evolution, yea ......not true

My friend argues this point all the time. I agree with it, by the way. Do you believe in creationism?


dún do bheal

Okay, Huckabee.

The Once-ler: Well, what do you want? I should shut down my factory, fire a hundred-thousand workers? Is that good economics, is that sound for the country?

yes i do belive in creationism, but of coarse i dont need to prove that in order to disprove evolution

I really hope Darwin's Beagle gets on this and helps to explain some things for you.

Common sense is as rare as genius. ~Emerson
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I believe an electron is 1/1800 the size of a proton.

“I hope the departure is joyful and I hope never to return.” - Frida Kahlo

I'm gonna betch slap the dumb outta you

There is a far more likely explanation that everything in the world exists as it does through gradual change over billions and billions of years than there being an invisible Man (and I do not know why God needs a penis) in the sky who magically made everything appear.

It is a poor argument to say that the odds are impossible for things to exist as they are. Things just are as they are due to the direction that evolution went. It's not like evolution, before it started, was like, "I want to make a planet that contains human beings, horses, venus fly traps, elephants..." and so forth.

the onus is on you to prove that God exists in the first place (which you cannot PROVE). Whereas it makes perfect logical sense to REALIZE that evolution is real and scientifically proven.

OR, just for fun, let's ask you why you do not make yourself believe in one of the hundreds of other creation MYTHS?

Here's a very short list:
Iroquois Creation Myth
Australian Aborigine Creation Myth
African Creation Myths
Greek Creation Myth
Japanese Creation Myth
Native American Creation Myths

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." -F.N.

ok so first of all, all u said was that the probability is a poor example, well its a fact that virtualy anything u can ever think of is more likely than abiogenisis. Also that fact that som1 said that god cant be prooven is just a obvious lack of understanding about christanity. If god could be scientificly prooven it would be in essence taking away total free will. We were created to choose god by faith, not because science told us its true. Also i would like an evolutionist explain the trex fossil that was found

Since your post is mostly incoherent I'll do my best to summarize your argument a bit better for you.

Your argument is evolution is ridiculous because:

(1) It requires abiogenesis and abiogenesis is impossible.

(2) The idea of a system becoming more organized over time without an intelligence influence violates scientific law.

(3) Thousands of pairs of fossils of organisms that could not have coexisted in time have been found together.

(4) Fossil dating techniques are inaccurate

(5) Things do not necessarily have to take a long time to fossilize

(6) T. Rex fossils have been found with soft tissue preserved.
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First of all, congratulations, you have come up with a new one that I haven't heard. That would be #3 above. Unfortunately it is bullshit. My guess is that your "research" consisted of going to Answers in Genesis website and believing everything you read there, even the parts you did not understand. In reality there are no out-of-place fossils. JBS Haldane, one of the most famous evolutionists said that if one could be conclusively demonstrated then evolutionary theory would be falsified. So far no one has.

Now, let's look at #1. I'll divide it into two parts:

(A) Evolution requires abiogenesis;

First of all it is creationism that requires your definition of abiogenesis. The definition you REALLY meant was "a NATURALISTIC origin of life from non-life". Second, surprisingly, modern evolutionary theory does not require it. Suppose that it was conclusively shown that God/The Flying Spaghetti Monster/Invisible Pink Unicorn/Rex the wonder Gremlin/Goldthar from the planet Zapdoozy started life out 3.5 billion years ago. Absolutely nothing in modern evolutionary theory would have to be changed. Evolution deals with the diversification of life, not its origin. Life would still have diversified by a process of mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, neutral selection, symbiosis, punctuated equilibria, and a host of other minor mechanisms within the modern evolutionary paradigm.

(B) Abiogenesis is impossible.

Creationists are fond of coming up with mathematical estimates on the probability of a naturalistic origin of life. But all these estimates have ABSOLUTELY RIDICULOUS ASSUMPTIONS to them. For instance, the most common estimate goes something like this:

Life uses thousands of proteins.
One protein that is common to all life is cytochrome c.
Cytochrome c is composed of a sequence of 400 amino acids
Life uses 20 different amino acids
Thus, the probability of getting all amino acids in the correct order is 1 in 20⁴⁰⁰
This is a god-awful small probability could never happen by chance in billions of billions of lifespans of the universe. And that is for just a single protein. If one multiplies that probability by the similar probabilities of the other thousands of proteins life uses then then probability becomes mind-numbingly small
Therefore, life couldn't evolve.

Just reading that it sounds plausible. But there are problems
#1 Cytochrome c is NOT found in all life. It is found in all life that uses O₂
#2 The structure of cytochrome c varies quite a bit across species, so there are numerous cytochrome c's that will do the job, not just one.
#3 According to evolutionary theory the reason all O₂-using organisms have a cytochrome c is because it arose once and the similarities are a result of a shared common ancestor. For all we know there could be a huge number of totally unrelated proteins that would have worked as well. According to modern evolutionary theory once organisms with cytochrome c evolved they would quickly diversify and fill all O₂-using niches which would competetive exclude any newly developing organism with these possibilities from emerging.
#4 Nobody believes that cytochrome c arose all 400 amino acids worth from nowhere. It arose from a simpler structure. It became complex by natural selection and natural selection is NOT a random process.

So, what does this all mean. It means that unless we know exactly what was the minimal sized protein that did something beneficial and all the intermediates we cannot justify the assertions made by the creationist calculations. We simply do not know. So instead of basing one's beliefs on what one DOES NOT know, scientists tend to base their beliefs on what one DOES know.

Here is what we DO know. Amino acids are the basic building blocks of proteins. There are potentially thousands of amino acids that could be used. Life uses 20. We have found plausible abiotic chemical pathways by which 12 amino acids can be made. ALL of those 12 are among the 20 that life uses. In fact, those 12 are the most often used amino acids in life. Evidence of these 12 amino acids have also been found in spectroscopic readings from dust clouds in outer space and from the interiors of meteorites suggesting that they are indeed made abiotically.

RNA and DNA are made up of nucleotides. There are 5 different ones that life uses. 4 nucleotides have been found to be generated by abiotic means. They are 4 of the 5 that life uses. The other one (Thymine) is a simple biochemical modification of one of the 4.

Hypercycles are chemical pathways that regenerate the reactants it uses. They form naturally when different chemicals are mixed together. This is suggestive of metabolic biochemical pathways.

One problem has been the chicken or egg problem with respect to biochemical pathways. In living organisms biochemical pathways are directed by enzymes, but enzymes are coded for by genetic material, but genetic material has to be assembled by enzymes. How did this ever get started. RNA has been found that acts both like genetic material AND it can also act like an enzyme as well.

Finally, the fossil record shows that the earliest known life was bacteria-like. Bacteria is the simplest thing that everybody agrees is a living organism. That is exactly how a naturalistic origin of life must come about, but it is not a requirement for an intelligently designed one.

So what we DO know suggests that not only is a naturalistic origin of life possible, it is likely.

Now let's look at your #2. Does the idea of a system becoming more organized without an intelligent influence violate ANY scientific law?

If it did then we would need that intelligence wasting its time on designing snowflakes and rock crystals. Furthermore, we woud need an intelligence looking over our very development from a fertilzed egg to an adult organism. I think we can safely conclude that does not happen. So the answer is NO it doesn't.

Creationists try to use the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (2LoT) to claim that evolution is impossible. 2LoT says that entropy of the universe must always stay the same or increase. It can never get less. In biology we do measure changes in entropy. In biological systems there is measure of useful energy (biochemical energy that can be used to drive reactions). It is called Gibbs Free Energy (G). There is even an equation that defines it:

G = H - TS

Where:

H = Heat content
T = Temperature in degrees Kelvin
S = Change in entropy

A simple rearrangement of the equation says that:

S = (H - G)/T

In order for the 2LoT to be violated S would have to be negative. This is only the case if G is greater than H. But that would mean that the useful energy extracted from a reaction would have to be greater than the whole heat content of the reaction. In other words we would have to extract more useful energy from a reaction than is in the reaction in the first place. Obviously no reaction involved in life does this. And evolution only depends upon biochemical reactions in living organisms. Therefore, evolution does not violate the 2LoT.

We have already dealt with your #3, so let's go to #4. Are fossil dating techniques inaccurate? The answer is that they vary from pretty good to fantastically good. There are a number of ways of dating fossils. There are several radiometric dating systems (U-Pb, Ru-St, K-Ar, ¹⁴C, etc). They are valid over certain time periods, for instance U-Pb can date things several billion years old while ¹⁴C is only accurate for things less than 50,000 years old. The reason is due to the half-life of the isotopes. ²³⁸U has a half life in the billions of years while ¹⁴C has a half life of only 5000+ years.

The basis for radioactive decay involves the WEAK NUCLEAR FORCE. We know that about what it is by measuring the decay of radionuclides. Also, since the weak nuclear force is also responsible for nucleosynthesis (the making of elements greater than hydrogen and helium) we know how strong the force must have been at the beginning of the expansion of the universe. Guess what? They are the same. The weak nuclear force has not changed its strength since the beginning of the Big Bang. So the breakdown of these radionuclides into daughter elements has been proceeding at a calcuable rate for essentially forever. It is this that allows us to be very accurate.

But do we have any evidence that it is accurate. YES! Several radionuclides overlap in their dating ranges. For instance K-Ar can date things to a billion years as well. We can compare U-Pb dating with K-Ar. Guess what? THEY AGREE to an astonishing degree. For ¹⁴C we can often count. For instance overlapping tree rings can date things back to about 10,000 years. We can take a piece of wood from a 10,000 year old piece of tree ring and date it with ¹⁴C. Guess what? We get that it is 10,000 years old!

There are other, non-radiometric ways of dating fossils. This includes amino acid racemization. Many molecules come with mirror-image duplicates. You can think of one set of molecules being right-handed and the mirror image molecule as being left-handed. Life uses just left handed amino acids. However, over time some amino acids will flip around bonds and spontaneously become right handed amino acids. This tends to take place at regular intervals. So by measuring how much of a right handed amino acid we have compared to its normal left handed variety gives us an idea of how old the fossil is. Guess what? By and large when tested, the dates we get from this technique agrees with the dates we get from radionuclide dating. techniques.

So if there is a problem with fossil dating then one has to explain why that problem gives us such consistent answers even though different species of radionuclides were used and even non-radiometric techniques were used. The only answer to that seems to be that the data we get is reliable.

On to your number 5. Things do not necessarily have to take a long time to fossilize.

This has been a creationist claim for a long time. I first became aware of it with regard to the Coso Artifact. To make a long story a bit shorter, it turns out that the Coso Artifact, once claimed to be a piece of alien technology from antiquity, is actually a 1920's spark plug embedded in a concretion. Creationists claim that the concretion is a geode and geodes are supposed to form over hundreds of thousands years and since the spark plug is in there that can't be so.

There are some problems with this (surprise, surprise). For one thing the creationist that found it in 1961 wont let anyone look at it. It hasn't been seen in years. Another and bigger problem is that no one has ever denied that things become encrusted fairly quickly, but a geode is not just an encrusted object.

Another claim that creationists make concern "polystrate" fossils. These are fossils that transverse several geologic strata. They are generally petrified tree trunks. Well guess what. Petrified tree trunks can stay up over a long period of time. There are still petrified trees standing in Yellowstone. It is not a problem for layers to be deposited around the trunks of trees. In such cases, one would expect the trees to cross several strata.

Finally, let's look at claim #6. Soft tissue has been found in T. Rex. That is absolutely correct. This comes from the work of Margaret Sweitzer. It is fascinating and I would recommend everyone read that link I left. While this was a very surprising finding (I at least was very surprised by it), upon close inspection it becomes understandable.

So how can soft tissue be found in 65 million year old bones? Here is a link to a blog that discusses that in more detail than I will (It even includes pictures). But the soft tissue are very small fragments, they are from the insides of bones and from animals that had a rapid burial. The process of mineralization occurs because the organic matrix get replaced by silicates brought in by water over a long period of time. This area of bone was the most shielded from water intrusion. If no silicates can get to it, it cannot be fossilized.

Cheers,

Darwin's Beagle
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If a million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. - Anatole France