What is the Evidence of Mutations and New Information

[Guest 1sheep]

7 minutes ago, Sojourner414 said:

If evolution is true, then why is Congress still filled with idiots? Shouldn't they have "evolved"?

The Neanderthal time warped into a lefty? Maybe it is the  mandella effect backwards?

[Guest shiloh357]

On ‎8‎/‎31‎/‎2018 at 8:02 AM, one.opinion said:

 

What I have been unable to do is change your mind, which I had no expectation of doing in the first place. I did, however, provide evidence from the fossil record.

No, you did not.  The whale evolution example is questionable and frankly, if Evolution were true, you would have thousands if not millions of examples of macro-evolution.   You do not have the kind of evidence we would expect to see from a process of transitions over a period of billions of years. One very potholed example is not sufficient as "evidence."

 

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Incorrect, he had fossil evidence of this, as well. Additionally, the bigger picture of the biogeography of the South American continent (beyond just the Galapagos Islands) was also evidence of macro-evolution.

No, he had no fossil record which why he said that he hoped that fossils would vindicate him in the future.  They didn't. 

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Some of Haeckel's contemporaries challenged his work, and it is certainly possible that a bias led to wide-spread acceptance of his drawings - I cannot definitively say, one way or the other. However, the largest piece of evidence contradicting Haeckel's drawings was a publication in Anatomy and Embryology magazine in 1997, by Michael Richardson. This publication contained photographs of different organisms at various stages of embryonic development. These photos clearly showed that Haeckel's drawings were inaccurate. Again, this work was done in 1997, so it is no surprise that only 3 years later, some textbooks still contained Haeckel's drawings. I don't know how quickly textbook authors responded to this new information, but I've never seen a textbook that contained Haeckel's drawings.

Well, evidently Stephen Gould did see them and knew about them and commented on them. 

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I agree, the root cause of the warming is the most open aspect to debate, although some people challenge the warming, as well. I don't know enough about climate science to argue one way or the other, but rely on the field of experts. In my opinion, disagreement with a field of experts would require some pretty solid evidence to the contrary, and I've not seen anything that fits that role.

There are certainly some over-reaching responses, but there are also some good suggestions about how mankind should fulfill the God-ordained role as caretakers of the earth. There is absolutely no harm in recycling programs, research and use of "green" energy, etc. I'm still gonna use plastic straws, though!! ?

The evidence is that the "experts"  were wrong and all of their predictions failed.   And man is not the cause for global warming, as global warming is a myth.  Everyone knows that the earth goes through periods of heating and periods of cooling as  means self-regulation its temperatures.   People who are used to thinking critically are not so easily impressed or intimidated by "experts."

The whole global warming debacle had no teeth unless we were made to feel that we are the cause and thus provide the impetus to convince us that we needed to buy certain types of "green"  washing machines, toilets, lightbulbs, and cars.  It was all about controlling us, not about the environment.  The government essentially took advantage of the fact that so many people are sheep and will except what the "experts" say without question.

[Guest shiloh357]

On ‎8‎/‎31‎/‎2018 at 5:44 PM, siegi91 said:

I don't know if we look like hairless gorillas. But I think it is self evident that we have a striking similarity with other primates. I feel that for chimps and gorillas while I feel nothing for spiders or beetles.

But why? If I were so special, I would expect to feel the same for spiders as I feel for apes or other mammals.

The scientific explanation is simple: we and chimps have a recent common ancestor and that is why we are so similar. Do you have a similar theological explanation for the fact that we are so similar?

 siegi

 

No, we don't have a common ancestor with chimps.  That is just nonsense.   Evolutionists point to the fact that are something like 98% similar in DNA with chimps.   But most of that has to do with biological functions.   The critical 2% DNA that makes chimps, chimps and humans, humans is radically different and defies any possibility that we are the same or that we are descended from chimps.  

We are 60% identical in DNA to bananas, but I don't think anyone would argue that we share a common ancestor with bananas.

[one.opinion]

30 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

No, you did not.

I quite clearly presented evidence. You do not agree with the conclusions I draw from the evidence, but it was presented.

31 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

No, he had no fossil record

This is demonstrably false. Darwin had a sizable fossil collection and much of this hypothesis was based on fossil evidence.

33 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

Well, evidently Stephen Gould did see them and knew about them and commented on them. 

As I've mentioned previously, the Gould quote was from 2000, three years after Richardson's work conclusively showed the entire scientific community that Haeckel's drawing were inaccurate. I'm sure the textbooks with Haeckel's drawings exist, but I just don't buy the hypothesis that a wide-spread hoax maintained these drawings much longer than they should have. Maybe support this hypothesis with some data -- like what percentage of Embryology (or other subject) textbooks used the drawings after 2000?

42 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

And man is not the cause for global warming, as global warming is a myth.

You are once again contradicting yourself. Is global warming a myth? Or is anthropogenic global warming a myth?

 

37 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

Evolutionists point to the fact that are something like 98% similar in DNA with chimps.   But most of that has to do with biological functions.

The high-end estimate (98%) that you mentioned does indeed relate to the protein-coding segments of DNA. However, even the non-coding DNA sequences have an extremely high degree of similarity, which is what scientists find convincing about common ancestry. The non-coding DNA portion of human and chimp genomes make up approximately 98% of the entire genomes, so the fact that this non-coding DNA is so similar really is strong evidence supporting common ancestry.

43 minutes ago, shiloh357 said:

We are 60% identical in DNA to bananas

As frequently as this myth is perpetuated, it is still absolutely false. In segments of the DNA that code for similar proteins, the DNA sequence identity can be quite high. However, those shared protein-coding regions make up less than 1% of the entire genome.

[ARGOSY]

15 hours ago, one.opinion said:

It is absolutely true that there are missing links in the fossil record -- a great number of them! However, a majority of experts agree that a really good set of fossils exist that exhibit whale evolution. What do you think of that particular example? You can read more here:

https://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/article/evograms_03

 

Creationism assumes a near-complete range of animals from all habitats in all ages. Your whale sequence affirms this and gives no advantage to evolution, that range of terrestrial to aquatic mammals exists today in various forms. So the cherry picking of the past range of mammals from a variety of habitats does not prove anything except the creationist assumption that the near complete range of mammals has always existed. 

I do believe in rapid evolutionary processes within a clade on a physiological level, so I agree some evolutionary sequences do exist, given enough environmental pressure.  But on a genetic level this is largely limited to changes in allele frequencies of a population, rather than new alleles appearing in a unique and functional form.

 

 

 

Edited October 18, 2018 by ARGOSY

[one.opinion]

4 hours ago, ARGOSY said:

Creationism assumes a near-complete range of animals from all habitats in all ages.

If one makes this assumption, then it is impossible for any evidence of a transitional series to exist - only animals along different ends of a spectrum. Asking for a convincing example becomes a moot point.

Making this assumption also means that radiometric dating of fossils is completely wrong. Do you have evidence suggesting this is so?

I would agree that it is certainly possible for God to have created the entire universe 6,000-10,000 years ago, but I believe He left many pieces of evidence throughout the universe that His creation is much older.

 

[ARGOSY]

34 minutes ago, one.opinion said:

If one makes this assumption, then it is impossible for any evidence of a transitional series to exist - only animals along different ends of a spectrum. Asking for a convincing example becomes a moot point.

Making this assumption also means that radiometric dating of fossils is completely wrong. Do you have evidence suggesting this is so?

I would agree that it is certainly possible for God to have created the entire universe 6,000-10,000 years ago, but I believe He left many pieces of evidence throughout the universe that His creation is much older.

 

Okay that is a change of subject that I will deal with in the next post.  But i would like to know if there is any fossil evidence anywhere that gives the theory of evolution any advantage over the theory of creationism?      Let me repeat that in every era, there is a whole range of animals to cherry pick from, because the whole range of animals exists. So it is so easy to find one to suit any so-called transition, even if creation is the truth. You need to find examples that favor evolution, for that you need to pick an animal that is distinctive in a certain feature so that only that lineage is recogniseable, then watch how the fossils change in time with steadily changing features.  the so-called human lineage is all over the place with sudden changes to hip size, brain capacity and no steady changes in one direction or the other, proving nothing except a variety of early race groups.

A better sequence would be the duck-billed platypus, being recognisable because it is distinctive, it is not just a matter of choosing some aquatic animal, then a semi aquatic, then a terrestrial  (or vice versa if you want to explain a terrestrial to aquatic sequence like the whale). Also the giraffe is quite distinctive, having a noticeably longer neck than other animals in early versions, yet the neck has got even longer over time. I will acknowledge that early mammals have since grown larger and some features more distinctive but that is rapid adaptation within a clade, not macro evolution. It fits in with what you would expect under creationist assumptions too, so I just want to know if evolution has any empirical advantage?

Edited October 18, 2018 by ARGOSY

[ARGOSY]

39 minutes ago, one.opinion said:

If one makes this assumption, then it is impossible for any evidence of a transitional series to exist - only animals along different ends of a spectrum. Asking for a convincing example becomes a moot point.

Making this assumption also means that radiometric dating of fossils is completely wrong. Do you have evidence suggesting this is so?

I would agree that it is certainly possible for God to have created the entire universe 6,000-10,000 years ago, but I believe He left many pieces of evidence throughout the universe that His creation is much older.

 

Now regarding radiometric dating, they have detected fluctuations in decay rates but have written this off as negligible without doing the full maths. So without further studies on PROJECTED changes to decay rates, radiometric dating is just an assumption.

 

ps I am not YEC, being a bible literalist. Genesis 1 describes a watery world in existence in darkness before the evening of day 1, and does not say for how long it was in existence. Because I take the bible literally, I can only see some larger animals created during the 7 days of creation, the existence of bacteria is not mentioned, and the existence of the watery world is mentioned, yet nothing is said about how long it existed. So please take that into account in discussions with me, I am not a typical YEC, but I am a literal believer in Genesis 1. the possibility of bacteria existing and the planet existing and the universe existing before creation week is a very real possibility for me as a bible literalist.

Edited October 18, 2018 by ARGOSY

[one.opinion]

11 minutes ago, ARGOSY said:

But i would like to know if there is any fossil evidence anywhere that gives the theory of evolution any advantage over the theory of creationism?

There are two aspects to a transitional series. The first is the fossils that exist along a morphological continuum between two extremes. The second is the dating of the fossils adding a second continuum of chronology to the fossils. If we begin with the assumption that all life forms on the planet were created several thousand years ago, we can claim that the continuum only shows species that existed at roughly the same time and were fossilized only during the global flood, so there would be very little evidence that would support anything but young earth creation.

However, if we assume radiometric dating is a reasonably-accurate scientific procedure, then we can claim that these fossils represent not only diversification in body form, but diversification over time. And THAT is what makes a good transitional series. Here (http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2901) is a pretty good set of answers to the question "Is radiometric dating accurate?" In answer 3, we see this important point: "The reason that I trust the accuracy of the age that we have determined for the earth (~4.56 billion years) is that we have been able to obtain a very similar result using many different isotopic systems." For decay rate fluctuation to nullify the accuracy of radiometric dating, then the decay rate fluctuation would have to have occurred in the exact same way for each isotopic system used for radiometric dating. If you have evidence of decay rate fluctuation in such a way that leaves multiple isotopic systems each with different half-lives in such close synchrony, I would love to see it.

Again, I agree that God absolutely could have created the entire universe and everything in it just a few thousand years ago. But I believe He left many pieces of evidence that suggest otherwise.

P. S. I should also make it clear that I am a creationist in the sense that I believe our omnipotent God is responsible for ALL creation. I just don't find young earth creation as plausible as creation over vast periods of time.

[ARGOSY]

16 minutes ago, one.opinion said:

There are two aspects to a transitional series. The first is the fossils that exist along a morphological continuum between two extremes. The second is the dating of the fossils adding a second continuum of chronology to the fossils. If we begin with the assumption that all life forms on the planet were created several thousand years ago, we can claim that the continuum only shows species that existed at roughly the same time and were fossilized only during the global flood, so there would be very little evidence that would support anything but young earth creation.

However, if we assume radiometric dating is a reasonably-accurate scientific procedure, then we can claim that these fossils represent not only diversification in body form, but diversification over time. And THAT is what makes a good transitional series. Here (http://scienceline.ucsb.edu/getkey.php?key=2901) is a pretty good set of answers to the question "Is radiometric dating accurate?" In answer 3, we see this important point: "The reason that I trust the accuracy of the age that we have determined for the earth (~4.56 billion years) is that we have been able to obtain a very similar result using many different isotopic systems." For decay rate fluctuation to nullify the accuracy of radiometric dating, then the decay rate fluctuation would have to have occurred in the exact same way for each isotopic system used for radiometric dating. If you have evidence of decay rate fluctuation in such a way that leaves multiple isotopic systems each with different half-lives in such close synchrony, I would love to see it.

Again, I agree that God absolutely could have created the entire universe and everything in it just a few thousand years ago. But I believe He left many pieces of evidence that suggest otherwise.

P. S. I should also make it clear that I am a creationist in the sense that I believe our omnipotent God is responsible for ALL creation. I just don't find young earth creation as plausible as creation over vast periods of time.

Firstly I believe radiometric dating is exponentially flawed across all isotopes in synchrony. Secondly I believe fossils are layered over time, no matter what the time frames are, and should point to evolution if evolution has any empirical advantage.

What one sees in the fossil record is predominance of certain classes of vertebrae according to conditions. The assumption that they therefore evolved, one to another, fish, amphibian, reptile , mammal is mere assumption.  What is a more common observation, and provable in modern conditions is that when an environment undergoes change, the common species hide in suitable niches, and niche species can become predominant if conditions suit. That is a far more viable and observable theory than evolution, no matter what the timeframes.

Edited October 18, 2018 by ARGOSY