formations of Utah. Therefore, you can rely on mean-spirited comments from a claimed “expert” of fossils. But my response is that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. But not everyone is entitled to their own facts.
#5) POST: Mutation Rate / Complex Structures. E Coli has been studied for over 44,000 generations by Professor [Richard] Lenski. Malaria infects 500 million people a year, and the malaria replicates in an ill person until there are 1 trillion malaria cells. And science has thoroughly studied what happens when these cells reproduce over their short life-spans. .... And the result? Not much. Mutation can create a resistance to an anti-biotic designed to fight malaria. But the mutation rate is far too low to do anything useful. As an example, in order for the malaria cell to develop resistance to chloroquine (a common early drug used to fight malaria), it takes a change in just two amino acids. How easily does this take place? Oh, about 1 in 10 ^20 of the malaria cells that have reproduced. Infinitesimally small, right? There just isn't enough mutations taking place to cause what Darwinists think evolution can do.
ANON’S RESPONSE: Paul D. Sniegowski*, Philip J. Gerrish, & RICHARD E. LENSKI: "Our finding that asexual populations can evolve high mutation rates in a relatively benign environment may help to explain observations associating mismatch repair mutators with certain cancers and with pathogenicity in E. coli and Salmonella. As in our experimental populations, high mutation rates may evolve as a chance byproduct of adaptation in clonal tumour lineages and in populations of asexual pathogens. The potential for faster evolution once high mutation rates have evolved may have important health implications."
-- Evolution of high mutation rates in experimental populations of E. coli (link omitted, found to have viruses.)
In your own blog, you wrote, "From the author's calculations in the story, each time the smoker smoked 3 cigarettes, a new mutation in the tumor was created!"
-- tomwolff.blogspot.com/2010/06/smoking-and-damage-to-genome.html
That sounds to me like a very rapid mutation rate.
TEW’s Reply – Professor Lenski’s famous experiment on E Coli produced the following result: one change took place in one of the 12 groups after 20,000 generations. Is that what anyone would describe as a “high mutation rate”? The New Scientist article describing the results is found here.
Yes, on the article I previously posted on smoking’s effect on tumors, I was also surprised at how quickly and easily damaging mutations take place in a tumor. Are you trying to equate the mutation rate in healthy cells with that of a tumor?
#6) POST: And the problem of complex structures was analogized by Professor Behe to a mousetrap. Darwinism believes small changes take place that can lead to create something new. But inside the cell, even the simplest of structures require many parts, self assembled, and all working together at the same time. … Adding this to the extremely low mutation rate, and it is hard to see why anyone would believe in random mutation as the creative force behind Darwinism.
ANON’S RESPONSE: "[Behe] writes that in the absence of' 'almost any' of its parts, the bacterial flagellum 'does not work.' But guess what? A small group of proteins from the flagellum does work without the rest of the machine—it's used by many bacteria as a device for injecting poisons into other cells. Although the function performed by this small part when working alone is different, it nonetheless can be favored by natural selection.
"The key proteins that clot blood fit this pattern, too. They're actually modified versions of proteins used in the digestive system. The elegant work of Russell Doolittle has shown how evolution duplicated, retargeted, and modified these proteins to produce the vertebrate blood-clotting system "
-- "The Flaw in the Mousetrap" by Kenneth R. Miller
http://www.evcforum.net/RefLib/NaturalHistory_200204_Miller.html
TEW’s Reply – I believe I recently saw a description of the topic that you are speaking about, the de-evolution of the flagellum, the piece of the cell that Professor Behe wrote about in ‘Darwin’s Black Box’. I have seen the topic described in a post at Telic Thoughts as follows: …A marine chronometer depends upon springs and balances in order to keep time accurately at sea. Suppose it lost one or more springs. It wouldn't be any good for keeping time at sea, but it could still function very well as a clock on land…
That may be what is taking place here, losing pieces and still working. Anyway, here is an interesting comment from the same post:
1. The flagellum is demonstrably Irreducibly Complex – shown in the lab of an ID scientist
2. When bacteria have one gene knocked out they can repair or add a new solution quite rapidly
3 . When two or more are needed the job is harder and may never get done – also shown in the lab of an ID scientist
4. So, as per the theorizing, when more than one step is needed it has been shown experimentally that mutation/selection is not the best candidate to solve the problem…
Here are the links referred to by the same author (here and here.)
#7) POST: Scientists can look at the chromosomes and say that the chimpanzee chromosome 2 a and 2 b somehow fused together into a large chromosome 2 in humans... And the crowning claim of Darwinism that humans are nothing but evolved monkeys.
ANON’S RESPONSE: Actually, the evidence is that both humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor.
TEW’s Reply – Yes, you are right. Excuse my sloppy description.
#8) TEW: … And although it is not part of Intelligent Design, most assume it can point to God as the responsible Agent.
ANON’S RESPONSE: Most who? How did God design living things?
TEW’s Reply – Again, excuse the sloppiness of my words. The “most” I was referring to here is most (but not all) within the Intelligent Design movement are from a Judeo-Christian background.
#9a) TEW: So that is my conclusion, Darwinists have theory, and rely on circumstantial evidence. While in Intelligent Design the evidence of the fossil record and the limitations of change within the genome show that something else is responsible for the difference between a monkey and a human. And although it is not part of Intelligent Design, most assume it can point to God as the responsible Agent.
ANON’S RESPONSE: Again, the "fossil record" and the "limitations of change" are supposed evidence against evolution, NOT evidence supporting ID. Evidence against evolution is not automatically evidence for ID. Where is the evidence for ID? ...
TEW’s Reply – I have addressed these issues in my replies above.
#9b) ANON: In addition, you have used the phrases "random forces are assumed as the cause," "Darwinist force of random mutation," "random mutation as the creative force behind Darwinism," and "Darwin's mechanism for change by Random Mutation," as if natural selection was not even a part of the theory of evolution, let alone a critical part. Without natural selection, a NON-RANDOM process, evolution would be eviscerated. Although natural selection is not the only process in evolutionary theory, it is the main one.
Douglas Futuyma, world-renowned scientist and professor of evolutionary biology at New York State University, said, "The reason that natural selection is important is that it’s the central idea, stemming from Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace, that explains design in nature. It is the one process that is responsible for the evolution of adaptations of organisms to their environment."
-- http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/futuyma.html
TEW’s Reply – I have two quick responses on what you have raised (the importance of Darwinism’s Natural Selection – remember that Darwinism = Random Variation/Mutation + Natural Selection). First, in Darwinism Natural Selection only helps when there are random mutations that provide a beneficial variation. As the science on random mutations has shown (see the original post, and the posts on malaria and e coli), the rate of mutation is too low for Natural Selection to accomplish anything like a change in a species. While Darwinism does show that resistance takes place to antibiotics. But not much more. And so, here is a crux of the problem – DNA, which contains billions of chemically encoded instructions directing how every part of your body will look, grow and develop over the course of your life. How was this created? How could anything with so many pieces have originated in the first living cell, the prerequisite for life itself? Life itself unmistakably points to God.
And b, I don't think Natural Selection really works. With all due respect to the author you cite, I don't think that things change much. Life has boundaries, and Natural Selection can't go past them. If you would like to discuss this more, let me know.
#10) ANON’S FINAL RESPONSE: Apparently, Tom, you have never read an article by an evolutionary biologist.
TEW’s Reply – Ouch?! Well, although I’m a graduate of the Brain-Washing School, they only let us read three things: the Bible, any book by Professor Michael Behe, and the Wall Street Journal. So, you'll have to excuse me. Maybe my dialogue with you will actually teach me a few things. Thanks for taking the time of your response, and helping me to be more careful with my writing.
Tom, I have a hard time believing you are still using the same old tired out arguements from previous years... Hasn't Behe taught you any new catchphrases lately?
Malaria is NOT usable as an analogy. It is a simple, stable bug that has no trouble surviving in it's current form. Simplicity holds down the mutation rate, and what mutations do occur would have a really hard time improving on the bugs' current survivability, so there is no Natural Selection to pass along the mutation and make it stand out to the human observer.
In any case, mutation and even Natural Selection are never going to guarantee that something can overcome all obstacles (like an anti-biotic). The same mutation that defeats the anti-biotic might also have side effects that cause the overall usefulness of the mutation to be zero, in which case it never becomes prevalent enough to be noticed. Getting mutations that cause a NET survival increase is rather difficult. That is precisely why most of the species that ever lived are all dead now... they couldn't evolve quickly enough to survive the One Bad Thing that happened to them.
Comparing bacteria to humans is sophistry at best, and smoke-and-mirror obfuscation at it's worst.
End for the moment,
~E~
"TEW’s Reply – While I like to eat, I am not so fond of having words put in my mouth. :-) No one said that there is “No transitional fossils…” I merely quoted Harvard Professor Stephen Jay Gould’s description of the fossil record: Sudden appearance, sudden disappearance. No intermediate transitions.
Um... Yes, you did. You did NOT state you were quoting anyone. You wrote it as simple sentences which were taken as your own words. Re-read your own post.
Part 2
Irreducibility becomes harder to defend every year, but from Behe's calcified brain to your mouth, it's Full Speed Ahead and Damn the Torpedoes!
So far Science has a great track record of destroying Behe's mousetrap theory. First the wing was shown to have usefulness at all stages of development, then the same occurred for the eye, then for proteins of the cell wall, and now history is in the process of repeating itself for the flagellum...
Look at the Post-It note, and it's adhesive... think of it's original discovery as a random mutation. The adhesive was considered useless and was almost eliminated from the 3M gene pool before some bright man found a great purpose for it... Once it was found to increase the survivability of #M (the host species in this case), it propagated all over the place. Now the host would have a hard time surviving without it. THAT is a much better analogy than the bacteria non-starter...
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Actually, the evidence is that both humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor."
And just last year, as I posted about back then, a wonderful new TRANSITIONAL form of proto-human was revealed, with upright gait, but but a foot still similar to the non-upright brachiating species...
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Most who? How did God design living things?
TEW’s Reply – Again, excuse the sloppiness of my words. The “most” I was referring to here is most (but not all) within the Intelligent Design movement are from a Judeo-Christian background.
And yet that majority has yet to produce ANY evidence that the desert God of Abraham is any more likely a Creator than the Sacred Cow of Norse mythology, or any other religions' Creation myth. Even the Bible itself couldn't decide on a single Creation myth...
"How could anything with so many pieces have originated in the first living cell, the prerequisite for life itself? Life itself unmistakably points to God."
Ah yes, the final bedraggled arguement, which has always boiled down to, "If I don't understand it, and you can't explain it RIGHT NOW, then God must have done it." or, "Science can't explain XYZ, therefore God."
You used this above when referring to Hawking... Just because it didn't make sense to YOU, you felt completely justified in dismissing Hawking's words. I never realized you were so well-versed in Quantum Mechanics, the various String Theories, 'Brane Theory, and Astrophysics.
Your lack of a scientific background has bit you on the butt before... Remember when the number of extra-solar planets discovered stood at 118, and you said that since we hadn't found an Earth-like planet YET, there must not be any others? What you didn't know was that the technology of the day could not detect Earth-like planets, but only really large and heavy ones. Only now are we getting closer to finding planets more like our own...
Are you any different than the shamans of old who said that thunder was the gods bowling, or that fire was a gift from the gods?
Pax,
~E~
Part 2
Irreducibility becomes harder to defend every year, but from Behe's calcified brain to your mouth, it's Full Speed Ahead and Damn the Torpedoes!
So far Science has a great track record of destroying Behe's mousetrap theory. First the wing was shown to have usefulness at all stages of development, then the same occurred for the eye, then for proteins of the cell wall, and now history is in the process of repeating itself for the flagellum...
Look at the Post-It note, and it's adhesive... think of it's original discovery as a random mutation. The adhesive was considered useless and was almost eliminated from the 3M gene pool before some bright man found a great purpose for it... Once it was found to increase the survivability of 3M (the host species in this case), it propagated all over the place. Now the host would have a hard time surviving without it. THAT is a much better analogy than the bacteria non-starter...
End of part 2 (due to Blogger's size limits)
~E~
Part 3..
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Actually, the evidence is that both humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor."
And just last year, as I posted about back then, a wonderful new TRANSITIONAL form of proto-human was revealed, with upright gait, but but a foot still similar to the non-upright brachiating species...
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Most who? How did God design living things?
TEW’s Reply – Again, excuse the sloppiness of my words. The “most” I was referring to here is most (but not all) within the Intelligent Design movement are from a Judeo-Christian background.
And yet that majority has yet to produce ANY evidence that the desert God of Abraham is any more likely a Creator than the Sacred Cow of Norse mythology, or any other religions' Creation myth. Even the Bible itself couldn't decide on a single Creation myth...
"How could anything with so many pieces have originated in the first living cell, the prerequisite for life itself? Life itself unmistakably points to God."
Ah yes, the final bedraggled arguement, which has always boiled down to, "If I don't understand it, and you can't explain it RIGHT NOW, then God must have done it." or, "Science can't explain XYZ, therefore God."
You used this above when referring to Hawking... Just because it didn't make sense to YOU, you felt completely justified in dismissing Hawking's words. I never realized you were so well-versed in Quantum Mechanics, the various String Theories, 'Brane Theory, and Astrophysics.
Your lack of a scientific background has bit you on the butt before... Remember when the number of extra-solar planets discovered stood at 118, and you said that since we hadn't found an Earth-like planet YET, there must not be any others? What you didn't know was that the technology of the day could not detect Earth-like planets, but only really large and heavy ones. Only now are we getting closer to finding planets more like our own...
Are you any different than the shamans of old who said that thunder was the gods bowling, or that fire was a gift from the gods?
End of part 3,
Pax,
~E~
Part 3..
"How could anything with so many pieces have originated in the first living cell, the prerequisite for life itself? Life itself unmistakably points to God."
Ah yes, the final bedraggled arguement, which has always boiled down to, "If I don't understand it, and you can't explain it RIGHT NOW, then God must have done it." or, "Science can't explain XYZ, therefore God."
You used this above when referring to Hawking... Just because it didn't make sense to YOU, you felt completely justified in dismissing Hawking's words. I never realized you were so well-versed in Quantum Mechanics, the various String Theories, 'Brane Theory, and Astrophysics.
Your lack of a scientific background has bit you on the butt before... Remember when the number of extra-solar planets discovered stood at 118, and you said that since we hadn't found an Earth-like planet YET, there must not be any others? What you didn't know was that the technology of the day could not detect Earth-like planets, but only really large and heavy ones. Only now are we getting closer to finding planets more like our own...
Are you any different than the shamans of old who said that thunder was the gods bowling, or that fire was a gift from the gods?
End of part 3,
Pax,
~E~
Part 4 (I'm really hating Blogger right now..., so this one is somewhat out of sequence...)
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Actually, the evidence is that both humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor."
And just last year, as I posted about back then, a wonderful new TRANSITIONAL form of proto-human was revealed, with upright gait, but but a foot still similar to the non-upright brachiating species...
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Most who? How did God design living things?
TEW’s Reply – Again, excuse the sloppiness of my words. The “most” I was referring to here is most (but not all) within the Intelligent Design movement are from a Judeo-Christian background.
And yet that majority has yet to produce ANY evidence that the desert God of Abraham is any more likely a Creator than the Sacred Cow of Norse mythology, or any other religions' Creation myth. Even the Bible itself couldn't decide on a single Creation myth...
"I use this analogy because in explaining life on Earth there are only two explanations on the table: Darwinism and Supernatural Creation. That’s it."
But that is totally wrong... Darwinism is not the whole of Evolution. There are several alternatives within the scope of Evolution, including traditional Darwinism as written a century and a half ago, Punctuated Equilibrium, and an even newer hybrid theory that links the two. There are several other sub-schools that deserve separation. I won't go into the possibilities of newer facts forcing new theories to come along (as happens in REAL science all the time).
Saying that all Evolution is Darwinism is EXACTLY like saying all flavours of Christian are the same... Lumping them together to force a dichotomy of God vs. Darwinism is a TOTAL Straw Man... That might work on a jury in a courtroom for your murder example, but in Science, that dog won't hunt. Myth busted.
End of part 4.... part 5, The Fossil Record, will be the last...
~E~
Part 4 (out of sequence...)
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Actually, the evidence is that both humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor."
And just last year, a wonderful new TRANSITIONAL form of proto-human was revealed, with upright gait, but feet similar to the non-upright brachiating species...
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Most who? How did God design living things?
TEW’s Reply – Again, excuse the sloppiness of my words. The “most” I was referring to here is most (but not all) within the Intelligent Design movement are from a Judeo-Christian background.
And yet that majority has yet to produce ANY evidence that the God of Abraham is any more likely a Creator than the Sacred Cow of Norse mythology, or any other religions' Creation myth. Even the Bible itself can't decide on a single Creation myth...
"I use this analogy because in explaining life on Earth there are only two explanations on the table: Darwinism and Supernatural Creation. That’s it."
But that is totally wrong... Darwinism is not the whole of Evolution. There are several alternatives within the scope of Evolution, including traditional Darwinism as written a century and a half ago, and Punctuated Equilibrium, and even newer hybrid theories linking the two. There are other sub-schools that deserve separation, and always the possibility of newer facts forcing new theories to evolve (as happens in REAL science all the time).
Saying that all Evolution is Darwinism is EXACTLY like saying all flavours of Christian are the same... Lumping them together to force a dichotomy of God vs. Darwinism is a TOTAL Straw Man... That might work on a jury in a courtroom for your murder example, but in Science, that dog won't hunt. Myth busted.
End of part 4.... part 5, The Fossil Record, will be the last...
~E~
Part 4 (out of sequence...)
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Actually, the evidence is that both humans and monkeys evolved from a common ancestor."
And just last year, a wonderful new TRANSITIONAL form of proto-human was revealed, with upright gait, but feet similar to the non-upright brachiating species...
"ANON’S RESPONSE: Most who? How did God design living things?
TEW’s Reply – Again, excuse the sloppiness of my words. The “most” I was referring to here is most (but not all) within the Intelligent Design movement are from a Judeo-Christian background.
And yet that majority has yet to produce ANY evidence that the God of Abraham is any more likely a Creator than the Sacred Cow of Norse mythology, or any other religions' Creation myth. Even the Bible itself can't decide on a single Creation myth...
"I use this analogy because in explaining life on Earth there are only two explanations on the table: Darwinism and Supernatural Creation. That’s it."
But that is totally wrong... Darwinism is not the whole of Evolution. There are several alternatives within the scope of Evolution, including traditional Darwinism as written a century and a half ago, and Punctuated Equilibrium, and even newer hybrid theories linking the two. There are other sub-schools that deserve separation, and always the possibility of newer facts forcing new theories to evolve (as happens in REAL science all the time).
Saying that all Evolution is Darwinism is EXACTLY like saying all flavours of Christian are the same... Lumping them together to force a dichotomy of God vs. Darwinism is a TOTAL Straw Man... That might work on a jury in a courtroom for your murder example, but in Science, that dog won't hunt. Myth busted.
End of part 4....
~E~
Part 5, The Fossil Record
We've been through this before, but it bears repeating. The Fossil Record has two major drawbacks, which Creationists try to exploit when using it to attack Evolution.
1) Very few creatures get fossilized. The conditions needed for fossilization are strict and narrow. Climate and soil conditions must be within a tight bandwidth. Entire species live outside those limitations for their entire existence. By looking at how modern species are spread out, it is possible to estimate that the vast majority (perhaps as much as 95%) of species never left any remains behind at all.
2) The Fossil record records very little data about soft tissues. Mostly all we see is mineralized bone. The small changes the Evolution predicts between periods of Punctuated Equilibrium will focus heavily on soft tissue changes. Therefore two skeletons that appear essentially the same might very well be from two differing species. Often the bones are not museum quality, or are from incomplete specimens, which means that we will miss many subtle changes to bone structure, thus missing transitional forms.
Given those limitations, it is amazing how much transition within the Tree of Life we can document. I should also mention that Creationists cheat by defining "transitional" so narrowly that very little will satisfy their criteria. The truth is that many species, especially complex ones, are transitioning all the time. Tiny changes add up to big ones, and the line between species can get pretty fuzzy...
Enough for tonight,
Pax,
~E~
1) Reply by Anon / TJL: Your definition of "naturalism" is correct, as far as it goes. It would be more fitting to say, "Claimed supernatural events are unproven BECAUSE they cannot be repeated" (or measured, recorded, and predicted).
1b)Anon/TJL: Nobody has been able to come up with a useful definition of "supernatural." Natural explanations and God-did-it explanations are worlds apart (not to mention which god did it -- there are so many!).The only "game" that works is the scientific method, namely observations, forming an hypothesis to explain the observations, making predictions based on the hypothesis, testing the predictions, and repeatedly replicating any positive results. If you believe that one can prove a supernatural phenomenon true or false without using the scientific method, then explain what method would work. "Creation scientists" are stuck with using the scientific method, if they want anybody, including other "creation scientists," to accept their conclusions.
1c) on the Cambrian Explosion - TJL: The Cambrian period lasted 5 to 10 million years, perhaps longer, and the evolution of new body forms occurred even before the Cambrian period. It's likely that many soft-bodied pre-Cambrian organisms did not fossilize.-- http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC300.html
1d) (God / Darwin of the Gaps) /TEW: The silliness of the Darwinist position is shown by this – they attack those who believe in God for believing in a ‘God of the Gaps’, where we invoke God only where something happens that is beyond our current understanding.
Anon/TJL: To "invoke God only where something happens that is beyond our current understanding" is just another way of saying "believing in a 'God of the gaps'."
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TEW: Yet the Darwinist’s dismissal of any possibility of action by God, causes them to have a much larger “Gap”. The Darwinist Gap, where Darwinists insist a natural explanation will one day be found, continues to grow larger and larger.
Anon/TJL: Throughout history, most alleged supernatural phenomena have turned out to have natural explanations, demonstrating the power and success of the scientific method and the likelihood that it will continue to have the same success in finding natural causes for presently unexplained phenomena.
2) (Two Suspects in a Murder) TEW: I’m not sure I understand your point here. In a murder case, if you have only two suspects, then evidence showing one of them did not do it, then this is also evidence that the other suspect did commit the murder. I use this analogy because in explaining life on Earth there are only two explanations on the table: Darwinism and Supernatural Creation. That’s it. And so, if Darwinism’s natural explanations cannot work, then that is circumstantial evidence that God did it.
TJL: Evidence that one of the two suspects did NOT commit murder is evidence only that the other MAY have committed the murder. There may even be a third unknown person that DID commit the murder. So far, you have given me only questionable scientific evidence AGAINST evolution -- where is your scientific evidence FOR Intelligent Design?
3) (Prof. Haking's claim that Universe can create itself because of Law of Gravity) TEW: The “Universe can create itself from nothing” because there is a law of gravity? Last time I checked the law of gravity applies in my living room where I am writing this. And I don’t see new Universe’s popping up around me.
TJL: "Nothing" is unstable, so "something" is far more probable. Why should there be God rather than nothing? "Something from nothing" is daunting and sounds like magic. However, many things in physics also sound like magic. For example, gravity, magnetism, and electromagnetism interact at a distance with no known mediator of the interaction, and a particle, such as an electron or photon, can be in two places at the same time, even while miles apart from one another. Einstein called this "spooky action at a distance."
Moreover, I see many examples of what looks like UNINTELLIGENT design. Recently I sent you 5 such examples and asked if you would care to give me a plausible explanation for them. You offered none.
Tom W Reply - You'll have to do better than than. You don't have to send all 5, just give me the best example of Unintelligent Design.
5) Darwinism's Mutation Rate is Far Too Slow) TEW: "There just isn't enough mutations taking place to cause what Darwinists think evolution can do."
Anon/TJL: You quoted Richard Lenski in support of your claim. Here's what he said that does not support your claim:
"Simple calculations imply that there are something like 10^20 = 100,000,000,000,000,000,000 E. coli alive on our planet at any moment. Even if they divide just once per day, and given a typical mutation rate of 10^-9 or 10^-10 per base-pair per generation, then pretty much every possible double mutation would occur every day or so. That's a lot of opportunity for evolution." (no CITE given for this quote).
Mutation rates must have been adequate to account for the changes observed in fossils in the geological record over long periods, if you accept transitional fossils and carbon dating.
T Wolff Reply - The uncited quote from Prof. Lenski only helps the Intelligent Design side. One change on what E Coli can digest that took place in one of 12 groups studied over 20,000 generations. Yes, for E Coli every possible double mutation that can take place has taken place. And the result? Not a new "species". Not a new creature. Just the same old E Coli. Darwinism'd mechanism for change of Variation/Random Mutation is shown to be impotent.
#6) (Prof. Behe's Irreducible Complexity) Anon/TJL: Behe gave only four physical examples of alleged "irreducible complexity," the bacterial flagellum of E. coli, the blood clotting cascade, cilia, and the adaptive immune system. Scientists have shown that his examples have either precursors or an element not present in some species. Moreover, complexity is not necessarily a sign of intelligent design; one of the goals of human intelligent design is maximum simplification. Complexity is more likely a product of random mutations.
"In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe gave testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that 'Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large.' "
T Wolff Reply - Wow, the battle on this was already won? Prof. Behe was shown to be wrong? Someone should have told the rest of us.
Instead of spouting platitudes, just give us 1 example. If you can keep it simple enough for me to understand, then I'll concede the fight. But if its just someone saying they won when they haven't, then let's keep these kind of gross over-statements off of the discussion.
4a). Eddward Oleander's Comment "And yet that majority has yet to produce ANY evidence that the God of Abraham is any more likely a Creator than the Sacred Cow of Norse mythology, ... Even the Bible itself can't decide on a single Creation myth...
Tom Wolff replies. Ed, I understand that you think this is some sort of funny line of reasoning. But it is not. The Creator God, Yahweh, sent His Son Jesus to live among us, teach us, and then to die for humanities sins. To compare this to a sacred cow in Norse mythology is insulting.
4b) Tom Wolff's previous comment: "I use this analogy because in explaining life on Earth there are only two explanations on the table: Darwinism and Supernatural Creation. That’s it."
Edward Oleander's Reply - "But that is totally wrong... Darwinism is not the whole of Evolution. There are several alternatives within the scope of Evolution...
Tom Wolff's Response - Ed, again here you are wrong. There are only two POSSIBLE explanations for life on Earth. Claim #1, that life on Earth resulted from natural causes. This is Darwinism, along with all of the minor variants that go along with it. And Claim #2, the Creator God supernatually created life on Earth. Thus, life on Earth resulted EITHER from natural causes or supernatural causes. There is no other box.
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