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Willravel · 09-04-2005, 09:32 PM

It's easy to attack creationism. Let's just be honest. It's not just full of holes, it practically is a hole.

There is a reason evolutionists fight creationists so hard. We've fought for more than a century against creationists. We saw the creationists as fools who believed that the earth was made in 4004 B.C. during six literal 24 hour days; that fossils, if they had any validity at all, were remnants of Noah's flood. They say that a deceptive God created the universe with starlight already on it's way (giving the illusion of great distances).

To allow for the possibility of any guiding intelligence would open the floodgates. Well, maybe it's time to take a peek out of the flood gates, if just for a moment.

When Darwain first proposed his brilliant theory, scientists assumed the fossil record would bear it out. We should be ablee to see the gradual progression from form to form, with slow changes accumulating over time untila new species emerged. But as most scientists know, thereality is that the fossil record DOES NOT show that. Ohj, there are transitional forms - take ichthyostega, which seems intermediate between fish and amphibians, or caudipteryx the median between dionsaur and bird, even the australopithecus 'ape/man'. The problem is that these are not gradual changes. These are not accumulations of tiny mutations over time. Sharks have been sharks for almost 400 million years, turtles have been turtles for 200 million years, and snakes have been snakes for 800 million years. In fact the fossil ecord is mostly lacking in gradual steps. The only good vertebrate sequence we have is that of a horse (which is why most museums have displays of equine evolution).

Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge responded to such claims, putting fourth a theory of punctuated equilibria (or 'punky-E', as it's sometimes called). Speciaes are stable for long periods of time, and then sudddenly, when environmental conditions change, they rapidly evolve into new forms! The problem is that punky-E states that environments stay the same for extended periods of time, which is absurd. When I lived in St. Louis I enjoyed 20 degree temperatures with snow almost hip deep. Fast forward to 6 months later and the temperature is breaking 100 and the humidity is making it impossible to dry off after a shower.

Of course, evolutionists keep on going. We tried to incorporate punky-E into our understanding of evolution in order for everything to still make sense. We longed for the sense that it all made when someone originally explained it to us. "It all makes so much sense!" we'd say to ourselves. We were even condescending to people who asked about missingh links. Of course this isn't the first time we've been smug...

I remember my grandfather (the inspiration of my early evolutionism) telling me about when Harold Urey and Stanly Miller created amino acids by putting an electric discharge through a primordial soup (what they thought, then, Earth's early atmosphere might have been like). We were half way to creating life in a jar. This was the triumph of evolutionary theory! If we zap the soup just rright, real self-replicating organsms might just appear.

Except we never did. We STILL don't know how to go from amino acids to self replication.

When I look under an electron microscope at things like cilia that turn out to be extremly complex, Darwin must be turning in his grave. The single-step evolution theory can't account for cilia.

We ignored the biochemical argument, too. We all hear about the cascade sequence that causes blood to clot, or the complexity of the human eye, or the ATP driven system of cellular metabolism.

My point?> creationism isn't fact or law. There are big wide gaps all over the theory. Evolution isn't fact or law. There are big wide gaps in the theory.

Newton's seventeenth-century laws of physics are mostly correct; you can use them to reliabally predict all sorts of things. We didn't disgard them; rather, in the 20th century, we subsumed them into a new, more comprehensive physics, a physics of relativity and quantum mechanics. Evolution is a 19th century notion, outlined in the famous "On the Orgin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". But the more we learn, the more natural selection seems inadequate on its own as a mechanism for the creation of a new species; even our best attempts at artificial, intelligently guided selection apparently aren't up to the task-all dogs are still canis familiaris.

And now at the start of the 21st century surtely it's not unreasonable to think that it's POSSIBLE that Darwin's ideas, like Newtons, can be subsumed into a greater whole, a more comprehensive understanding?

09-04-2005, 09:32 PM	#58 (permalink)
Willravel ... a sort of licensed troubleshooter.	It's easy to attack creationism. Let's just be honest. It's not just full of holes, it practically is a hole. There is a reason evolutionists fight creationists so hard. We've fought for more than a century against creationists. We saw the creationists as fools who believed that the earth was made in 4004 B.C. during six literal 24 hour days; that fossils, if they had any validity at all, were remnants of Noah's flood. They say that a deceptive God created the universe with starlight already on it's way (giving the illusion of great distances). To allow for the possibility of any guiding intelligence would open the floodgates. Well, maybe it's time to take a peek out of the flood gates, if just for a moment. When Darwain first proposed his brilliant theory, scientists assumed the fossil record would bear it out. We should be ablee to see the gradual progression from form to form, with slow changes accumulating over time untila new species emerged. But as most scientists know, thereality is that the fossil record DOES NOT show that. Ohj, there are transitional forms - take ichthyostega, which seems intermediate between fish and amphibians, or caudipteryx the median between dionsaur and bird, even the australopithecus 'ape/man'. The problem is that these are not gradual changes. These are not accumulations of tiny mutations over time. Sharks have been sharks for almost 400 million years, turtles have been turtles for 200 million years, and snakes have been snakes for 800 million years. In fact the fossil ecord is mostly lacking in gradual steps. The only good vertebrate sequence we have is that of a horse (which is why most museums have displays of equine evolution). Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge responded to such claims, putting fourth a theory of punctuated equilibria (or 'punky-E', as it's sometimes called). Speciaes are stable for long periods of time, and then sudddenly, when environmental conditions change, they rapidly evolve into new forms! The problem is that punky-E states that environments stay the same for extended periods of time, which is absurd. When I lived in St. Louis I enjoyed 20 degree temperatures with snow almost hip deep. Fast forward to 6 months later and the temperature is breaking 100 and the humidity is making it impossible to dry off after a shower. Of course, evolutionists keep on going. We tried to incorporate punky-E into our understanding of evolution in order for everything to still make sense. We longed for the sense that it all made when someone originally explained it to us. "It all makes so much sense!" we'd say to ourselves. We were even condescending to people who asked about missingh links. Of course this isn't the first time we've been smug... I remember my grandfather (the inspiration of my early evolutionism) telling me about when Harold Urey and Stanly Miller created amino acids by putting an electric discharge through a primordial soup (what they thought, then, Earth's early atmosphere might have been like). We were half way to creating life in a jar. This was the triumph of evolutionary theory! If we zap the soup just rright, real self-replicating organsms might just appear. Except we never did. We STILL don't know how to go from amino acids to self replication. When I look under an electron microscope at things like cilia that turn out to be extremly complex, Darwin must be turning in his grave. The single-step evolution theory can't account for cilia. We ignored the biochemical argument, too. We all hear about the cascade sequence that causes blood to clot, or the complexity of the human eye, or the ATP driven system of cellular metabolism. My point?> creationism isn't fact or law. There are big wide gaps all over the theory. Evolution isn't fact or law. There are big wide gaps in the theory. Newton's seventeenth-century laws of physics are mostly correct; you can use them to reliabally predict all sorts of things. We didn't disgard them; rather, in the 20th century, we subsumed them into a new, more comprehensive physics, a physics of relativity and quantum mechanics. Evolution is a 19th century notion, outlined in the famous "On the Orgin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life". But the more we learn, the more natural selection seems inadequate on its own as a mechanism for the creation of a new species; even our best attempts at artificial, intelligently guided selection apparently aren't up to the task-all dogs are still canis familiaris. And now at the start of the 21st century surtely it's not unreasonable to think that it's POSSIBLE that Darwin's ideas, like Newtons, can be subsumed into a greater whole, a more comprehensive understanding?