Kem P

Richard Colling: A Real Case of Being Expelled While Ben Stein and the producers of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed have been busy spending millions of dollars to manufacture stories of individuals suffering personal trauma simply for accepting intelligent design, they (and their audiences) remain blissfully ignorant to the large numbers of people who have truly been harmed for accepting the scientific realities of evolution. Many of these people profess their own profound Christian faith, but have been penalized in their personal, professional and spiritual lives, sometimes for just suggesting that evolutionary theory might be compatible with a strong faith. The list here is long: Steve Bitterman (lost his teaching job for not teaching the story of Adam and Eve as literal truth); Alex Bolynatz (fired from a teaching position for claiming evolution and faith are compatible); Howard Van Till (subjected to four years of investigative inquiry for suggesting that biblical accounts were influenced by the cultures in which they had been written); Nancy Murphy (threatened with dismissal for writing a negative review of Philip Johnson

I don't have them saved on my computer, I just knew what you had said was incorrect, and within a few minutes of looking around I found those. I just happened to be lucky that they all happened to be on one website, and so I didn't have to look around at different sites to collect isolated details on each individual region. I do apologise for posting them as one long list, but the articles are all quite short, and I didn't really have much personally to add. I just wanted to point out that we do have evidence for what you said we didn't, i.e. cave paintings before 8,000 years ago.

Before I will respond to your questions you will have to define your vague terminology and you haven

Why would you expect hybrids, and how would you ever tell that they were in fact hybrids? What is being proposed is that 5-7 million years ago, there lived a population of apes that separated; one group became isolated from the other over time until they were no longer interbreeding. Let's call these two groups which split from each other so that they were no longer the same species, Group 1 and Group 2. Over time Group 1 and Group 2 became gradually more different. We are now 5-7 million years on from the split and the only extant descendents of Group 1 are humans, while the only extant descendents of Group 2 are chimps*. *There are actually two species of chimpanzees; the Common Chimpanzee and the Bonobo. These two lineages separated from one another maybe a million years ago.

What about these; http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ubir/hd_ubir.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/chav/hd_chav.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/apol/hd_apol.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/lasc/hd_lasc.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/blac/hd_blac.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/wadi/hd_wadi.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/jomo/hd_jomo.htm http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/malt/hd_malt.htm

Lol, nice response. I notice you are apparently unwilling to engage with the various lines of evidence that are provided in the video which essentially demolish your 'common design' argument, the only argument that you have ever presented on here. As to your question of why I have not put similar evidence on here; my response is that I have. Unfortunately the post violated forum rules and was deleted very soon afterwards.

I notice that you answered none of my questions. Why bother responding by just asking different questions? I asked the questions for a reason and you just ignored them. Regarding the defintion of evolution, I would agree with the NCSE - http://ncselegacy.org/evolution/education/defining-evolution .

Horizoneast, did you actually bother to look up the videos mentioned - http://www.worthychristianforums.com/Commo...02#entry1450002 ? If you didn't, they can be found They are interesting at least for people to see the evidence that theistic evolutionists find so compelling.

I have been wondering if any of the people here can name some predictions of what type of evidence we should be looking for concerning evolution. For instance, if we take the basic idea that humans and chimpanzees share a common ancestor, what sort of evidence would we expect there to be for this? If these two organisms do share a common ancestor it would mean that their two genomes, which we can see now and examine in essentially as much detail as we want, were formerly the same genome, in the common ancestor, and that differences have built up since they split. Working on this basis, what would we expect the two modern genomes to look like? What evidence should there be that these two genomes are ultimately derived from the same one? As a follow on, if the genetic data sets the existence of the common ancestor at around 5-7 million years ago, what should the fossil record look like from that point on?

Since various anti-evolutionists have made the claim numerous times that no evidence for evolution has been provided I would like to request a single thread where we are in fact able to present some solid evidence, confident that the thread won't be deleted as my previous one was. Here are some specific recent requests that have been made for rigorous evidence for evolution and I think it is only fair that we be allowed to respond; http://www.worthychristianforums.com/Commo...78#entry1449478 http://www.worthychristianforums.com/Commo...64#entry1449064 http://www.worthychristianforums.com/Survi...38#entry1449138 Could the moderators please give permission for a single thread - even if it is agreed in advance that it is only allowed up for a limited time - to be started where we are actually allowed to present evidence that can be discussed and debated?

Leoxiii, the important question is: what would you accept as evidence of common ancestry over common design? If we were to treat them both as competing scientific hypotheses we would have to know what each predicts and what should be the case if either one were true so we can compare these predictions to reality to test them. We must also know what could not possibly be the case if each one were true, and what would prove them wrong. If an idea is consistent with all possible outcomes (as the actions of a supernatural entity would appear to be) then how do we test it? If we were to accept common design as a working hypothesis, how would we seek out errors in our understanding of how a supernatural agency would operate so that we can correct them? That's the whole point of science, you seek out flaws and weaknesses in your current models and theories so that they can be improved. As soon as you invoke the supernatural, there's just nowhere else to go.

I notice that neither of you responded to any of the points I made. Oh, and horizoneast can you provide me with a direct link to the article written by Stephen Jay Gould about homology? I typed that quote by Kenyon and Davis into google, and was presented with this creationist website - http://www.trueorigin.org/theobald1d.asp - referencing the quote and refering to it as S. J. Gould, Natural History, January 1987, 14. The problem is that when you go to the Stephen Jay Gould archive you find that there is no such article. There is an article in January 1987 but it is in Discover and contains no such discussion of homology - http://www.scribd.com/doc/17464111/Darwini...ephen-Jay-Gould. There is an article entitled 'Evolution and the triumph of homology, or why history matters' but that was in 1986 and was in American Scientist; perhaps the discussion is in here but I am unable to find a copy of it to check. I really wish anti-evolutionists would provide proper references for their quotes so they can be verified as accurate, and not just another example of fraud, such as the quote attributed to Arthur Keith which he is supposed to have written in the forward to the 100th anniversary edition of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species in 1959, despite his having died in 1955. I note that since neither of you can name a potential falsification of common design, you admit that it is unfalsifiable and therefore not scientific. As one example of this common design vs common descent argument, let us for a moment examine cetaceans. These are organisms such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises, but they live in the water. However, they are mammals, and so common descent proposes that in order for them to be related to other mammals, cetaceans must ultimately be descended from land mammals. Now when we look at the fossil record we see a whole series of temporally arranged fossils appearing to document the evolution of whales from a land mammal; Indohyus, Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, Dalanistes, Maiacetus, Rodhocetus, Takracetus, Gaviocetus, Basilosaurus, Dorudon, Mysticetes, Odontocetes. These fossils demonstrate everything we would expect to see; such as progressive loss of hind limbs, and the gradual migration of nostrils back towards the top of the head to forum a blowhole. This is not ‘proof’ of anything, but it is reasonably compelling and suggestive of a macroevolutionary transition. Remember also that nobody is proposing that these organisms are a direct line of ancestors and descendants (always think of evolution as a bush, or a branching tree, never as a ladder). They simply represent an overall picture; orginally in the fossil record there are no cetaceans at all, and then we see a gradual series each appearing to be slightly less like a land-based mammal, and progressively more like a modern whale. Now not only is that the case, but we also observe the same processes at work during their embryological development. Cetaceans develop hindlimb buds at the exact same stage of their development as other mammals, and these are essentially indistinguishable from those in other mammals at that stage. In cetaceans, the buds later regress back. Cetacean nostrils develop of the tip of their nose but then migrate and fuse into a blowhole on the top of their head. Thus we see a remarkable convergence between fossils and embryological development. Again, not ‘proof’, but we do have converging lines of evidence pointing in towards the same conclusion. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...i?artid=1482506 Of course, nowadays we are able to sequence genomes and look at organisms’ genes. When we look at the genomes of cetaceans we find that they have the remnants of genes for land-based olfaction and vision, as well as remnants of genes for making hindlimbs. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlere...i?artid=1691291 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18686195 All of this is exactly what we would expect to be the case if common descent was true. I could go on, and tell other stories, but I suspect this post might not remain up so I won’t waste any more time. I will however, just repeat my initial question: if this is a result of common design why is it a design that looks so remarkably like common descent? Just how deep does the illusion go?

Leoxiii you fundamentally misunderstand the nature of that post that I made discussing potential falsifications of common descent. I was describing any number of potential discoveries that would instantly prove disastrous to common descent, so much so that it is almost inconceivable to imagine how it could ever accommodate them. This is why evolution is scientific, it is ultimately falsifiable if nature provides us with the necessary data. You yourself can go out and become a scientist and look for these things. If you find them present them to the scientific community and you will have thrown modern evolutionary theory into disarray. I know that you can explain things by resorting to 'common designer' arguments, but unless you can indicate a single potential finding that would falsify such a notion it is not a scientific explanation. Can you provide me with a falsification of common design, as I have done for common descent, or do you admit it is unfalsifiable? All common design arguments are ultimately just 'appearance of common descent' arguments, in the same way that people argue that God made the earth a few thousand years ago but it just looks really old. Common design arguments just take the evidence for common descent and declare "God just made it that way," without actually being prepared to enage the data. Universal common descent demands that all organisms have essentially the same genetic code (or the minor derivations of it) and the fact that this is true should be ample evidence for any sane person of universal common ancestry. Does common design demand this? Who knows? God presumably could have made any organisms how he wanted. He could have made each one with an entirely different code, so that they could not possibly be related. But no, people who advocate common design arguments say that not only did he make organisms all on the same basic code, he made them so similar with that code that it looks exactly like common descent would expect. For example, let's compare human and chimps genomes; a full 2.4 / 3 billion nucleotide letters line up between these two species: genes, non-coding sequences, pseudogenes, the works – in essentially the same order. This is called synteny – genes in the same order. There is no reason why these two species need the same genes in the same order. Another issue is redundancy: there are different ways to code for the same proteins with nucleotides. Nucleotides in coding sequence are read in groups of three (codons). For example, GGx = glycine (GGA, GGC, GGG and GGT); for proline, CCx will do (four possible codons as well). Take, for example, the following three amino acid sequence: “Gly-Gly-Pro”. There are 4^3 or ways to code this at the nucleotide level. For longer proteins, the possibilities quickly reach to the tens of millions and beyond. Despite all the possible ways to encode proteins available to a Designer, what we see with chimps and humans is not only near identical match in amino acid sequence, but that the underlying nucleotide code is also nearly identical (or in many cases, fully identical). Let's just examine one protein, insulin, it has 110 amino acids, and there are over 10^53 different ways to code for this at the nucleotide level. Humans and chimps differ by only two of those 110 amino acids, and of the 330 nucleotides, they differ by only six! Of over 10^53 different possibilities, why do we see one that is only six nucleotide changes away? Now take this basic issue and its implications to the 2.4 / 3 billion nucleotides in common between the two species that differ by only 1.23%. Also bear in mind that the differences we see accrued in two distinct lineages – human and chimp. So, the differences we see today are the combined changes in both lineages from a common starting genome. More specifically: suppose that a Designer was constrained to the exact amino acid sequence we observe for human insulin in both humans and chimps. There are 10 to the 53rd power nucleotide coding options for that exact amino acid sequence. Of this vast, vast array of possible codes, we see the codes in these two organisms are barely different at all. If a Designer was going to design insulin in these two species, why not pick one of the other billions of sequences available for these exact amino acids? Why pick sequences so close to one another that it strongly supports the idea of common ancestry? And why do this exact same thing at a genome-wide level? And then arrange these same genes with the same sequences into the same spatial pattern (when that isn’t required from a design standpoint either)? And then include non-functional sequences with clear signs of prior adaptation to other manners of life in the same places in both genomes, with the same inactivating mutations? And then he apparently did exactly the same thing with the genome of the gorilla, only with slightly more changes? Again with the orangutans, but with just slightly more changes still? And all the way down the phylogenetic tree he went, just basic copying and pasting the same sequences in the same order, pseudogenes, ERVs, and everything else, each time with just slightly more differences to further the charade of common descent.

Horizoneast, I once heard a pretty good response to this from an old earth creationist. He obviously believes that the God created Adam and Eve via a supernatural creation event, and that they had no evolutionary connection to any other prior organism on earth. However, he put it like this; when Adam for example was first created he probably would have looked old, however he would have measured young. For example, there are medical tests that can be performed to determine the age of a person with a reasonable degree of accuracy, depending on chromosomes and other things in the human body. When we come to the earth and the universe, it is not just that it 'looks' old, it actually measures to be old. Independent methods from different disciplines all essentially converge on the same ancient age for both, around 4.6 billion and 13.7 billion respectively.

Actually, I started it. I didn't realise it wasn't allowed. It seems rather strange for people to demand evidence and then just delete it when it is provided. I could probably reproduce the basic outline of it if I was given assurances that it wouldn't be deleted again.

Some more cool stuff; Evolution of the Four-Chambered Heart - http://esciencenews.com/articles/2009/09/0...heart.evolution Getting A Leg Up On Whale And Dolphin Evolution: New Comprehensive Analysis Sheds Light On The Origin Of Cetaceans - http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/...90924185533.htm

We've found more fossils linking birds to therapod dinosaurs, precisely where evolution predicted they would be. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8273938.stm

Nebula, I don't know about the OP but I have been away for a few days. I did however notice your questions yesterday but the reason I haven't answered them is I simply don't understand them. Could you perhaps explain in greater detail what you mean and what sort of a response you are looking for?

Henry Gee is absolutely correct that rocks don't have birth certificates but that doesn't mean we can't tell how old they are. He is also right about fossils, we can never know whether any series of fossils represents a direct series of ancestors and descendants, but they don't have to as that isn't what 'transitional' means. This is something that he himself explained after the Discovery Institute used his quotes as you have; "That it is impossible to trace direct lineages of ancestry and descent from the fossil record should be self-evident. Ancestors must exist, of course — but we can never attribute ancestry to any particular fossil we might find. Just try this thought experiment — let’s say you find a fossil of a hominid, an ancient member of the human family. You can recognize various attributes that suggest kinship to humanity, but you would never know whether this particular fossil represented your lineal ancestor – even if that were actually the case. The reason is that fossils are never buried with their birth certificates. Again, this is a logical constraint that must apply even if evolution were true — which is not in doubt, because if we didn’t have ancestors, then we wouldn’t be here. Neither does this mean that fossils exhibiting transitional structures do not exist, nor that it is impossible to reconstruct what happened in evolution. Unfortunately, many paleontologists believe that ancestor/descendent lineages can be traced from the fossil record, and my book is intended to debunk this view. However, this disagreement is hardly evidence of some great scientific coverup — religious fundamentalists such as the DI — who live by dictatorial fiat — fail to understand that scientific disagreement is a mark of health rather than decay. However, the point of IN SEARCH OF DEEP TIME, ironically, is that old-style, traditional evolutionary biology — the type that feels it must tell a story, and is therefore more appealing to news reporters and makers of documentaries — is unscientific. I am a religious person and I believe in God. I find the militant atheism of some evolutionary biologists ill-reasoned and childish, and most importantly unscientific — crucially, faith should not be subject to scientific justification. But the converse also holds true — science should not need to be validated by the narrow dogma of faith. As such, I regard the opinions of the Discovery Institute as regressive, repressive, divisive, sectarian and probably unrepresentative of views held by people of faith generally. In addition, the use by creationists of selective, unauthorized quotations, possibly with intent to mislead the public undermines their position as self-appointed guardians of public values and morals." http://network.nature.com/people/henrygee/...nd-damned-again

Theories can be verified in the sense that they can make predictions which are borne out by physical data. However, no theory, no matter how many times it is confirmed through testing will ever be 'proven true'. The simple reason for this is that scientific theories are always looking to be improved as more becomes known, and any that appear to be correct at a certain time could require future alteration or could ultimately be shown to be wrong by contradictory data. No, scientific theories stand or fall by the data that they attempt to explain and nothing else. No, this is simply a false dichotomy. Each individual theory must be measured against the evidence, falsifying an alternative explanation only means that explanation is wrong, it does not mean something else gets to win by default. With regard to evolution, it is logically possible that there might be some alternative explanation for nested hierarchies, pseudogenes, ERVs, biogeographical distribution, independent convergent phylogenies, comparative anatomy, atavisms, embryological and development pathways for organisms, transitional fossils, observed speciation events, and other things, but so far the scientific community thinks that universal common descent is the best explanation. Until someone provides a better explanation which explains all this and some potential new discoveries that evolution doesn't it is 'the only game in town'. Likewise for atomic theory, perhaps there is some unknown phenomena that is causing us to mistakenly attribute certain aspects of the natural world to the existence of atoms, but so far it's the best we have.

Beccar777, just what exactly would you accept as a transitional fossil? I mean evolution predicts that they must exist but in order for anybody to actually verify whether or not they do there must be a set of criteria by which we can determine whether any fossil could ever meet the requirements. I genuinely would like to know what you would accept. Many of these paleontologists have spent decades working in the field, this is what they do, they are trained to be able to assess fossils. You claim there are other paleontologists who disagree with these assessments, could you provide me some names? Actual paleontologists who are working in the field, publishing research, and who I could email to ask whether or not they think that the fossil record supports the theory of evolution. Also, you keep referring to this "sudden appearance" by which I take it you mean the Cambrian explosion. Could you tell me what you think the Cambrian explosion is? If it is the creation week as described in Genesis why are there no jawed fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, birds, insects nor even much in the way of plant life? I mean the Bible says plants were created on day 3, birds and water creatures were both created on the same day - day 5, and that land animals were created on day 6. How do you understand the Cambrian explosion as some kind of creation event?

Since the other threads discussing the fossil record have become rather full and so it's easy to miss these things, here are a series of links about transitional fossils as have been requested. Palaeontological and Molecular Evidence Linking Arthropods, Onychophorans, and other Ecdysozoa http://www.springerlink.com/content/w21721...2/fulltext.html Monoplacophorans and the Origin and Relationships of Mollusks http://www.springerlink.com/content/k8886w...6/fulltext.html The Evolutionary Emergence of Vertebrates From Among Their Spineless Relatives http://www.springerlink.com/content/l48138...k/fulltext.html The Fish

Common design is not a scientific explanation for the very simple reason that it (at least in the way it is used on here) is completely unfalsifiable. If you can provide me with some potential falsifications of common design I would be very interested to see them. If however you want potential falsifications of common descent I would be only to happy to provide them. We simply have no idea at all of what common design might look like. And the hypothesis of evolution is falsifiable? Oh please do tell me what test I might conduct that could falsify common descent and please do it without using assumptions and predictions inferred from the hypothesis. Further, I hate to be redundant but, are you any of you evolutionists ever going to answer my questions? Here are just three of them. 1. Can the hypothesis of evolution be verified, proven true? 2. Can the hypothesis of evolution be verified by positive induction? 3. Can the hypothesis of evolution be verified by falsifying the only alternative? No theory in science is ever 'proven true'; cell theory, atomic theory, the theory of evolution are all scientific explanations for natural phenomena but none of them is proven and none ever will be. Proof does not exist in science. However if you want potential falsifications of common descent try these; - Find an apparent transitional fossil that contradicts the established phylogeny; mammal-bird, fish-reptile, amphibian-mammal, any of those would do - Similarly find a true chimera; i.e. Kirk Cameron's crocoduck or bullfrog - Some out of place fossils; pre Cambrian amphibian, reptile, mammal, bird etc - Find an organism that has an entirely different genetic code - Find a non-bird that has the genes for producing feathers - Find a non-mammal that has nipples, develops nipples during its embryological development, or has the genes for making nipples - A fossil record that shows everything that has ever lived together in the same rock layers all over the earth - A mechanism for preventing accumulation of genetic mutations - Discover that the genome of a reptile/amphibian/fish/plant etc that is closer to that of a human than the chimp's is - Find a mechanism that prevents speciation - Find a gene in an organism that doesn't display evidence of an evolutionary history, one it is unambiguously designed (see youtube video 'Challenging the Discovery Institute to Discover' by C0nc0rdance) - Find a highly conserved gene, such as cytochrome c, that is identical between supposedly between distantly related organisms - Find, for something such as cytochrome c, that all organisms either all have exactly the same sequence, or their own unique one. There are some to be getting on with.

Horizoneast, every scientist on the planet could sign that statement. Of course all scientists should be skeptical about every claim, and we should certainly analyze the evidence for everything. But no scientist is actually saying that natural selection and random mutation account for everything we observe in the biological world, modern evolutionary theory incorporates all kinds of other processes, so that statement is a strawman. In fact an awful lot of the people who signed it had no idea what they were signing and wouldn't have signed it if they had known how it was going to be misused - http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/loca...29_danny24.html . The important point is that when the scientists who signed that statement are actually asked whether they accept common descent essentially all of them do (there is a video on youtube where someone did this, it is called 'List of Scientists Rejecting Evolution- Do they really?'). People have actually contacted them and the general response is something like "oh I have no problem with evolution per se, I am just not certain about the role played by natural selection in the process." It's also worth noting that an awful lot of signees to that list are not scientists, they might have PhDs but simply having a PhD does not make a person a scientist. They are not conducting scientific research anywhere and presenting it to the rest of the community. When you actually look at research scientists (people who are paid to get the science right and are not just concerned about apologetics) the percentage of people who reject common descent is far lower than the number of historians who deny the Holocaust ever happened. Check out Project Steve - http://ncseweb.org/taking-action/project-steve - 1106 signees and counting.