Valoran

I was only answering your question, which was specifically was there evidence that sedimentary deposits can be laid down rapidly.

I was not saying that since they can, therefore they are.

I was saying that since they can, then without any conflicting background information it's a possibility that they are.

Some types of sedimentation can obviously be deposited rapidly. Some types can't, and this conflicting background information was precisely what the link I gave you explains, which you might have found out if you'd bothered to read it.

As for the rest of your post, all you seem to be trying to do is claiming that you have good and sound arguments, it's just that you're not going to show them. Well - as usual, that's your choice.

OK, I appreciate your willingness to offer a concession. Thank you.

You're welcome.

All I was saying was that it demonstrates that sedimentary deposits are laid down rapidly, and that's accepted irrespective of whether or not you're an old earth evolutionist or a young earth creationist. That's all that my comment was designed to do in the first place. Everyone agrees that sedimentary deposits can be laid down rapidly, and 75% of the earth's surface is covered with such sedimentary deposits so again everyone agrees that there has been large scale flooding over the earth. So if we know the earth has been flooded, and we know that the sedimentary layers can be deposited rapidly, and Mt. St. Helens demonstrated that so too can ash and that erosion that used to be interpreted as taking long ages was also demonstrated to be possibly in catastrophic conditions at that eruption, then what we see is that classic uniformitarianism that used to reject all these things has made huge concessions to catastrophism.

The glaringly obvious flaw in your logic is that you assume that just because SOME sediments are rapidly deposited, ALL of them are.

Just to satisfy myself that you're actually aware of what the geological evidence against YEC-ism is, here's a brief primer: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CH/CH550.html

I'm sure you're capable of googling whatever other details you might need to know, or raise them in the form of questions/challenges here.

So much so that philosophically the evidence is supporting a single flood event since proposing a single flood does not compound postulates beyond necessity, whereas multiple, local floods that all lithified to preserve fossils (even though the conditions for lithification require very specific chemicals and therefore unique circumstances which couldn’t often be expected), is compounding postulates beyond necessity.

I'll need to ask you to explain in further detail, since I'm afraid I'm quite ignorant on how local floods and fossils are incompatible with each other.

I am convinced the architects and proponents of this movemenet aim to completely remake our culture in their image. Every school will be forced to teach about the merits of the gay lifestyle.

As opposed to the merits of the heterosexual lifestyle? I'm really not sure that's what they teach kids in school.

Every children's as well as adult TV programming will feature gay and lesbian characters.

Adult TV programming, perhaps. Children's shows? Heterosexual couplings aren't even a main point in TV programs for kids yet - if ever.

Every church will be barred from speaking against it as hate speech.

As long as they're only barred from doing so publicly, I welcome that law fully. If the same law oppresses the right of the church to express its doctrine behind its own doors, however, I suppose I'll have to vote for amending that law.

Every employer will be forced to hire and retain gays and lesbians to fulfill equal employment opportunity law.

You mean the same way they have to hire blacks and women, and - God forbid - black women? Such a law is definitely way past due.

Philosophically, if you disconnect from a religious framework to bound behavior, any sexual practice you can possibly imagine, however vile or disturbing, can be justified and legitimized. Pedophilia? Well, if the kid wants to do it, you should not get in their way. Let them explore their sexual identity and preferences.

Or maybe because it's not allowed because children are generally not mature enough to understand the consequences of sex, hence it's illegal even with "willing" children.

Bestiality? If the horse if approachable, go for it.

I suppose that makes sense. I can't say I'm particularly knowledgeable on animal behavioral patterns, though, so I'll refrain from judgment.

Necrophilia? Hey, it's a corpse, inanimate matter.

If a corpse is nothing more than inanimate matter, then what's the point of burial rituals, or even treating a corpse with respect? Cultures attach values and feelings to the bodies of deceased loved ones, not to mention that many of us presumably abhor the thought of our own bodies being used in such a way after our death.

There is no limit to where we are headed if individual preference is the standard for right conduct.

Yes, there is. Just because X is allowed doesn't mean that everything else must be allowed as well. That's a ridiculous and weak argument.

Oh for heavens sakes! We are talking about His rules not a fascist ruler as well as living under Gods reign and not mans. And as I wrote man cannot be left to rule themselves, man cannot rule himself or others well at all at least not for any length of time and yes we see that in fascist, socialistic, even within a republic as America is and was supposed to be.

The point was that "if you guys follow the rules, everything's gonna be just peachy" doesn't really excuse harsh and arbitrary laws, nor do those harsh and arbitrary laws coming from God instead of man make them any easier more pleasant to live with.

Yes and no, Israel was to set itself apart from the others and live under the rules God gave, and if people were following those rules there wouldnt be any problems.

You're aware that that line of reasoning is the exact same one used by every fascist government in the history of mankind... right?

So, I love that you’re accusing me of playing semantic games, and here’s why:

You admit that my example did get you to affirm that sedimentary layers can be laid down rapidly, but then say that I’m playing semantic games because I need to show that it specifically has to be sedimentary rock layers that can be laid down rapidly…. Well, the examples of the supposed polystrat fossils are mostly petrified trees encapsulated in layered sedimentary rock, aren't they Valoran?

You know that they’re in layered sedimentary rock. You know that full well.

No one thinks that it’s layered sedimentary deposits that were never lithified, and no one things that the sedimentary deposits lithify first and then are laid down in rock form as strata.

OES, I just want to confirm something at this point to make sure we're still even on the same page, because I don't know whether you're serious anymore. Are you trying to argue that polystrate fossils debunk geological evidence against a young Earth, or do you just want me to concede that you scored a point off me? Because if it's the latter, I've repeatedly told you that I'm happy to admit you got the better of me. Wear it with pride, or do whatever you want with it. But if it's the former, have you really read the links I posted instead of simply jumping on a sentence and triumphantly going "ah ha!"?

By the way, we had an evolutionary Geneticist here for a while named Don Fanucci. You’d like him. Anyways, his response to some material that was presented to him by Dr. Walt Brown was that Dr. Brown was in no position whatsoever to teach on genetics since his background was in Engineering. He so frequently repeated the point (and if you don’t believe me go look him up, it wasn’t that long ago) that it’s just hard to imagine how to appreciate your ad hominine attacks on a Biochemist like Behe.

There's no element of ad hominem whatsoever regarding my comments regarding Behe. He is a sham who has been repeatedly defeated by both the courts and the scientific community. If I were really resorting to ad hominems, I would have simply dismissed his research out of hand instead of constantly asking you to link us to his work so we can read and discuss it. Why haven't you done that, by the way?

Yes, I agree. But we can pray for Valoran to move beyond his resentment and rage toward believers and be at peace with himself.

Truth be told, there are quite a few believers I respect; my partner and her pastor and shepherd are three examples. Now you may be a long way off from making the cut, but that doesn't mean you need to try to justify it by making the false accusation that I resent all believers, you know.

Not to mention that you're up to your same antics of trying to get this thread locked with your gutter-level comments, as usual. Talk about a one-trick pony. I can't remember if I've informed of you about it before, but I'd just like to give you a courtesy notice that you'll henceforth be ignored unless you actually have anything useful or relevant to say.

Oh wait, that's right, I'm talking to a YEC who cannot possibly accept the fact that yeast has been around in its unicellular state for hundreds of millions of years. D'oh!

Do you understand what the word "respectful" means?

If you can't discuss the subject without taking pot shots, stay out of the discussion.

To be honest I find it strange that you would interpret a straightforward description of the YEC belief as a "disrespectful pot shot". Are creationists usually offended when their own beliefs are described back to them?

Something the viewer will notice right away is how the speaker acknowledges that yeasts are supposed to have branched off of multicellular ancestors, just as I mentioned the other day - hence, the research is really more illustrative of possibility than anything and must be validated by conducting further research on other single celled organisms.

You mean organisms like C. vulgaris (Boraas et al, 1998)? It's already been done more than a decade ago, where unicellular eukaryotes evolved into multicellularity in order to increase their size and avoid being eaten by small-mouthed protozoan predators.

Whether yeast evolved from multicellular ancestors is irrelevant. The question is whether the yeast genome contains any genes for multicellularity today before the experiment was performed on the samples. Yeast has gone for hundreds of millions of years, replicating at a rate of several thousand generations per day in its unicellular state. You also continue to ignore the fact that the yeast genome has been entirely sequenced since 15 years ago and is publicly available. If you want to argue that multicellularity is part of the yeast genome, can you please tell us which sequences are you talking about, exactly?

Oh wait, that's right, I'm talking to a YEC who cannot possibly accept the fact that yeast has been around in its unicellular state for hundreds of millions of years. D'oh!

Something else I noticed was that there's no indication I noticed of what mutation has supposedly occured. As it seems unlikely that unguided chance just happened to faciliate such a beneficial mutation, I'd sure be interested to know if they discovered that every time they subjected the yeasts similar conditions if it would come out with the same result, which would indicated it was not as a result of a mutation, or at least if it was a mutation it would trigged by the conditions and demonstrate that the cell was conducive to such multicellular clustering in the first place.

It's always easy to tell who didn't even read the experiment report at all before trying to discredit it. They're the ones who come up with defenses saying that the researchers should have done this and that when the "this and that" has already been laid out in detail in the report. The experiment was performed on 10 separate yeast populations. All evolved into multicellularity at the end of the experiment.

Besides, are we really still hedging our bets on the "it wasn't caused by mutation!" theory? The yeast specimens all demonstrated the same phenotype of their parent generations and continued to iterate on those phenotypes with each generation. If the phenotype changes were not caused by mutation, it means they weren't genetic, and hence cannot be passed to subsequent generations. That would mean that each generation spontaneously developed the exact same snowflake phenotype as their predecessors all by themselves and improved upon it, and their children all spontaneously develop the same improvements as well and also iterate on further improvements. Can you please explain to us how this is supposed to make any sense? Can you also please explain, after you initially argue how incredible and difficult and impossible it is for organisms to change from unicellularity to multicellularity, you're now trying to claim that such a change can take place without mutation, and hence - by extension - without any change in the yeast genome?

Also, I've noticed the evolutionist seems to be helping themselves to the extrapolation of the development of a multicellular 'organism' from what seems only to be the strict definition of multicellularity, and I think the extrapolation is at best premature. The interpretation of cooperativeness among the cells seems like a bit of a stretch to me at this point, but what I'd like to know is if one of these single yeast cells eats, does the nutrients pass to all of the cells, and the same thing with resperation, waste disposal, etc.? If not, could this really be considered an organism and not simply a cluster of cells working symbiotically?

Can you give us an example of a cluster of symbiotic cells who do not form using any aggregation mechanism but rely on successive division of component cells attached to each other instead, react to selection forces as a whole instead of as individual cells, and exhibit controlled cellular suicide in correlation with cluster fitness and optimal propagule size?

So Valoran, you just skipped right over the part where I said, "For anyone other than Valoran..."?

Ah, I see you've stumbled across the obvious, well done. Thanks for pointing it out as well, some of us here might not have your keen analytical mind and Holmes-esque powers of observation needed to notice that.

Valoran, that doesn't even make sense. It makes you look crazy.

It means that, for some reason, you are asking whether I skipped over irrelevant parts in your post, when the very obvious fact is that I did.

Sarcasm is wasted on the stupid. I need to keep that in mind.

First you pretend that you're too stupid to understand the point I made by having you affirm for me that sedimentary layers can be laid down rapidly, and now you're pretending... whatever it is that you're going for here. I don't get it - how is it that you figure that pretending that you're stupid and crazy make you feel like you're appearing to be correct?

OES, I'm perfectly happy to admit that you won a meaningless game of semantics, and I've already said so. You're not going to get any argument out of me when you try to argue that ash and soil can be deposited rapidly. I trusted a YEC to engage in honest debate, and I've been shown the folly of my ways. So yes, you did get me to affirm that sedimentary layers can be laid down rapidly. But any time you're going to present actual evidence that sedimentary rock layers can be laid down rapidly, which is the geological evidence that blows YEC-ism out of the water, or actual historical evidence for Jesus' resurrection, I'll be willing to listen, though I can't say I'll be holding my breath waiting for it.

I'm a Christian who believes in eternal salvation based on doctrine and evolution has an impact on doctrine, so I'm participating on a Christian forum about shared beliefs with other Christians.

That's so obvious that it demonstrates that the question used as a diversion from actually answering the question I asked is another pretence of being stupid. Again, why pretend you don't understand very simple things to try to look smart?

And I'm an engineer by degree and science teacher by profession who is here to learn how to debunk creationist nonsense. I'm quite sure you're more than aware of that, given how you turned out multiple posts' worth of ad hominems about it before, so I'm not sure what's the point of your pretending to be ignorant and stupid in an attempt to look smart.

You're a creationist, and you're here to talk creationism. I'm an evolutionist, and I'm here to talk evolution. I'm glad you're finding it so obvious and simple now, but it'd be great if you tried to engage your brain and arrive at the obvious and simple answer before I had to ask you a rhetorical question to guide you towards it because I wasn't sure what you were trying to accomplish by playing dumb.

So... no answer to my question?

Interesting.

OK. You want to parade around pretending to be stupid and craze that's fine by me.

I'm interested in whether or not you're getting a good return for our effort, so I'd appreciate it if you keep me updated on how many converts you get from among us.

So if you "knew" - and I use that term loosely - that I'm here to "convert" you, what were you hoping to accomplish by pretending to be stupid and crazy and asking me what I'm here for?

That's a rhetorical question, by the way. The obvious answer is that you're trying to turn this discussion towards ad hominem, as usual, because your bag of tricks is running dangerously low by now. Your attempt of bringing up Behe's work has backfired so badly that you don't even dare to link us to it. You're unable to discuss the evidence for creationism and against evolution other than copying and pasting links and snippets you apparently have no understanding of, much less refute arguments against. And you've tried to score a personal one-up by claiming to not care what I have to say, except that it's turning out that you care so much you apparently can't stop yourself from replying to me.

What's next? When do the desperate ad hominems, meaningless word games, and your pattern of running away pretending to not care but unable to stay away because you care so badly going to commence once more, OES? What's your and MorningGlory's best shot at trying to get this thread locked again because you cannot answer the evidence against your position? Or dare I hope for an actual evidence-based refutation of my arguments I have made in response to your link?

So Valoran, you just skipped right over the part where I said, "For anyone other than Valoran..."?

Ah, I see you've stumbled across the obvious, well done. Thanks for pointing it out as well, some of us here might not have your keen analytical mind and Holmes-esque powers of observation needed to notice that.

I told you I'm not going to bother to discuss this with you. Everyone can see that your little attempt at face saving doesn't establish your integrity and I'm not going to waste my time with your dishonest games.

But I'd like you to answer MorningGlory's question: Why are you here?

We don't care about your insults. We've been through others just like you before. You're not blowing our minds.

So if you think we're all just deluded then why waste your time? I don't go around trying to convince people there's no santa clause, or that the moon landing was real... but here you are, dedicating your time and energy to talking incessently at us, even after we've told you flat out that we don't want to hear from you and don't care about your opinion.

So that begs the question, if this life is all you have why are you wasting it talking to deluded, superstitious half-wits? Who cares if we believe nonsense if that's how we want to spend our days?

What is it that you think you're doing here and why?

If you don't believe in evolution, then why waste your time? I don't go around trying to convince people there's no Santa Claus, or that the moon landing was real. Why do you dedicate all this time and energy talking incessantly about evolution?

If you don't want to hear from me and don't care about my opinion, why are you replying to me and saying that you want me to answer questions? Besides the obvious answer, of course: you just want to make absolutely sure other people here know how much you supposedly don't want to hear from me and don't care about my opinion.

Personally, I think it'd be great if you're going to engage in the discussion and defend your arguments with honest debate instead of playing meaningless word games and/or running away all the time. But if you're going to simply turn tail - hey, it's your choice, and truth be told it's just going to make debunking your nonsense that much easier for me.

A few immediate challenges to this research can be seen here: http://www.godandscience.org/evolution/multicellular_evolution.html

Let's inspect the main arguments made by that article.

There is more than one way in which cells within such "snowflakes" can become stressed and die. You will recall that all these cultures were shaking during their growth. Usually, this is done using an orbital shaker that "spins" the media in the cultures at speeds of at least 200 rpm. The supplemental methods3 say that the cultures were "shaking at 250 × g" (Obviously, this is an error, most likely meaning 250 rpm). Such shaking results in sheer forces, which will damage cells near the middle of the "snowflake" as it is contorted by the forces of the rapidly moving culture medium. The larger the colonies become, the stronger the sheering forces that will act on it. The damaged cells will die, resulting in the release of a "juvenile snowflake."

If this assertion is true, then larger yeast clusters should consistently exhibit higher rates of cell death, since centripetal force is directly proportional to mass. What we see, on the other hand, is that there is little to no correlation between cluster size and cell death rates during the early generations of snowflake yeast. This correlation, however, grows gradually until there is a strong correlation by the 60th generation of snowflake yeast, showing that this cell death was not caused by mechanical factors (otherwise the correlation would be present in every generation since the mechanical factors are constant), but that it evolved over time. I'm afraid you'll have to come up with a better explanation that actually fits the facts.

Without any kind of genetic analysis, it is impossible to conclude that any genetic changes were responsible for the phenotypic changes observed.

How do you expect epigenetics or or RNA expression changes to account for such a chasm between unicellularity and multicellularity? First you argue how difficult and impossible it is for multicellular organisms to evolve, and now you claim that such a change can occur without any change in the genome? Incredible. Even if it is true, does it really matter? As long as the changes are heritable and can be acted upon by selection forces, then evolution can occur. Quibbling on this point is simply a red herring that does nothing to change the significance of the experiment.

Authors of the study were so blinded by their belief in macroevolution that they failed to consider the most obvious explanation for the results they observed. Wildtype Saccharomyces cerevisiae already have the ability to grow in a clumped manner by forming pseudohyphae. Granted, the morphology of the "snowflakes" is quite unlike that observed in pseudohyphae. However, this does not mean that Saccharomyces cerevisiae could not have appropriated at least some of the genes involved in pseudohyphae formation to form "snowflakes." Numerous studies are available in the literature that describe the genes involved in pseudohyphae formation in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.4 To conclude that Saccharomyces cerevisiae evolved new genes in a few days of selection in the laboratory is beyond credulity.

What is really beyond credulity is that you expect us to accept the alternative explanation that every single generation evolved all the same characteristics of the parent generation and more, all from scratch, all within a single generation, and that every successive generation did the same. (Or perhaps you're trying to posit the one-size-fits-all excuse of "God did it!" to cover the far-fetched alternative?)

The author of the article admits that pseudohyphae is quite unlike the morphology of snowflake yeast. That's an understatement, considering how pseudohyphae are little more than mitotic daughter cells with no cytoplasmic connection whatsoever failing to completely break off from the parent cell, while snowflake yeast are true multicellular organisms which react as a whole to selection pressures instead of just having individual cells exhibit such reactions. I suspect the author of the article knows this very well. And yet he comes up with the ridiculous proposition that multicellularity can be hand-waved away by yeast pseudohyphae.

Even for the rare few creationists who are intelligent enough to know that the data is squarely against their delusions, the only option they have is to come up with all sorts of absurd assertions and pretend that it's good science, so as to shore up their own faith as well as that of the ignorant, gullible public who looks up to them as stalwart defenders against the satanic influence of scientific research. Admit the facts, and all that will happen is that they get vilified as "traitors" and face rejection from friends, leaders, and even family - their own parents, spouse, children. Which is why you just can't help but pity creationists, especially the smart ones who knows what's really going on but are trapped by their circumstances and forced to deny the truth.

I'm still waiting for a link to Behe's work, by the way. I'm really curious now what sort of sham Behe is cooking up this time when even creationists are afraid to show his work to shore up their arguments.

Oops - I did read it, I just copied and pasted the wrong part. Here's the retort:

"Within the Fungi, simple linear multicellularity of hyphae occurs in all major clades (see below), but only Ascomycota and Basidomycota display more complex two- and three- dimensional multicellularity in the form of sexual spore- producing fruiting bodies. In both of these groups, reversals to unicellular lifeforms have occurred, for example, Saccharomyces and many other related yeasts in the Saccharomycotina (Ascomycota) or Cryptococcus albidus and related species in the hymenomycete clade of Basidiomycota (de Hoog et al. 2000, p. 130).

What do Ascomycota and Basidomycota being multicellular have to do with S. cerviseae being multicellular or otherwise?

You might care to know that yeast is prominent as an example of being a unicellular fungus, and that it was actually the first eukaryotic organism to have its genome fully sequenced back in the 90s. Can you show us where are these latent multicellular genes in the yeast genome? What is the basis of your claim that yeast once used to be multicellular and it was simply drawing on its latent genomes to revert back to its previous multicellular form?

If you followed the link, you'd have seen that I just pasted the wrong part.

I'm sorry, I didn't know I was supposed to read your mind and guess what you really intended to post.

If you want a soundbyte get a link. If you want to understand something, read a book.

But Valorian, I wasn't talking to you when I wrote the post to which you responded, because you're fundamentally incapable of having a rational discussion.

During our last interaction you asked if I could furnish support that sedimentary deposits could be laid down rapidly, and I told you that I would have you affirm that such is the case. I then told you that I would do so by having you agree that polystrate fossils, as they were dubbed, were explained away by rapid sedimentary deposits that created layering and you furnished the link to confirm that was the case.

Somehow you then managed to pretend that the conversation didn't go just as I said it would and pretended that I was arguing from a YEC interpretation of those fossils. Well, how you thought I could get you to affirm rapid sedimentary deposits using polystrat fossils according to a Young Earth Creationist interpretation is a mystery. Why would a creationist say that an atheist would affirm their interpretation for them?

You demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that you're not interested in honest discussion, and let me assure you I'm not interested in playing games with you. I shouldn't even have let myself get suckered into replying to you in the first place.

So, instead of making fun of you, I'll refrain from feeding the troll any further.

If you want to argue that soil and ash can be rapidly deposited, be my guest. I have no objections whatsoever. What I started off with was the assumption that you were going to present evidence for the YEC position since that was what you went into the previous discussion with, having assumed that you were interested in honest debate instead of playing word games. If you ever feel like providing evidence of rock sedimentary layers being formed rapidly, I'll be willing to listen.

You talk of irrationality and trolling, but you turn tail and run when asked to link to Behe's work? I'm not even asking you to explain his research since that's only a waste of time given how you display the apparent lack of ability to analyze what you're copying and pasting, all I'm asking for is a link to it so we can read it for ourselves, and you immediately throw insults and run away with your tail between your legs. Even for a creationist, this is hopelessly incompetent of you.

... or you're presenting a false dichotomy and Behe's work actually indicates what I presented since you even admitted that you're unfamiliar with his work and therefore wouldn't know enough to inform the dichotomy you present as the linked work may not be the same as Behe's. I can't help but point out that you say you won't comment on Behe's recent work because you're not informed on that subject, and then you go ahead and comment on his work anyways without being informed.

But, as for the article you linked, notice that it says "... while the latest work doesn’t duplicate prehistoric transitions, it could help reveal the principles guiding them".

The reason for this is presented here "Our yeast are not utilizing ‘latent’ multicellular genes and reverting back to their wild state. The initial evolution of snowflake yeast is the result of mutations that break the normal mitotic reproductive process, preventing daughter cells from being released as they normally would when division is complete. Again, we know from knockout libraries that this phenotype can be a consequence of many different mutations. This is a loss of function, not a gain of function. You could probably evolve a similar phenotype in nearly any microbe (other than bacteria, binary fission is a fundamentally different process). We find that it is actually much harder to go back to unicellularity once snowflake yeast have evolved, because there are many more ways to break something via mutation than fix it" (source: http://biology.stackexchange.com/questions/709/did-researchers-evolve-multicellular-yeast-or-did-they-just-turn-on-multicellula).

It looks to me like this is far more like taking a single cell of a multicellular organism, and watching it revert back to its multicelluar state than a formerly single celled organism becoming multicellular.

Therefore, I don't see how this demonstrates how life could have slide from a single celled organism to a multicellular one, if the cell hadn't already been conducive to that kind of state.

That is the substance of Behe's work, and it seems to me like these kind of invalid, and over-hyped diversions from that kind of empirical study demonstrate a sort of desperation to affirm an a priori assumption of naturalism, seen in the expressions of those who worked on the project you linked: "I’m certain that rapid evolution occurs. We just don’t know to look for it.”

Being certain of what you don't know what to look for begs the question.

I suggest you might want to try actually reading what you're copying and pasting. If "their yeast" weren't utilizing 'latent' multicellular genes, what then is the basis of your claim that the yeast was multicellular in the first place if they didn't utilize multicellular genes?

What we have here is a blindly copied and pasted snippet that actually works against your own claims, and assertions from you about Behe's work which you refuse to link to for some reason so that we can read it. What exactly did Behe's experiment involve, and how does one reconcile it with the fact that we actually have direct observational evidence of multicellular organisms evolving from previously unicellular ones?

It offends my intellect. talkorigins is misleading propaganda.

Behe's sham science that has been repeatedly defeated by both the courts and the scientific community and his prancing around masquerading as a legitimate scientist offends my intellect as well. Unlike you, however, I'm willing to look at his research and discuss whatever merits it may have instead of simply running away - if you'd be so kind as to link us to it.

Now, if you look into Behe's recent work on mutations in micro organisms he examines both prokaryote and eukaryote cells and empirically quantifies the capacity for change via mutation.

Far from revealing great potential for change, when a systematic quantitative examination is made (unlike the speculations made by the case studies you present above) the results reveal the limitations of selection and mutation.

Single celled organisms remain single celled organisms, and function much like they did in the billions of past generations, though sometimes less efficiently. The indication is that single celled organisms couldn’t “evolve” regardless of the timeline, given the effects on their genome.

I won't comment on this recent work of Behe's that you're referring to since I'm not familiar with it and it isn't linked to so I can read it for myself, but the fact is that Behe is a sham whose work has been debunked by both the courts and the scientific community. As for your claim that single-celled organisms cannot evolve into multicellularity, we actually have direct evidence that proves otherwise:

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/evolution-of-multicellularity/

So either you're misinterpreting Behe's work, or Behe is simply up to his old tricks again.

I guess Jesus was nonsensical as well as He reiterated parts of creation as it were fact, which it is.

I guess you pretty much nailed it on the head.

As for punching holes that is merely your belief based on your faith in what scientists tell you they theoretically know, which they merely theorize and don't really know at all. So that is your faith and God sees you as nonsensical for rejecting Him and His truth, which is, in fact, the only truth.

The evidence for macroevolution has been provided repeatedly in this thread. They have been repeatedly ignored. I doubt reposting them again is going to change anything, but I guess it can't hurt to try.

*links removed*

Can you either refute the evidence or explain how to re-interpret them to support creationism? Can you provide any evidence to support the claims of the article linked to by the OP, which as far as I can tell is unfortunately nothing but an empty assertion elaborated out using pages of pseudo-scientific babbling in an attempt to lend it an air of credibility?

I understand that the genetic markers are not common to all organisms; the Lord simply made X number of blueprints and used each of them more than once. To me, it's crystal clear. God can't lie.....and He hasn't tried. Bottom line is this though; regardless of which theory or belief we embrace.....we cannot comprehend the mind of God and we will know for sure when He decides it's time.

It's remarkable how we can see predictable patterns in how God uses those blueprints then. Apparently God started off with the most basic and rudimentary blueprints for early prokaryotes, modified his blueprints bit by bit over thousands of millions of years, gradually killed off his early blueprints as he ever-so-slowly introduced more and more complex ones, branching them off into various kingdoms and phylums and families according to an order that is completely different from what Gen 1 of the Bible tells us, whereas at the onset of modern science where we actually have knowledge about genetics and the principles of Mendelian heredity and the ability to actually measure changes in organisms, God abruptly ceased his interfering and let nature take its course so that His hand cannot be detected and recorded by science.

It's really remarkable how creationists invariably falls back on "we can't understand God!" to excuse facts that punch holes all over their nonsensical, baseless speculations. I've never really understood how the creationist can bear to live with the shame of such intellectual dishonesty, or if they feel any shame at all... but that's just me.

Here is an example of what I mean about interpreting evidence:

Why Dogs Don't Need Snow Boots

The evolutionist will automatically see the amazement of evolution while the creationist automatically will see design.

nebula, it's easy to pick out single pieces of evidence and argue that one can interpret it multiple ways. Unfortunately, it's also dishonest because the modern evolutionary synthesis isn't founded on isolated bits of evidence like dogs' paws, it's a cohesive theory that unifies a wide range of evidence offered by paleontology to mathematics to genetics.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_of_common_descent

Can you explain to us how can we possibly interpret the entire set of evidence available to us today in order to fit creationism?

I reject evolution on many levels but the scientific evidence is the first.

Throw a fish on the beach every day for a billion years and it's not going to grow legs and turn into a monkey. It's going to die and rot (if it doesn't get eaten)

One species can not turn into another species. Science proves this to be fact.

What makes you think that evolution is triggered by throwing fishes onto beaches, or that fishes are supposed to evolve into monkeys?

Given that speciation (the process of one species evolving into another) has been directly observed numerous times with different species, what makes you think that science proves that "one species can not turn into another species"?

I'm quite sure I could but I asked YOU for the sources of your statements. I don't have time to look up your sources. If you don't work in the scientic field, how do you know your statements are true?

Why are you trying to discuss evolution when you apparently don't even understand the relationship between the genotype and phenotype of organisms? ***Edited to remove the personal attack ***

The thing is, we trust Christians to debate honestly instead of engaging in pointless word games. It appears you're trying to prove that that trust is misplaced.

It is a pet peeve I have. But really, word games are what evolutionists excel at - if we do not describe things satisfactorily, you all harp on us to explain things properly. So I find it amusing that you find my protest offensive.

There is a difference between your failing to describe things satisfactorily, and your constructing your entire argument around viole's choice of words when the real meaning has been explained to you.

Which parts of the arguments which have been presented to you do you not understand, so we can explain it to you again? Or is it that all you're going to post about is how viole used "want" in her post?

Maybe you could provide credible sources of your statements? How do you know these points are scientifically sound? Do you work in this field?

I don't work in the field, but I paid attention during biology class in high school. Assuming you're from the United States, I think you can easily find the answers to your own questions by flipping through a high school or college textbook.

Yes it does if you want to eliminate such things as "Intelligent Design" Personification implies intelligence guiding the process.

The thing is, we trust Christians to debate honestly instead of engaging in pointless word games. It appears you're trying to prove that that trust is misplaced.

The phenotype of an organism is largely dependent on the genotype, but not entirely. During embyonic development you can get variations in phenotype wholly apart from the geneotype. This is seen in cloned animals where the genotype is 100% the same yet the phenotype is varied from differences in embryonic development, i.e. variation in hormone levels from mother etc.

... as well as phenotypes developed in response to external stimuli (e.g. physical exercise). Yes, I believe I forgot to mention those. Thanks for pointing that out.

I'm sure that there are people here who would love to drag this thread into the realm of insults and personal insinuations instead of sticking to a technical discussion, and have been trying to do exactly that, but what I'm really interested is in hearing the creationist viewpoint on this issue.

I assume that even the staunchest anti-evolutionist is sufficiently educated to know that the phenotype of an organism is entirely dependent on the genetic "blueprint". What then makes it so impossible to believe that changing an organism's genes will also change its physical appearance, behavior, and characteristics? Anti-evolutionists constantly insist that there is a barrier that limits mutation and prevents organisms from evolving into other "kinds" - putting aside the ever-flexible creationist definition of "kinds" for the moment, what exactly is this barrier, how does it work, what are its limits, when and how has it ever been studied, and where is the evidence for it?

You make it sound so simple to occur, yet when pressed for details you can't understand the question. Oy!

If , say, canines and felines have a common ancestor, at some point dramatic mutations in different populations occurred that would require the two to be classified not as different species by as different families. Most likely, were this common ancestor to be discovered, it would be classified as a different family than both, would it not? Or as one but not the other?

Forget percentages, how many genes would have had to have mutated in order for such changes to occur?

How many genes were mutated even between homonid families? (Again, number of genes, not percentages.)

In most instances, the common ancestor of X and Y would most likely be classified in the same family as either X or Y. There is nothing to say that the common ancestor must suddenly become extinct after it spawns a new branch of organisms.

As for your other questions: as have been pointed out, they're nonsensical because you apparently have no understanding of how genetics and taxonomy works. First off, there is no exact correlation between a genotype and a phenotype. How many genes are needed to affect any particular change depends on the type of change and organism in question, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to your question. Secondly, you need to remember that the Linnaeus taxonomy system precedes our knowledge of evolution. It does not allow for in-betweens, as organisms must be classified as either one species or another. At borderline cases, where a transitional species displays characteristics of both the species preceding and succeeding it, its classification is often arbitrary. It's really like asking the question: at which point does the color red become the color orange?