The same thing with lab rats. They can be bred for certain genetic traits. That this can be done at all suggests that evolution or something very much like it is possible.

but, oddly enough, in these same laboratories, rats give birth to rats, and wheat produces wheat. Rats do not give birth to cats, and wheat doesn't produce barley. What you're talking about is adaptation, and it is DISTINCTLY different from evolution.

"I think saying "Have they observed one creature turning into another one?" is a perfectly valid question (whether you think it "promotes me to being deep in the argument" or not) - since that is the ONE part of the whole thing they don't have evidence on. In fact, if you do get deep in the argument, that is the one question you have left unanswered by the theories - they haven't found the one or many mechanisms that would neccesarily cause that."

But there is where the mountain analogy works. It would take, literally millions of years for one species to change so much that it doesn't resemble what it once was. You understand that, yet you are still asserting that it should happen in a single step so that some scientist can observe it.

Environments change, and therefore the needs of the animals in those environments change. When that happens, the traits that are beneficial also change. Therefore natural selection would weed out even more of the species in question and then only favor the ones with that trait.

Then, over another 10,000 years, the climate or some other aspect of the environment changes. Then, maybe the furrier you are the less apt you are to survive. Another "weeding out" occurs, and the most fit to survive are the ones with the least fur. Now the original species on the other land mass has been effected by totally different environmental changes, so these changes wouldn't be happening to them.

I really don't see what there is to be confused about. We've been breeding dogs for a few thousand years, and look at the difference between a St. Bernard and a hairless Chihuahua. Given a million, or a hundred million, or a billion years, you don't see that speciation is possible?


I had several cats when I lived in TN. Out of the blue one of the cats had a kitten with 6 toes. The kittens that cat fathered sometimes had 6 toes. I checked into it and it is a fairly uncommon genetic quirk. If, though having 6 toes would have been favored, eventually all cats would have 6 toes.

Little changes like that over the course of a hundred million years could easily make a species less and less recognizable, until finally they are a separate species. From my point of view anyone who says they don't see that is purposely blinding themselves. I'm not saying all the processes involved are 'law', or even close, but to me it looks easily as plausable in terms of scaling up as erosion.

But there is where the mountain analogy works. It would take, literally millions of years for one species to change so much that it doesn't resemble what it once was. You understand that, yet you are still asserting that it should happen in a single step so that some scientist can observe it.

But here's the point, Baker. The fact that a species does not change into a completely different animal in a lab environment does not disprove evolution for the reasons you cite, but neither does it PROVE evolution. The fact is, the analogy was initially used as a proof for evolution, which is as utterly erroneous as using it as a proof against. Observed conditions in a laboratory environment have limited effect for learning about the origin of species.

I'm still here...skipping the science stuff tho....boring..haha..to me at least.

You and Baker had some really good discussion going there...but science side tracked it.

I'll keep checking in....but don't ask me about cats and rats. As long as cats eat rats...all is as it should be.

"The fact that a species does not change into a completely different animal in a lab environment does not disprove evolution for the reasons you cite, but neither does it PROVE evolution. "

No one is saying it does. We see the small changes we see over hundreds of years to the species around us, just like we see small changes in land due to erosion. We aren't silly enough to claim that those changes would just miraculously stop with erosion, but for some reason people can't predict what all these little changes in species would amount to over a billion years.

Don't you see how that, in and of itself, is unscientific? Science is about coming up with a hypothesis based upon what you observe that makes a prediction. When you see soil washing off mountains with each rainfall, you are reasonable to assume that over the course of a million years that process would continue to weather the mountain.

But for some reason when we see small changes to species, it is anathema to use those observations to predict that those small changes would continue on and on and on until each branch of the tree is so radically different genetically that speciation has occured.

Why? Why is making a prediction about one observed process good science, and making another unscientific? It seems pretty obvious to me that we are observing very slow processes, both with erosion and natural selection, and both over the course of hundreds of thousands, or millions, or billions of years would have vastly more substantial effects.

What you guys seem to be saying is that forming a prediction based on limited observation is fine for every field of study EXCEPT evolution. It's like someone looking at mud washing off a mountain saying "Oh, sure, I see dirt running off, but I've never seen rain wash an entire mountain away." The issue in terms of my erosion comparison is the demand that you see a million years of the process in a single step, or else you can make no prediction at all.

I just think it is too simplistic. With erosion, there is maybe 1 or 2 mechanisms. Very simple ones - maybe chemical erosion (acid rain, etc) and physical erosion (friction of water and rocks). These are very simple processes, and they are additive - that is, over a long period of time, the effects add up in a relatively simple way. Add erosion to erosion and you just get a smaller piece of rock, until there is nothing left in that area and the rock matter has gone somewhere else. No problem.

The mechanisms of microevolution are greater in number and much more complex. Genetic drift, speciation, natural selection, and adaptation are all in play. They effect the organism, and each other. This process isn't at all simple, and it certainly isn't strictly additive or easily quantifiable over long periods.

Yes, the creatures will be different, but how different? How far can microevolutionary mechanisms take it? I say not that far - until I see additional mechanisms or combinations of mechanisms that convince me otherwise.

"Yes, the creatures will be different, but how different? How far can microevolutionary mechanisms take it? I say not that far - until I see additional mechanisms or combinations of mechanisms that convince me otherwise."

Do they have to be all that complex, though? Granted, this is a working theory, not a law, but if you look at the changes we DO observe, it is reasonable to think that there would be massive differences over the course of a million years, with climate change, etc., adding to the momentum.

To me it is a matter of never being able to dip your foot in the same river twice. I think it takes MORE of a stretch of the imagination to think that the processes we see would somehow stall or slow instead of continueing to gradually change the animal over thousands of years as their requirements for survival change.

I admit that there is the necessity of genetic mutation over time, but even without it the change in creatures over that span of time in separate ecosystems with different requirements for survival would be immense. All we are talking about is making predictions based upon what we see.

I think that it is more unscientific to imagine that the changes we see wouldn't continue, and cumulatively so, over vast amounts of time wherein we KNOW that the climate and environment changes.

I'm not staying it will stall or slow. The microevolutionary processes will continue to happen. I am just saying that there is only so much that they have the power to do (with what we know at this time). There is a boundry to how much they can change things, at least as far as our observation has gone. They can make changes here and there, create things that are technically seperate species with different attributes, but even these are fundamentally very similar to their "parent species". (one of the best examples they list on your wikipedia speciation link is a new kind of horsefly that eats different foods - but it is still very much a horsefly in all other respects).

Additionally, you are still claiming that they accumulate or are somehow explicitly additive. This may be true, but it could also be that the changes could reverse in response to some stimulus, start and go back, travel in a cycle tied to climate or any number of other things. Who knows what patterns would develop. There is nothing to say it is so linear over long timescales.

This idea of accumulation of many different changes is central if you want to make the whole macro thing work - but we don't know that this is definetly the case. The "snowball effect" or "additive erosion" example works IF it is the case. That is a big "if" as far as I am concerned.

I'm going to wrap up my comments because I am shortly leaving for a camping trip that will extend through the holiday weekend, so I won't be online.

Proponents of synthesis evolution see the already known microevolutionary processes as a magic bullet, or holy grail that can accomplish anything genetically as long as you add enough zeroes at the end of the year count. I'm just not buying this without more evidence of the long-term mechanisms involved.

If macroevolution occured or is occuring, going from one thing to something fundamentally very different, then it is using some genetic or macroevolutionary mechanism that we haven't found yet. If it's not occuring, then we have to look elsewhere as to how we got all the stuff we have around our planet.

There is nothing wrong with it being correct or incorrect, but it is wrong to go parading it around as indisputable prematurely. I'm not saying anyone here is, but many do, (for various less than scientific motivations) and in the process they smack of zealotry reserved for religions of old. (Ha! there is my feeble attempt to get back onto the actual topic of the article . . . )
I just don't think we should go crusading until we figure things out more solidly.

Thanks for the discussion all, it was very interesting! I think we got down to some fundamental issues in this discussion.

Anyway, there is lots of stuff we only mentioned in passing (like current seemingly stable species, punctuated equilibrium, transition fossils, etc), so I am sure you guys can continue your discussion without me.

Adieu!

"Additionally, you are still claiming that they accumulate or are somehow explicitly additive. This may be true, but it could also be that the changes could reverse in response to some stimulus, start and go back, travel in a cycle tied to climate or any number of other things. Who knows what patterns would develop. There is nothing to say it is so linear over long timescales.

No, I'm saying that it would be fairly unscientific to assume that they WOULDN'T accumulate over time when there's no data to suggest otherwise. Why would we think that creatures who are constantly adapting would just stop?

What you appear to be saying to me is that even though we know the soil erodes off mountains, we can't be sure if it would keep right on doing so, and therefore we can't really assume anything about erosion in the long term. Science is ABOUT predictions, though. If you predict things you've already witnessed, it isn't much of a prediction.

I could understand your hesitance if, say, we were creating new drugs based upon these predictions, or if the fate of the human race somehow hung on their accuracy. In reality, though, this impact of mistakes in the predictions are fairly nonexistant, and so I don't see why scientists shouldn't have the freedom to hypothesize so long as they don't declare what they are doing 'truth'.

Many are, and that's where you'll see me jump on them when they declare that parents had better make sure no one is teaching otherwise, as in the article I wrote last week. To me, though, evolutionary science is simply looking at the overall makeup of the fossil record we have, and making predictions based upon their study of it, and genetics, and other fields.

And what is wrong with that? That is what science is all about. Only the most hard-line creationists claim that all
species that ever lived on the earth were all alive and the beginning and only extinctions have occured. If you don't believe that, then you have to accept that new species appeared. If you accept that, you have to grant science a little leeway on figuring out how it happened, right?

have a good trip. Make yourself an account here when you get back. Your discussion is welcome.

have a good trip. Make yourself an account here when you get back. Your discussion is welcome.

ditto

I'm really gonna miss NBI. So whatyathink Baker, he majored in Science or what?

have a good trip. Make yourself an account here when you get back. Your discussion is welcome. ditto I'm really gonna miss NBI. So whatyathink Baker, he majored in Science or what?

For the record, have just read your exchange with Baker, I will echo Baker's and KFC's recommendation.  And wishes for a good trip.

No one is saying it does. We see the small changes we see over hundreds of years to the species around us, just like we see small changes in land due to erosion. We aren't silly enough to claim that those changes would just miraculously stop with erosion, but for some reason people can't predict what all these little changes in species would amount to over a billion years

Actually, the more generations of animals we study, the more it does seem to disprove the concept of macroevolution. Take the fruit fly, for instance. One of the reasons it is so invaluable for study is that we can observe so many generations in an incredibly short amount of time. Yet in the millions of generations studied in various labs around the world, not one single wasp has been produced from those generations of fruit flies. Not even a good transitional species. They all remain (quite boringly, and predictably) fruit flies). And the fact is, YES, the very fact that you (and others) are tossing out adaptations of lab rats as examples of evolution means that you are (in defiance of every principle of scientific research) using those adaptations of proof of a rather extraordinary claim without providing the extraordinary proof. You are, in short, demanding a level of proof from creationists that you are yourselves unwilling to provide.

I'm not a man of science, Baker. You could fill VOLUMES with what I do not know. Frankly, I do not know how the species we know today came to be, nor is it relevant to the things I need to do to advance in life. But what I DO know is that I see both sides accusing the other of being full of beans without providing adequate support to fully support their position. In the case of the secular scientist, it is especially appalling, as they feel they must build their case by belittling my faith as superstition or something even less substantial. And because their thesis hinges on a direct attack on me and what I believe, I will stand up and defend my position with what I DO know. And what I DO know is this: that most scientists are rather poorly trained in the scientific method, and that their arrogance and dependence upon their presuppositions greatly hinders their research. I'm not saying scientists should begin their research presupposing the existence of God, but I AM saying they should NOT begin their research presupposing the NONexistence of God, as so many do.

I've rambled on long enough. We now return you to your regularly scheduled thread.

"Yet in the millions of generations studied in various labs around the world, not one single wasp has been produced from those generations of fruit flies. "

*screams*
*pulls out hunks of hair*

The model you are talking about wouldn't even predict that fruit flies would change. There would need to be factors that cause speciation to be WARRANTED, and a LOT of change in between. Sharks aren't a whole lot different than they were millions of years ago, because they haven't faced much to cause them to need to.

99% of the species that ever walked, crawled, swam, or flew are all extinct. In light of that, do you think you can actually predict that a single, simple and hardy subspecies of fly, with no evolutionary stresses would change just for our viewing pleasure? It would be a 'monkeys writing Shakespeare' level coincidence if it happened.

I understand your perspective, and I think from my blog you can tell I share it for the most part. When I see statements like your fly/wasp one, though, I see the other side throwing yet another baby out with the bathwater. I don't like close-minded secularists who don't bother to understand intelligent design, and, with all due respect, I don't like critics of evolutionary theory who make unrealistic demands on science.

As believers, we have only a few choices.

• We can believe that in the beginning God created all species, the earth was insanely crowded with diverse creatures, and 99% of them are now exinct. This would pretty much invalidate the fossil record as any kind of tool completely, because we'd have to see modern animals living alongside trilobytes.


• We can believe that the fossil record is reliable, and that God makes creatures just appear every few million years when similar creatures have gone exinct. That would be suspect for the same criticism you have, Gid, because no one has seen a species just appear out of thin air.


• ...or we can believe that there is an insanely ingenius physical process that God created as the engine of creation.

I don't see how anyone but people who need the creation story to be literally true could be offended by that. We salute God's ingenuity in terms of the miracle of birth, rainbows, and a million other physical wonders we see every day. Our faith seems to be tested when we are asked to believe that we have more humble beginnings ourselves.

Vanity, perhaps?

I dunno Baker. I just watched March of the Penquins and I could see God all throughout that movie. I never heard the fact that 99% of all the created species are extinct. Where do you get that tidbit of info? That seems quite high IMO.

I don't "need" the creation story to be literally true. I just take it as faith...like I said before in my original piece here...Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. I think like I said earlier our origins have more to do with history than biology. I don't believe we are ever going to be sure this side of heaven to be honest. But for me I take the scriptures literaly including creation, because the rest of it has proven accurate or just plain makes sense. Otherwise I'm left to my own opinion and to me.....that's not an option.

One thing I do know tho is controversy can be good. It creates heat which in turn creates light......but of course we do need to keep our eyes open.

Where do you get that tidbit of info? That seems quite high IMO.

It's pretty easy to figure out why. There were unknown hordes of dinosaur, god knows how many species of freakish fish, the megadons of pangea and countless species of insect, not to mention that at the current rate a few hundred species die out every year. 99% is probably a conservative estimate.

"Where do you get that tidbit of info? That seems quite high IMO."

Not really, like cacto said. It's probably 99.99...%.

How many fossils have you seen of creatures that still exist? I have a small collection, and other than a couple of bugs in amber none of them are still around. We've recorded hundreds of extinctions in the modern era ourselves, and who knows how many they missed.

I'll see what I can dig up on it.

Thanks guys for this bit of info. Still seems high to me but I'm listening here. I will likewise check my resources. I've just never heard this before. I would probably check it with Ken Ham and Kent Hovind since they are the most vocal Creation Scientists I know of. They back everything up with hard evidence which I like. Don't just tell me, show me.

Also, just want to say that I understand that we can argue till the cows come home about evolution. Is it really what it says it is? Could it be true and not just a theory? I know for as many Christian Scientists are on my side, you also have just as many good Scientific guys on your side making equally valid points. I do think both sides require quite a bit of faith regardless of the evidence we have before us.

Now having said that, I do think the Christians have a slight edge. We have God and what we have written down from Him.. Basically meaning when it all comes down to it, it, the question comes down to Do you believe in God or not? Do you believe the word of God is what it says it is? Most evolutionists do not. There are some theistic evolutionists which Baker I think you may be, but for the most part it does come down to that first question.

From what I know of the history of Theistic Evolution it came about as a result of Darwin's book "Origin of Species." This book caused quite a stir among church people of the time. Not wanting to make the same mistake they did with Galileo (the church is still feeling the embarrassment of that episode) they went with it. They thought that it was true Science and if so, they tried to reconcile what the bible said with what Darwin was saying. So some got on the bandwagon and said both are true uniting Moses and Darwin in Holy Matrimony. From a Christian POV we think it's nothing more than Satan watering down God's word. He's very good at that. It's just mixing truth with error.

I'll see what I can dig up on it.

hahaha....... thinking there's a pun in there somewhere Baker.

Okay, I did my side of the research. This is what I'm thinking.

If there are a million species (which is grossly underestimated) then that would mean that we would have to have 99 million species in fossils according to you 99.9% number. Is this possible? Do we have 99 million fossils that are extinct now?

Also according to my source (Ken Ham) he said this:

The number of species living in the past, as estimated from fossils, is not as great as once thought, according to a new study seeking to catalogue every fossil ever dug up. So far, the researchers have found that a number of fossils have been misidentified as being separate species, whereas in fact they are the same species. Poor communication between taxonomists in different countries can often lead to fossils being wrongly given their own species status. Accordingly, it is now estimated that the overall number of species in the fossil record is inflated by 32–44%. New Scientist, 23 August 2003, pp. 32–35.
A common claim that 99% of fossil species have become extinct is based on the assumption of evolution, i.e. that billions of intermediate species once existed.

wouldn't that last sentence fall under the category of circular reasoning?

There's more. Check out this......Link

There's a problem with relying on fossil evidence though. Animals which are eaten - like the dodo - leave little in the way of remains. Animals which don't die in the right conditions also tend to break down entirely, leaving no evidence of their existence. Most insect species, for example, could die out without leaving much evidence of their existence, if they left any at all.

Whilst it's certainly true that the fossils we've found could be duplicates, and therefore estimates based on fossilised remains could be reduced by 35-40%, that still leaves a lot of room for extinctions. There are no fossils, for example, of wombats save for their megadon cousins. And yet clearly they exist.

Oh, and this argument shouldn't simply cover fossil extinctions - we should consider all animals, not just those we've found fossils for. Limiting it to fossils limits the argument fairly significantly.

"Now having said that, I do think the Christians have a slight edge. We have God and what we have written down from Him.. Basically meaning when it all comes down to it, it, the question comes down to Do you believe in God or not?"

Again, you're thinking in terms of the Bible. There are a lot of people who believe in God or other gods that don't subscribe to the creationist story in the Bible. Your creation story isn't tied to the existence of God, it is tied to the inerrancy of a couple of chapters in a book that doesn't even claim to be inerrant; and we don't even know who wrote those chapters or when.

Here's the problem, you demand that evolution be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt, but you refuse to prove what you claim here, that the Bible is God's word 'from him'. If anything that can't be proved 100% is equally untrustable, then you have to rate bigfoot, who thousands of people have claimed to see, is MORE believable than God. These demands for untarnishable proof can come back to bite you.

I don't want to insult the people you mention, but neither of them are scientists. Ham has a BS, and Hovind has a couple of mail-order degrees in religious education that he isn't supposed to even cite unless he specifies what they are for, which he never does.

Don't get me wrong, you won't find anyone as supportive of the self-educated as me, but in the eyes of a lot of people, many Creationists included, Hovind is not someone to look to. Have you seen some of the stuff he believes?

Hovind tends to lie a lot, just be careful what you swallow. I don't appreciate the "lying for justice" thing from liberal activists, and I most certainly don't appreciate it from Christians. He has a Bachelors in religious educations and the rest is in Christian Education. If you read what he really believes about the creation, well, I think you'll see through him.

Here's an article from answersingenesis.com that is really worth reading. It addresses what Mr. Hovind and others often claim, and it is a reasonable request from actual young-earth creationists to stop embarassing them, lol. When young-earth creationists start backing away from you, you know you've gone too far...

BTW......what current prophet? Are you Mormon?

Hee hee hee, found me out.

"The number of species living in the past, as estimated from fossils, is not as great as once thought, according to a new study seeking to catalogue every fossil ever dug up. So far, the researchers have found that a number of fossils have been misidentified as being separate species, whereas in fact they are the same species. Poor communication between taxonomists in different countries can often lead to fossils being wrongly given their own species status. Accordingly, it is now estimated that the overall number of species in the fossil record is inflated by 32–44%. New Scientist, 23 August 2003, pp. 32–35. A common claim that 99% of fossil species have become extinct is based on the assumption of evolution, i.e. that billions of intermediate species once existed."

I've seen that logic, and I LOVE this argument, because it is really an argument IN FAVOR of evolutionary theory.

There are way over a million species on earth today. We only have a fossil record 250,000 or so species. Ham's argument is that we haven't had as many extinctions as we think. Ponder that for a moment.

The creationist argument is that we can't suppose the exitence of creatures we don't have fossils for. Well, oddly enough we don't have fossils for the vast majority of species living today. Ouch. Has it hit you yet? Either:

• You have to admit that the vast majority of creatures didn't leave fossils...
• ...or that the vast majority of creatures living now WEREN'T ON THE EARTH THEN, since we can't presume their existence without fossils.

You see where that leads? In order to be a young-earth creationist you have to accept that the fossil record is only the smallest slice of species that walked the earth. You have to because you are making the claim as a creationist that the species we have now were there with the dinosaurs.

If we don't have a fossil record for them, does that mean they weren't there, or does it mean that very few creatures leave fossils? If you admit that very few creatures leave fossils, and the majority of fossils we have now are of exinct creatures, the the obvious conclusion is that the vast majority of creatures who lived on Earth a) didn't leave fossils, and are now exinct.

Otherwise it is a huge coincidence that the fossils we have just happened to end up being mostly extinct creatures.

So, in a nutshell, if you insist upon 99 million fossils, you have to insist on the million fossils of the creatures we have now. If THEY aren't in the fossil record, you have to admit the fossil record is vastly incomplete, or that modern creatures didn't exist then. Anything else is assuming the existence of creatures without fossil evidence, which is what Ham is condemning.

I know there are some, I'm not sure how you word it, but disagreements from Hovind and Ham's camps. They are totally different in approach and manner. One, to me, is sort of diplomatic and the other very blunt to the point of being rude. I've listened to and watched both. If I was going to choose between the two, I'd go with Ham. Hovind is very sarcastic, not very liked by anyone other than the Christians where I think Ham is well respected from both sides. While I laugh at Hovind and how he operates, I do wish he'd tone down some because I think he can be a great big turn off to some people.

Basically Hovind is a Science teacher that goes around and shows how they are lying to us using the textbooks. He makes his living off reading this bad textbooks. I have a very good friend who is a Science Teacher. He has to be very careful as to what he says. He does not believe what he's teaching most of the time when it comes to this subject matter. He has ways to get around it somewhat, but he is mandated to teach it nonethless. I think he was in agreement with Hovind. I'll ask him tho.

As far as lying? I'm not sure what you mean by that. But I'll check the link. Christians shouldn't lie and I agree with you. But I've not known that to happen here. His bedside manner needs some work but as far as I've heard and seen I've not had any issues with what he said.

Here's the problem, you demand that evolution be proved beyond a shadow of a doubt

that's not true Baker. I've said numerous times that both have to be taken on faith. But I believe the creation story because the other stories have been proven true mostly by historical records or archeology but the creation story itself has to be taken on faith. That's not true with evolution. There's nothing I can hang my hat on here. It keeps changing. I feel I have solid ground with scripture that I don't have with the evolution theory.

Ok, another thought on the scripture thing. What is the Word of God? What is it to you? The prophets spoke of it, Jesus spoke of it, the NT writers spoke of it. You may want to check out Psalm 119 and see the different ways the word is defined.....ordininces, law, precepts, commands, statues, judgments, decrees, etc. Check to see what it's supposed to do for you. This Psalm conveys the thought that the Word of God contains everything a man needs to know.