Creationist Reply…challenging!

[jasonparker]

A creationist book…like a reply file to evolutionists… to tell the truth a qualified one, what do you think about the "True Natural History - II" section? http://www.harunyahya.com/refuted1.php

[recon]

Here's a much better website for the book (official website): http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/

I did a search on Amazon for this book and found nothing. Maybe this says something about it.

[Moonbear]

From the few pages I read, it seems to be the standard creationist arguments. This author does seem to have at least read a basic biology textbook and learned a little something about the theory of evolution, but still has misunderstood or misrepresented a great deal of it.

[aychamo]

I love how religious people are so worried that science is trying to disprove all their little myths and stories.

[Jikx]

anyone care to summerise the main defects with the theory of natural selection?

[selfAdjoint]

anyone care to summerise the main defects with the theory of natural selection?

Are there any? It has been demonstrated in computer software, so it is capable of instantiation, and the genetic version of it is confirmd by the similarities between the genomes of, say fruit flies and humans (fruit fly genes have been inserted into mouse embryos, and they worked!).

Some creationists are still saying it violates the second law of thermodynamics, but that just shows they don't understand thermodynamics! Real thermodynamics is completely consistent with evolution by variation and natural selection.

[Moonbear]

Are there any? It has been demonstrated in computer software, so it is capable of instantiation, and the genetic version of it is confirmd by the similarities between the genomes of, say fruit flies and humans (fruit fly genes have been inserted into mouse embryos, and they worked!).

And with the Human Genome Project, we've learned that humans are even more similar to other species than we even expected. The human genome has far fewer genes than were predicted before the project began.

[aychamo]

Are there any? It has been demonstrated in computer software, so it is capable of instantiation, and the genetic version of it is confirmd by the similarities between the genomes of, say fruit flies and humans (fruit fly genes have been inserted into mouse embryos, and they worked!).

Some creationists are still saying it violates the second law of thermodynamics, but that just shows they don't understand thermodynamics! Real thermodynamics is completely consistent with evolution by variation and natural selection.

I *love* when people try to use the 2nd law as a disproof of evolution. The garbage that comes out of their mouths is worthy of a comedy goldmine.

[Jikx]

And with the Human Genome Project, we've learned that humans are even more similar to other species than we even expected. The human genome has far fewer genes than were predicted before the project began.

A very true statement. Its not the number of genes, but the splicing varients which is astounding. I believe the number is 30 000 genes, with over 100 000 proteins due to splicing. For example, foetal haemoglobin and adult haemoglobin are the same gene - but different end protein.

Kind of off topic: Evolution doesn't invalidate (some) creationist theories anyway. It says nothing of how we came about in the beginning - only how we became as we are today. Who can say God didn't just create the laws of nature, and flicked the switch, knowing full well how it would turn out?

[Moonbear]

Kind of off topic: Evolution doesn't invalidate (some) creationist theories anyway. It says nothing of how we came about in the beginning - only how we became as we are today. Who can say God didn't just create the laws of nature, and flicked the switch, knowing full well how it would turn out?

I don't think it's off-topic at all. That really is the biggest misconception creationists have about evolution, and I think what leaves them feeling so "threatened" by evolution...they think evolution attempts to explain the origin of life (I guess they don't realize that isn't what Darwin meant when he titled his book "Origin of Species.") Evolutionary theory doesn't really care how life began on Earth, it's about how it has changed since then.

[yanniru]

Well if the creation of life is not part of the field of evolutionary biology; at least it exists in archaeology, where field data reveals that the basic 35 of 41 phyla of lifeforms on earth evolved in a mere 5 million year stratum called the Cambrian explosion. Life existed in elementary forms before then. But the data displays a cliff in the complexity of lifeforms, from which almost all complex species emerged.

That is the basic argument of those promoting Intelligent Design. That much seems to be true. But they jump to conclusions that ignore many other possibilities more consistent with math and science.

[Phobos]

After Pakicetus and Ambulocetus, the evolutionist plan moves on to so-called sea mammals and sets out (extinct whale) species such as Procetus, Rodhocetus, and Archaeocetea. The animals in question were mammals that lived in the sea and which are now extinct. (We shall be touching on this matter later.) However, there are considerable anatomical differences between these and Pakicetus and Ambulocetus. When we look at the fossils, it is clear they are not "transitional forms" linking each other:

- The backbone of the quadrupedal mammal Ambulocetus ends at the pelvis, and powerful rear legs then extend from it. This is typical land-mammal anatomy. In whales, however, the backbone goes right down to the tail, and there is no pelvic bone at all. In fact, Basilosaurus, believed to have lived some 10 million years after Ambulocetus, possesses the latter anatomy. In other words, it is a typical whale. There is no transitional form between Ambulocetus, a typical land mammal, and Basilosaurus, a typical whale.

- Under the backbone of Basilosaurus and the sperm whale, there are small bones independent of it. National Geographic claims these to be vestigial legs. Yet that same magazine mentions that these bones actually had another function. In Basilosaurus, these bones functioned as copulary guides and in sperm whales "[act] as an anchor for the muscles of the genitalia."163 To describe these bones, which actually carry out important functions, as "vestigial organs" is nothing but Darwinistic prejudice.

In conclusion, despite evolutionist propaganda, the fact that there were no transitional forms between land and sea mammals and that they both emerged with their own particular features has not changed. There is no evolutionary link. Robert Carroll accepts this, albeit unwillingly and in evolutionist language: "It is not possible to identify a sequence of mesonychids leading directly to whales."164


(pressed for time now...I hope to return to this topic soon)

Some examples of typical creationist arguments.

With an example transitional fossil B between Species A & C and they reject it by either (1) simply saying it's just an example of A or C or (2) saying there are no examples of B-and-a-half, which therefore discounts the link.

Misunderstanding of the transitional nature of features....exaptation...the changing use of anatomical features. The continued/changed use of a "vestigial" feature is evidence for evolution, not against it.

Also quoting out of context.

[Moonbear]

- The backbone of the quadrupedal mammal Ambulocetus ends at the pelvis, and powerful rear legs then extend from it. This is typical land-mammal anatomy. In whales, however, the backbone goes right down to the tail, and there is no pelvic bone at all. In fact, Basilosaurus, believed to have lived some 10 million years after Ambulocetus, possesses the latter anatomy. In other words, it is a typical whale. There is no transitional form between Ambulocetus, a typical land mammal, and Basilosaurus, a typical whale.

Okay, I'll bite. They are discounting that whales and land mammals are related because of where the backbone (vertebrae) ends relative to the pelvis? Um, have they never seen a dog, cat, rat, mouse, monkey, cow, etc? Any land mammal with a tail has vertebrae extending beyond the pelvic bones.

The issue of transitional species is one of those arguments creationists toss around recklessly. You can demonstrate to them transitional species and they'll want to see transitional species between the transitional species.

[aychamo]

The issue of transitional species is one of those arguments creationists toss around recklessly. You can demonstrate to them transitional species and they'll want to see transitional species between the transitional species.

Yep! And the even less educated ones just demand more and more "missing links!" Like you said, if you show a transition B between A and C, they want a transition between A and B and then B and C. It creates an infinite amount of "necessary" transition states. Really shows a gross misunderstand of, well, basically everything.

In an argument, how do you tell someone tactfully "You are wrong, you don't know anything."?

[Moonbear]

Well if the creation of life is not part of the field of evolutionary biology; at least it exists in archaeology, where field data reveals that the basic 35 of 41 phyla of lifeforms on earth evolved in a mere 5 million year stratum called the Cambrian explosion. Life existed in elementary forms before then. But the data displays a cliff in the complexity of lifeforms, from which almost all complex species emerged.


Even that data does not address the origin of life. It addresses the diversification of life once it existed. A limitation of archaeological evidence is that most organisms, especially soft-bodied ones, just decay away, so leave no fossil record. We have to rely on the fairly uncommon circumstances by which fossils were formed to have evidence to study. Biologists and archaeologists acknowledge that there are large gaps. We can speculate about what types of organisms may have existed in between, but we have no proof of it. This doesn't discredit evolutionary theory, it means it remains a theory. Creationists use those gaps to promote their "theory," however, the problem remains that creationism is based on what is NOT observed rather than what IS observed. It doesn't fit with what we do know and the evidence that does exist.

[Moonbear]

In an argument, how do you tell someone tactfully "You are wrong, you don't know anything."?

If you find a way to do that, let me know! :rofl: One can always suggest to them that if they wish to disprove evolutionary theory, the best way to do it is to get a PhD in evolutionary biology, and then use scientific method to disprove the theory. They never take me up on that suggestion. [shrug]

[aychamo]

Ah, but that is a good suggestion :) I will definitely use that!

I'm always amazed at how people that have never had a single course in biology will proceed to tell me how wrong evolution is because of whatever tale they heard in church or from their pastor or whatever.

[Another God]

These websites just make me sick with their use of logic. Ignoring all else, ignoring the lack and abuse of evidence and quotes, they don't even actually pose an argument. The few paragraphs I could bear to read came down to this:

The lie that evolutionists tell you is misleading and wrong. It is wrong because it displays incorrect information, and says things which are not true. It undermines our values with lies, and says things that I do not agree with. Because it does this, it is therefore incorrect. And Evolutionists never prove to us how they manage to ignore these facts.

[Phobos]

Robert Carroll accepts this, albeit unwillingly and in evolutionist language: "It is not possible to identify a sequence of mesonychids leading directly to whales."164


I'll have to check the reference for the full context of this; however, it may be related to the fact that the early whales are believed to have come from one of two lineages...either the mesonychids or the artiodactyls...and the current theory is leaning toward the artiodactyls.

[Phobos]

More from the cited website...


One huge problem for the theory of evolution is the irreducible complexity of wings. Only a perfect design allows wings to function, a "half-way developed" wing cannot function.
...
A half-formed wing cannot fly.
...
According to biophysical research, mutations are changes that occur very rarely. Consequently, it is impossible that a disabled animal could wait millions of years for its wings to fully develop by means of slight mutations, especially when these mutations have damaging effects over time…


Here we go again with that non-sensical IC argument.

(if I may recycle an old post of mine...)
There are modern animals that can do quite well with incomplete flying ability….e.g., colugo (Cynocephalus volans), flying lizards (Draco volans), flying frogs (Rhacophous nigropalmatus), marsupial sugar gliders (Petaurus breviceps), or flying snakes (Chrysopelea). (thx - Dawkins - Climbing Mt. Improbable)

And of course, there are many flightless birds today that still have wings but they do just fine.

The wings of a bat can also serve to help it walk across the ground.

The “half-feet” of mudskippers are certainly not useless.

A 1300 cc brain is certainly not useless compared to a 1400 cc brain.

It’s a false impression that stages between A and B are useless (where A and B are his personally selected starting and end points in the bush of evolutionary history). Each step (evolutionary change) between A and B was either beneficial (or at least not detrimental) to that species. Creatures did not decide they wanted to fly...willed wings to sprout and waited millions of years for them to finish. They lived their lives using what they had at that time and the process of evolution kept modifying existing structures to some benefit over time.

Proto-birds with "half a wing" did not fully fly, but being able to stay airborne for an extra few feet when jumping (i.e., gliding) would have a benefit over competitors that could not do that.

[Chronos]

The proof is still in the pudding. Hard to deny the fossil evidence, hard to deny the microbiological evidence, hard to deny that over 3 billion years is not long enough to arrive at the human condition.

[yanniru]

I had occasion last weekend to check Gould new 100+ page book on evolution. The Cambrian Explosion was discussed at length including Kauffman's explanation based on redesign once a threshold of complexity is reached. (Actually Kauffman's computer program just applies to molecules and the creation of life, not the Cambrian explosion. But it seems that even Gould makes the 'Leap of Faith' to all types of organisms.)

Anyway according to Gould, or I should say my understanding of Gould, the fossil record is not as clear cut as the Intelligent Designers would have you think. New lifeforms do appear suddenly, but not all in one 5 million year period of time some 530 million years ago.

For example, according to the "Brief History of the Universe' authored by John Baez and discussed elsewhere in this forum, the first plants appeared 1.3 billion years ago, the first animals 670 million years ago, the first insects on land 395 million years ago, first reptiles-313 My ago, first flowers and dinasaurs-235 My ago, first birds- 150 My ago and first grass- 24 My ago. Also along the way there were several extinctions of most species at 440 My, 370 My, 251 My, 205 My and 67 My ago.

Baez does not even mention the so-called Cambrian explosion. At that time all life seems to have been marine life and even if a great number of species were created at 530 My ago, most marine life was wiped out by the 440 My ago extinction.

A Reform or refined interpretation of Genesis is that each day of Creation is a Commenerative Day. That is, it is the beginning of a form of life, but the full expression of each form is expressed in Genesis. For example, plants began first 1.3 By ago. But Genesis also mentions trees and flowers. Other passages in Genesis can be used to justify this interpretation.

However, even allowing for such a liberal interpretation, Genesis does not account for 5 days of extinction. It seems that if there is Intelligent Design, the designer uses trial and error.

[yanniru]

NB: Gould's book is 1000+ pages. The Edit button just offered me the opportunity to delete the post, not edit it.

Richard

[aychamo]

A Reform or refined interpretation of Genesis is that each day of Creation is a Commenerative Day. That is, it is the beginning of a form of life, but the full expression of each form is expressed in Genesis. For example, plants began first 1.3 By ago. But Genesis also mentions trees and flowers. Other passages in Genesis can be used to justify this interpretation.

However, even allowing for such a liberal interpretation, Genesis does not account for 5 days of extinction. It seems that if there is Intelligent Design, the designer uses trial and error.

The people who try to take scientific findings and make them "fit" into Genesis are doing nothing but molesting their bible. Genesis clearly does not say those things. Genesis has the entire order of "creation" wrong. They have light before the sun. They have "earth" before they have stars, etc.

I've read books that people have written that try to make it look like the book of Genesis in the Christian bible actually says exactly what science says, but the books are crap. The whole idea is crap.

Genesis is a book of stories of man trying to explain where he came from. It was passed down by oral tradition for hundreds and hundreds of years, before someone finally wrote it down.

(I'm an atheist.) There is absolutely zero reason to believe anything in the book. Also, I think that any Christians that feel that the book of genesis has to be literally correct, and thus molest the book to fit science are actually scared that their book is wrong. It seems the majority of Christians who are capable of some reasonable thought processes accept that the book of genesis is just a story, and not mean to be taken literally (but then why believe anything else in the bible?)

What scares me is the fundamentalist Christians who think the 6-day translation is literal. Can anyone say Kent Hovind? What an idiot.

[Elledan]

I like it when those silly fundamentalistic theists are having such a hard time comprehending the fact that there's a big difference between evolution and biogenesis.

Evolution is a fact which only the most foolish and ignorant individuals still deny. Biogenesis deals with the actual origin, the beginning of life.

Recent discoveries have provided more and more evidence for the theory that life was first formed around thermal vents deep in the oceans. For creationism and its many variations there's still only 'evidence' based on the absence of evidence.

Refuting creationism is therefore much like trying to refute conspiracy theories: it's about as effective as running head first into a brick wall, and in the end leaves you only with a bad headache.

[aychamo]

Evolution is a fact which only the most foolish and ignorant individuals still deny. Biogenesis deals with the actual origin, the beginning of life.


Let me first state that I agree 100% with every single word you wrote, and your post sounds just like me talking when I talk to my friends or what-not

I agree with the part in bold. But let us (can one contract that to let's?) look at that statement. If you were trying to convince someone of evolution, that would be a fallacious argument, would it not? Would that be an ad hominem abusive? Or some type of bandwagon?

FYI, I live in the south, and there are a lot of pentacostals and baptists down here. Talk about some stories. Oh my god. This one girl told me that they found a wheel in the Red Sea or something and that was proof that Moses parted it and thus was proof that god existed. I posted somewhere else that my girlfriend's sisters told her that evolution means that two rocks collided and ameboas came out and that's where humans came from (they had recently watched the Kent Hovind DVD set [speaking of f-ing idiots!]). I hear some crap down here man... wow! It's always refreshing having someone with no education tell me (a biology major) about evolution.

[bross7]

I don't think it's off-topic at all. That really is the biggest misconception creationists have about evolution, and I think what leaves them feeling so "threatened" by evolution...they think evolution attempts to explain the origin of life (I guess they don't realize that isn't what Darwin meant when he titled his book "Origin of Species.") Evolutionary theory doesn't really care how life began on Earth, it's about how it has changed since then.


I never understood this fear. I guess it is more that it refutes the logic that the Earth is only 7000 years old and thus would refute a lot of the Bible at least in a statistical sense. The only thing that evolution really wrecks for religion is that Adam and Eve were created as the first humans and that humans did not evolve from any other lifeform. Although without a definite link between apes and humans that isn't even a guaranteed link although it seems highly likely.

Quite frankly I think that the two fit perfectly together from a logical point of view. Something happens, for example the Big Bang. Then eventually over time life begins. This does not prevent religion, and yet creationists try to prevent science. Pretty funny.

Although I guess we have seen this over the course of human existence as conflict usually arises with a My God is God and your god is a dog type thought process. I see creationists as this way. Evolution threatens a lot of the back story to religion so evolutionary theory must be discredited to make our God be the God.

[russ_watters]

It’s a false impression that stages between A and B are useless (where A and B are his personally selected starting and end points in the bush of evolutionary history). Each step (evolutionary change) between A and B was either beneficial (or at least not detrimental) to that species. Creatures did not decide they wanted to fly...willed wings to sprout and waited millions of years for them to finish. They lived their lives using what they had at that time and the process of evolution kept modifying existing structures to some benefit over time. One of the strangest things about "Darwin's Black Box" is it relies heavily on this argument (or its cousin, the "irreduceably complex" argument). The author starts off by saying how a fully-formed human eye is too complex to have evolved, but then for some strange reason goes through the whole evolutionary history of the eye, proving that it can/did! Then after demonstrating that his own argument doesn't hold water, he re-affirms that its correct and continues on (that's where I stopped reading).It's always refreshing having someone with no education tell me (a biology major) about evolution. I'm sure its entertaining, but it would only take about 30 seconds of that argument before I'd need to stick my pen in my eye.

Setting aside evolution for a sec, the various creationist "theories" can easily be debunked by looking at the fossil record: its (sorta) upside-down. All the animals that exist today should have existed 4 billion years ago and via extinction, the number and variety should be decreasing not increasing.

[Elledan]

Let me first state that I agree 100% with every single word you wrote, and your post sounds just like me talking when I talk to my friends or what-not

I agree with the part in bold. But let us (can one contract that to let's?) look at that statement. If you were trying to convince someone of evolution, that would be a fallacious argument, would it not? Would that be an ad hominem abusive? Or some type of bandwagon?
Like I pointed out in my post, it's absolutely futile to attempt to make someone who firmly believes in creationism change his or her mind.

In this case I was just pointing out the blindingly obvious :wink:

It's always refreshing having someone with no education tell me (a biology major) about evolution.
Education is severely overrated as long as it focuses on learning facts instead of critical (scientific!) thinking. It's kind of like the 'give a man a fish' vs 'learn a man to fish' example: learn an individual a fact and s/he will remember it, learn an individual to discover facts and s/he will gain new facts at an exponential rate.

This kind of thinking is the sole reason behind the proliferation of ignorance outside (and inside) the scientific community.