Blue eye gene

[MorningGlory]

cache, April 13th 2008

"All you've done here is restate your contention. I know you believe that no new species (using the term loosely) have evolved, my question is why. Why hasn't macroevolution occurred, given that micro clearly has? What biological mechanism halts evolution at the arbitrary boundary you call macroevolution??"

If I knew exactly what that mechanism was I could quit my day job. I've already explained to you that I believe that obsolescence is encoded in the genes....sooner or later all will go extinct. The reason macroevolution has not occurred should be obvious. The Creator creates....species do not morph into something other than what He created them to be.

"So, what, God got bored of one set of creatures so he killed them off and made some new ones? Or did he make a mistake in their design? Or did he change his mind about what he wanted his world to look like?"

From what I've read of Him, God doesn't get bored, nor does He make mistakes. He can certainly change His mind, which He probably did, after all...He IS God.

"Nonsense. Give me one example. I know of many many instances of common sense falling to pieces. In fact some cases this even happens in situations governed by classical physics, like the behavior of an object in a stream of air (it's stuck in the stream surprisingly strongly), or the behavior of a ball on a tilted rotating disc (the ball seems to defy gravity, you could probably find some video of this somewhere)."

No, don't do the 'nonsense' thing, it's patronizing. I can give you a very good example of common sense trumping the hypothesis of a very highly placed, and highly paid, engineer in my own company. This man designed and put into production a new type of downhole, deepwell pipe, confident that his design was foolproof even though it had not been done before. It kept breaking and the expense was enormous to bring it all to the surface and relaunch or to redrill and resink. One of the junior engineers simply pointed out that ********* joints would, more often than not, flex rather than break. They did. This saved the company a lot of money. And it was just common sense, something that a lot of people without much oilfield knowledge would have thought of.

Btw, I fail to see how your examples, above, show the failure of common sense.

[mikeinsarasota]

You have to have a sense of humor if you're talking about ancient cockroaches

why's that?

Well, the mental image of a gray haired cockroach with a cane comes to mind..... But, seriously, you've got to admit it's hardly a common subject (or one that's interesting to very many.)

I'm sure thousands of entymologists would beg to differ. And why do you trivialize the conversation by picturing a cartoon character of a cockroach? Why can't we just discuss it without theatrics?

[MorningGlory]

cache Weren't you guys just talking about how old the cockroach species is? I googled 'oldest species' and came up with this:

The very oldest species on Earth are the cyanobacteria, which seem to have been around virtually unchanged for nearly 4 billion years. This is based on fossils of that age that have been compared under high-powered microscopes to existing species of these bacteria. Other bacteria that are about as old are the archaea, which thrive in acidic, high- temperature, or high-radiation environments.

Another remnant of ancient organisms includes the stromatolites, mounds of algae and bacteria that today grow in the Bahamas, Shark's Bay Australia, and a few other limited environments. They have been around, also largely unchanged, for over 3 billion years and at one time were the Earth's dominant form of life.

On the animal side of things, the brachiopod Lingulaa is probably the oldest, having existed nearly unchanged for over 500 million years, and the horseshoe crab (limulus) has been on the planet for several hundred million years, too. Since the average "lifespan" of a species is only a few million years, having such ancient species around is very impressive.

How does this fit into your model? Also, what evidence to you have to support your hunch (other than that 99% of species are extinct since this also fits nicely with macroevolution)?

What do you want to hear? So there are species older than the cockroach; no one said otherwise. Obviously, some species live a lot longer than others. And these survivors haven't evolved.

Here we have what is colloquially known as a non-answer. You can continue to state your view, but it wont be a valid one until you (or the 'scientists' at AiG) come up with this mystical biological mechanism for the spontaneous cessation of evolution.

I don't frequent AIG, just so you know. There is a mechanism that stops microevolution; what that mechanism is...I don't know and neither does science. If there wasn't we would have species evolving into other species. Hasn't happened.

Ooooooh, here's an interesting philosophical morsel. How can a being outside of time change its mind? Why would a being with infinite knowledge and wisdom want to change its mind (after all, we change our minds when new information comes to light that better informs our choices)?

Moreover, how can a being that knows all be said to be conscious? If something knows what it's going to do before it does it, in what way does it have free will? It can't choose to do something else because then it wouldn't have truly seen the future. (Now that you've shown me you have no answers to my questions I don't mind the thread going off on this philosophical tangent)

No, let's be more precise, cache. I haven't given you the answers you WANT. You are limiting yourself with this one track thinking. God is not subject to interpretation by you, me or anyone else. You're not going to put Him in a niche no matter how hard you try. He created you, after all.

Well the evidence clearly showed the engineer's hypothesis was wrong, the junior engineer's common sense was just a means of pointing out that evidence. Common sense may lead us to evidence, but it isn't actually evidence itself.

Common sense is a human attribute; usually meaning the simplest and most practical way to a goal or the avoidance of something, as illustrated by the young engineer. It's NOT evidence. What are you talking about?

Oh well let me explain them in more detail.

For the first one, get a vacuum cleaner, switch it to blow, and put a ping pong ball in the air stream. Your common sense would suggest that the ball would be blown upwards and then fall to the side, but instead it seems to be held in place by a wobbly invisible hand. In fact, it's held so strongly in the air stream that you can tilt the angle by 45 degrees or more and it will still float there defying gravity. This is completely counter-intuitive behavior.

In the second example you have a disc that is rotating quickly and is tilted at small angle. If you roll a rubber ball from the edge of the disc, instead of rolling down the slope it will just continue rolling into the center of the disc. Actually I don't know if that's the exact set up, but a few years ago a New Scientist article led me to some videos of all the counter intuitive things you can do with a rotating disc and a rubber ball. Maybe you can find the videos but I'm having some trouble locating them.

While these examples of strange behavior are interesting....they're in no way the failure of common sense. They are natural phenomena.

[artsylady]

Hi. Sorry I haven't been around lately. I've been very busy. Besides, I don't think any evolutionist wants to give any other theory any consideration anyway, so what's the point in all of this discussion anyway?

[mikeinsarasota]

You have to have a sense of humor if you're talking about ancient cockroaches

why's that?

Well, the mental image of a gray haired cockroach with a cane comes to mind..... But, seriously, you've got to admit it's hardly a common subject (or one that's interesting to very many.)

I'm sure thousands of entymologists would beg to differ. And why do you trivialize the conversation by picturing a cartoon character of a cockroach? Why can't we just discuss it without theatrics?

Because I, unlike you, have a sense of humor. If you can seriously contend that cockroaches are an interesting subject, to any but a few, all I can do is go off into more laughter. Lighten up, mike. Cockroaches aren't worth getting all sideways over.

Your mocking tone is not appreciated, and is no way to treat a brother in Christ.

[MorningGlory]

Hi. Sorry I haven't been around lately. I've been very busy. Besides, I don't think any evolutionist wants to give any other theory any consideration anyway, so what's the point in all of this discussion anyway?

But, Artsy, you were doing such a good job.....when you were gone for a few days I just had to jump in. Discussion is a good thing (even when it gets heated) because it's a good way to learn things and try to see things from a different perspective. I say 'try' because that's hard to do. Hard....NOT impossible! Don't worry about the evolutionists seeming to not want to consider other view points. Miracles still DO happen.

[artsylady]

Thanks Glory and you're right. Miracles do happen. Seen it happen right here on WB, right here in apologetics. Doesn't happen often, but it does happen. I guess i need the reminder.

And you did a great job btw.

Stick around. I can't promise I'll be back anytime soon.

Cache:

the full sentence is "If this process had been an important factor in the

[mikeinsarasota]

Oh, gosh, I'm not mocking you! I'm ribbing you for being so serious. About cockroaches, no less! Notice the up there? If I was being unpleasant I would have a and if mocking it would be a . Sorry if you were offended, mike. It was not intended that way. Look.....

If I wanted a humorous conversation or to be ribbed, I'd visit a comedy forum. God is not comedy. There are people here trying to refute Him, that is no laughing matter.

Edited April 15, 2008 by mikeinsarasota

[artsylady]

You won't like my SHOCKED thread then.

[MorningGlory]

I've given you the answer "THERE IS A MECHANISM THAT HALTS MICROEVOLUTION." I don't know what it is, scientists don't and you don't either. So asking me over and over again is kinda silly. Sure, I hold on to my hypothesis even though I've not got physical evidence that it's true. Why not? You hold on to the TOE without a shred of evidence as to it's validity. What's the difference? And we don't 'know' that speciation happened. You may know it. I say it didn't happen. You see, cache, you can pull all the rabbits out of hats you want; they're still rabbits and didn't evolve from anything else. They will also become extinct at some point. Evolutionists have been pointing to algae and fruit flies to prove evolution and have failed so far. Do you have any evidence that proves speciation then?