Evolution disproved?

[secondeve]

"Well, back to fruit flies. Because fruit flies reproduce many generations in a very short time, scientists picked them for the experiment hoping to compress thousands of years of `evolution' into a few years of lab work.

"After 80 years and millions of generations of fruit flies subjected to X rays and chemicals which cause mutations, all they have been able to produce are more of the same: fruit flies.

"And

[Bread_of_Life]

I would like to ask, is if we evolved from apes like we supposedly did, and that was a physical change for the better, why are there still apes?

We and apes evolved from the same ancestor, we did not evolve "from" apes.

There are two processes of speciation, orthogenesis, and cladogenesis. Orthogenesis is a gradual change in one species until eventually it becomes reproductively distinct from its ancestors.

Cladogenesis is when a species splits into two species. Effectively, cladogenesis is what happened a long time ago between us and chimps - we were one species, they went one way and evolved into chimps, we went another and evolved into humans. Both make a decent living, we in cities, they in trees.

[Guest Timbo]

Hi Pointer,

So-called Christian Fundamentalists assert that all physical creation was produced in six 24-hour days some 10,000 years ago. The Bible, however, does not support such a conclusion. The Genesis account opens with the simple, powerful statement: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."(Gen 1:1) Bible scholars agree that this verse describes an action separate from the creative days recounted from verse 3 onward. The implication is profound. According to the Bible's opening statement, the universe, including our planet earth, was in existence for an indefinite time before the creative days.

Geologists estimate that the earth is approximately 4 billion years old, and astronomers calculate that the universe my be as much as 15 billion years old. Do these findings - or their potential future refinements - contradict Genesis 1:1 ? No. The Bible does not specify the actual age of "the heavens and the earth". Science does not disprove the Biblical text.

What about, though, the length of the creative days ? Were they literally 24 hours long ? Some claim that Moses - the writer of Genesis - later referred to the day that followed the six creative days as a model for the weekly Sabbath at Exodus 20:11, saying that each of the creative days must be literally 24 hours long. Does the wording of Genesis support this conclusion ?

No, it does not. The fact is that the Hebrew word translated "day" (yohm) can mean not just a 24-hour period. For example, when summarizing God's creative work, Moses refers to all six creative days as one day, saying: "This is a history of the heavens and the earth in the time of their being created, in the day that Jehovah God made earth and heaven." In addition, on the first creative day, "God began calling the light Day, but the darkness he called Night."(Gen 1:5) Here, only a portion of a 24-hour period is defined by the term "day". Sometimes the word

[sweetycakes]

Well, I can't say too much about evolution. I don't believe it, for one thing, except maybe micro-evolution, not macro-evolution. But, as I responded earlier in a PM to another forum member, regarding the validity of carbon-14 dating: An experiment was carried out not too long ago in the UK, (well known and well publicised) where a shell sample was submitted to eminent British scientists for the purpose of carbon-14 dating. This was reported in mainstream daily newspapers, by the way.

Anyway, the results eventually came back, that the shell sample was dated at something like 120 million years old.

However, it was subsequently shown that the creature in question, (a crab), was in fact still ALIVE!

A search on the internet should be forthcoming with these results I state. I haven't bothered myself, as I was here and following it at the time.

The lessson to be learned from all of this, in my opinion, is: Don't believe everything that scientists claim regarding evolution and the dating of the earth or fossil record.

Just something for your information. Follow it up if you will.

[sweetycakes]

Evolution is STILL disproved.

God made man in His own image.

Believe what you will. I choose to believe what God says. He will prove to be right in the end. He always has before. Or have you not read the bible?

[Arialia]

Well, I can't say too much about evolution. I don't believe it, for one thing, except maybe micro-evolution, not macro-evolution. But, as I responded earlier in a PM to another forum member, regarding the validity of carbon-14 dating: An experiment was carried out not too long ago in the UK, (well known and well publicised) where a shell sample was submitted to eminent British scientists for the purpose of carbon-14 dating. This was reported in mainstream daily newspapers, by the way.

Anyway, the results eventually came back, that the shell sample was dated at something like 120 million years old.

However, it was subsequently shown that the creature in question, (a crab), was in fact still ALIVE!

A search on the internet should be forthcoming with these results I state. I haven't bothered myself, as I was here and following it at the time.

The lessson to be learned from all of this, in my opinion, is: Don't believe everything that scientists claim regarding evolution and the dating of the earth or fossil record.

Just something for your information. Follow it up if you will.

Dunno if this has been replied to or not. Anyway, the shell had absorbed carbon from the surrounding limestone, messing up the dating process. However, this, obviously, was caught. This kind of anomaly does not happen every time Carbon-14 dating is used; in fact, it is relatively rare.

[secondeve]

All that is amazing. I figured in all those generations the fruit fly would have at least turned into a monkey, cat, or something. I guess they need billions of generations, not millions. If it has not happened by then, the evolutionists can claim they need trillions of generations.

Sweet gods of common sense. If this is what constitutes your grasp of evolution, no wonder you're amazed.

[Bread_of_Life]

Anyway, the results eventually came back, that the shell sample was dated at something like 120 million years old.

Carbon-14 dating can only date samples up to 55,000 years old, at a maximum. This is therefore a cock and bull story.

Dunno if this has been replied to or not. Anyway, the shell had absorbed carbon from the surrounding limestone, messing up the dating process. However, this, obviously, was caught. This kind of anomaly does not happen every time Carbon-14 dating is used; in fact, it is relatively rare.

And so is this.

As for this so called experiment that disproved evolution, it proves only that:

a) Large macro-mutations are almost always harmful, which we knew already

b) That evolution is conservative, not adaptive, most of the time, which we knew already.

*sigh*

[Arialia]

Anyway, the results eventually came back, that the shell sample was dated at something like 120 million years old.

Carbon-14 dating can only date samples up to 55,000 years old, at a maximum. This is therefore a cock and bull story.

Dunno if this has been replied to or not. Anyway, the shell had absorbed carbon from the surrounding limestone, messing up the dating process. However, this, obviously, was caught. This kind of anomaly does not happen every time Carbon-14 dating is used; in fact, it is relatively rare.

And so is this.

As for this so called experiment that disproved evolution, it proves only that:

a) Large macro-mutations are almost always harmful, which we knew already

b) That evolution is conservative, not adaptive, most of the time, which we knew already.

*sigh*

A) The only reason they were harmful is because they weren't adapting, they were pushing chemicals the flies had never experienced in. Do you think humans could just "adapt" to atomic bombs?

B) I'm not sure what this means.

[Bread_of_Life]

A) The only reason they were harmful is because they weren't adapting, they were pushing chemicals the flies had never experienced in. Do you think humans could just "adapt" to atomic bombs?

No, that's not the only reason they were harmful. If you artificially massively increase the rate and extent of mutations, you are far more likely encourage maladaptive forms. Large mutations, or large numbers of mutations, are almost bound to be negative, because there are relatively few well adapted possibilities compared to many mal-adaptive possibilities.

However, you're right that they weren't adapting. The reason is, they were not under the influence of ordinary natural selection. They weren't adapting "to" anything - they hadn't undergone a change in environment that would make the adapt.

B) I'm not sure what this means.

It means that, 99% of the time, natural selection acts to keep what is there that is well adapted, rather than change what is mal-adapted. It conserves what we already have that is good most of the time, and changes rarely. But we already knew that - most evolution and selection is conservative. These are not new findings, and they do not disprove evolution.