Can Evolutionists Answer These??

[Fishteacher73]

Nails and claws are similar structures, but nails and claws are no the same. CLaws are rectactable and nails are not. Different in form and function.

[Skippy]

Natural selection has severe logical inconsistencies.

Like....what?

op5

"Charles Darwin described the eye as one of the greatest challenges to his theory. How could he explain it? The eye, after all, is simply incompatible with evolution. "To suppose," Darwin admitted, "that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances ... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree" (On the Origin of Species, 1909, p. 190).

 

Jacob Bronowski wrote that, "if you compare a human being with even the most sharp-eyed of the great apes, say with a chimpanzee, our vision is incredibly more delicate ... Their ability to discriminate fine detail (which can be tested in a very simple way) is not comparable with that of human beings" (The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, 1978, pp. 12-13).

 

The human eye possesses 130 million light-sensitive rods and cones that convert light into chemical impulses. These signals travel at a rate of a billion per second to the brain.

 

The essential problem for Darwinists is how so many intricate components could have independently evolved to work together perfectly when, if a single component didn't function perfectly, nothing would work at all.

 

"Now it is quite evident," says scientist Francis Hitching, "that if the slightest thing goes wrong en route—if the cornea is fuzzy, or the pupil fails to dilate, or the lens becomes opaque, or the focusing goes wrong—then a recognizable image is not formed. The eye either functions as a whole, or not at all.

 

"So how did it come to evolve by slow, steady, infinitesimally small Darwinian improvements? Is it really possible that thousands upon thousands of lucky chance mutations happened coincidentally so that the lens and the retina, which cannot work without each other, evolved in synchrony? What survival value can there be in an eye that doesn't see?

 

"Small wonder that it troubled Darwin. 'To this day the eye makes me shudder,' [Darwin] wrote to his botanist friend Asa Gray in February, 1860" (The Neck of the Giraffe, 1982, p. 86).

 

The same can be said of the brain, nose, palate and dozens of other complex and highly developed organs in any human or animal. It would take a quantum leap of faith to think all this just evolved. Yet that is commonly taught and accepted.

 

After reviewing the improbability of such organs arising in nature from an evolutionary process, Professor H.S. Lipson, a member of the British Institute of Physics, wrote in 1980: "We must go further than this and admit that the only acceptable alternative is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it" (Physics Bulletin, Vol. 30, p. 140). GN

 

-- Mario Seiglie

[Erasmus00]

Charles Darwin described the eye as one of the greatest challenges to his theory. How could he explain it? The eye, after all, is simply incompatible with evolution. "To suppose," Darwin admitted, "that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances ... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree" (On the Origin of Species, 1909, p. 190).

 

http://www.answersingenesis.org/home/area/faq/dont_use.asp A refutation, and from creationists. Darwin himself, in On the Origin of Species proposes a mechanism for the eye to evolve. Picking quotes out of context like this like this is horribly dishonest.

-Will

[nkt]

So imagine a fish that could tell when it was daytime, and when it wasn't. That fish could bask in the warm shallows just after dark, and not get eaten, with far more certainity than other fish. It wouldn't need any amazing eye, it would just need the energy boost from the heat of the sun's rays, and a small sensor that could detect light or dark. Not that complex, really, when compared to a leg or a lung.

 

Now consider that other fish and other animals get a similar effect. Some of them determine when something swims past, and they eat it, or get eaten by it. Selection pressure for an adaption to the eye is therefore strong, and eyes become quite rapidly more important, and more complex. Some animals, such as spiders, go with a massive array of eyes, all wired together. Squid go for a huge eye to detect light in the deep. Predators go for eyes that are twin, for good depth perception. Humans, with a huge brain, go for colour vision, and a pair of eyes that work together to ensure we can spot even the smallest thing at the length of our body. Once we shifted to being bipedal, selection for being able to focus sharply on the place we put our feet, which are, after all, not protected by hard hooves or nails, as well as allowing us to see far better what we were doing with our hands, which rapidly became more agile, as our brains got bigger and more complex.

 

Goldfish can see IR, but we can't. Hawks can see far smaller details than we can at higher resolution. The woodcock can see 360 degrees around itself. Our eyes can handle a lot of detail, but it uses a lot of shortcuts, tricks and various hardwired processing to reduce the load, and our eyes still trick us.

 

Our eyes are not evidence of anything special. Anyway, if it is evidence of some amazing creator, then who created the creator?

 

Edit: Erasmus00, well said!

[Fishteacher73]

One must also realize that so much of this "amazing complexity" is not in the eye. So much of the definition and interpretation is in the brain. I personally have done experiments testing eye and brain function in toads that exhibit the fact that although the basic structure of the eye is the same, the toad does not percieve the same visual image as a human does. This "complexity" that you want to attribute to the eye is simply not there.

[nkt]

Indeed, the neural networks in the toad's brain can only really determine things in a very limited way:

 

1. Small and moving - Food

2. Small and not moving - not food

3. Big and moving - Danger!

4. Big and not moving - trees and stuff

 

They have enough visual acuity to see things, but they don't have enough brains to know what they are looking at. A frog, if startled, will always automatically jump towards the darkest place it can see. It has no idea of what threats lie there, but evolution has taught it well enough that it is a wired in brain response now!

 

Anyone wanting to read a good book about evolution, that goes through many technical and difficult questions in a lively and clever way, should read "The Blind Watchmaker" by Richard Dawkins (Amazon.com: The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design: Richard Dawkins: Books http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0393315703/104-7167524-3200763?v=glance) It is a good read, but does get a bit sticky in the later chapters, as he kills off even the most obscure arguments of the "benign creator" theory and other twisted logics. The first half is a great novel, almost!

[Boerseun]

Debating the origins of the eye might seem to be strengthening the creationis case. However, the fact that their premise is even more absurd is not very often mentioned by them.

 

It might be comparable of the development of insect wings. You would assume that a half-baked non-working wing wouldn't just develop to be changed into a proper wing over thousands of generations. But it seems as if the first insects to develop rudimentary wings did so as thermal control mechanisms. It could have been in an ice age or something similar, where broad flat plates could be pointed towards the sun to quickly increase the insect's body temperature. It even developed muscles in the root so the insect can point it to the most advantageous position towards the sun. Modern day insects' wings are dead and dry structures, but for the first day or so of their lives there's actually blood flowing through the tiny veins in the wings, so it's a very plausible scenario.

 

And then, of course, an insect sitting in the top of a tree and trying to escape a predator, and jumping out of the tree, might find that these thermal regulators could be moved to have in influence on its path as it falls out of the tree.

 

Thus wings are born.

 

Wings and thermal regulators have nothing to do with each other, but this, to my mind, could very well be what happened. Something similar might have been the case with eyeballs, but it might not be so obvious as the above.

[Skippy]

So imagine a fish that could tell when it was daytime, and when it wasn't. That fish could bask in the warm shallows just after dark, and not get eaten, with far more certainity than other fish. It wouldn't need any amazing eye, it would just need the energy boost from the heat of the sun's rays, and a small sensor that could detect light or dark. Not that complex, really, when compared to a leg or a lung.

 

Now consider that other fish and other animals get a similar effect. Some of them determine when something swims past, and they eat it, or get eaten by it. Selection pressure for an adaption to the eye is therefore strong, and eyes become quite rapidly more important, and more complex. Some animals, such as spiders, go with a massive array of eyes, all wired together. Squid go for a huge eye to detect light in the deep. Predators go for eyes that are twin, for good depth perception. Humans, with a huge brain, go for colour vision, and a pair of eyes that work together to ensure we can spot even the smallest thing at the length of our body. Once we shifted to being bipedal, selection for being able to focus sharply on the place we put our feet, which are, after all, not protected by hard hooves or nails, as well as allowing us to see far better what we were doing with our hands, which rapidly became more agile, as our brains got bigger and more complex.

 

Goldfish can see IR, but we can't. Hawks can see far smaller details than we can at higher resolution. The woodcock can see 360 degrees around itself. Our eyes can handle a lot of detail, but it uses a lot of shortcuts, tricks and various hardwired processing to reduce the load, and our eyes still trick us.!

Since we can choose :Alien: , I choose to have eyes like the woodcock. Is that all it takes for my children to get those kind of eyes? Maybe that explains Marty Feldman?

 

I can imagine a lot of things, that doesn't make them so EVEN if I can get others to agree it might be true...just ask Marshall Applewhite.

 

Our eyes are not evidence of anything special. Anyway, if it is evidence of some amazing creator, then who created the creator?

Edit: Erasmus00, well said!

You just listed a number of reasons our eyes are special...even attributed them for humans having an even larger brain than before, not for reasons of vision but because of what eyes help us do.

 

No one created The Creator. The eye is evidence that evolution could not have happened as its adherents believe it did, it is not in and of itself THE evidence for a Creator.

[Skippy]

Debating the origins of the eye might seem to be strengthening the creationis case. However, the fact that their premise is even more absurd is not very often mentioned by them.

 

It might be comparable of the development of insect wings. You would assume that a half-baked non-working wing wouldn't just develop to be changed into a proper wing over thousands of generations. But it seems as if the first insects to develop rudimentary wings did so as thermal control mechanisms. It could have been in an ice age or something similar, where broad flat plates could be pointed towards the sun to quickly increase the insect's body temperature. It even developed muscles in the root so the insect can point it to the most advantageous position towards the sun. Modern day insects' wings are dead and dry structures, but for the first day or so of their lives there's actually blood flowing through the tiny veins in the wings, so it's a very plausible scenario.

 

And then, of course, an insect sitting in the top of a tree and trying to escape a predator, and jumping out of the tree, might find that these thermal regulators could be moved to have in influence on its path as it falls out of the tree.

 

Thus wings are born.

 

Wings and thermal regulators have nothing to do with each other, but this, to my mind, could very well be what happened. Something similar might have been the case with eyeballs, but it might not be so obvious as the above.

For some reason when I read this I kept hearing Rod Serling's voice..."There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Evolution Zone."

[Skippy]

Debating the origins of the eye might seem to be strengthening the creationis case. However, the fact that their premise is even more absurd is not very often mentioned by them.

I find it amazing that you, Fish and nkt are discounting/disregarding what Darwin said. That is akin to a Muslim ignoring what Mohammed said, Buddhists ignoring what Buddha said or a Christian ignoring Christ's words. To do so though, for one of them, would mean that the rest of what those people said was null and void. Not so for evoluitonists???

 

It would appear that Darwin was more concerned with scientific integrity than the followers of the religion his book spawned are. Just a thought...

[pgrmdave]

I find it amazing that you, Fish and nkt are discounting/disregarding what Darwin said. That is akin to a Muslim ignoring what Mohammed said, Buddhists ignoring what Buddha said or a Christian ignoring Christ's words. To do so though, for one of them, would mean that the rest of what those people said was null and void. Not so for evoluitonists???

 

This isn't true in science. We don't need to doggedly hold onto the originator's idea just for the idea of it to be true. Scientific ideas reform themselves over time, as experiments are performed, and people learn more. Darwin's specific thoughts on evolution may not be correct even if the basic idea of it is.

[pgrmdave]

This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Evolution Zone

 

Yes!!! There is a lot of imagination done in a lot of science, my mind specifically wanders to Einstein's thought experiments, and one in which he imagined what someone would see if they were to be able to ride a beam of light. We cannot experiment with evolution without large populations, and unfortunately, fossils only record a very small percentage of a population so we need to interpret the data with what we have. It isn't perfect, but, it's logical, and it's better than saying "We can't explain it right now, so it must have been a god/aliens/a creator behind it." That is unscientific, and illogical.

[Erasmus00]

It would appear that Darwin was more concerned with scientific integrity than the followers of the religion his book spawned are. Just a thought...

 

I find it amazing that I pointed out to you how horribly dishonest your Darwin quote was. Even gave you a creationist reference that talks about it. And rather then respond to me, you ignore me and keep stating this nonsense. And then you accuse others of not having integrity?

-Will

[Skippy]

Yes!!! There is a lot of imagination done in a lot of science, my mind specifically wanders to Einstein's thought experiments, and one in which he imagined what someone would see if they were to be able to ride a beam of light. We cannot experiment with evolution without large populations, and unfortunately, fossils only record a very small percentage of a population so we need to interpret the data with what we have. It isn't perfect, but, it's logical, and it's better than saying "We can't explain it right now, so it must have been a god/aliens/a creator behind it." That is unscientific, and illogical.

You're grasping. It is just that type of rhetoric which allows many of us to assert that Evolutionism IS in fact a religion...it matters not what others say many will still bow down at evolution's altar. Difference is Buddha, Mohammed and Christ never said that what they professed might be in error.

 

Point is...you imagine riding the light beam, THAT is science fiction NOT science fact, it cannot be done experimentally. L'Engle imagined the "tesseract," Kim Stanley Robinson made Mars habitable with windmills, Tolkien imagined a whole race of creatures (Hobbits), etc. It makes for good philosophical discussion, but that doesn't make any of it fact.

[Boerseun]

Skippy - I've read your last two posts, and I must apologise:

 

I haven't got the faintest idea what the heck you're on about.

 

Does those posts contain anything resembling a point? Because I fail to see it.

[pgrmdave]

There are no transitional links and intermediate forms in either the fossil record or the modern world. Therefore, there is no actual evidence that evolution has occurred either in the past or the present.

 

What would you consider a transitional link? an 'intermadiate form'? The fossil record only stores a tiny fraction of a fraction of the organisms that were alive, and we've only just begun really studying evolution in the modern world, and we know that evolution would take a long time, so just bear with us for a few more millenia :Alien:

 

Natural selection (the supposed evolution mechanism, along with mutations) is incapable of advancing an organism to a "higher-order".

 

No it's not. (see, my argument does as much as yours does, because it provides no facts, theory, or information, try coming back with an actual point here)

 

Although evolutionists state that life resulted from non-life, matter resulted from nothing, and humans resulted from animals, each of these is an impossibility of science and the natural world.

 

Evolution only works when there is life, and has nothing to do with abiogenesis, which was the leading idea centuries before evolution was an idea. You state humans resulting from animals as though humans aren't animals, but...we are! Plus, you once more fail to actually provide any point, facts, ideas, thoughts...anything that might be useful or intelligent.

 

The supposed hominids (creatures in-between ape and human that evolutionists believe used to exist) bones and skull record used by evolutionists often consists of `finds' which are thoroughly unrevealing and inconsistent. They are neither clear nor conclusive even though evolutionists present them as if they were.

 

Newton got it wrong too, does that mean that gravity doesn't exist?

 

Nine of the twelve popularly supposed hominids are actually extinct apes/ monkeys and not part human at all.

 

We share more than 90% of our DNA with a frog, who claimed that they were 'not human at all'?

 

The final three supposed hominids put forth by evolutionists are actually modern human beings and not part monkey/ ape at all. Therefore, all twelve of the supposed hominids can be explained as being either fully monkey/ ape or fully modern human but not as something in between.

 

Where are your sources? How did you come by this infomation? What do you mean by 'fully human' and 'fully ape'? Do you mean that they are exactly like living apes and humans? Because they aren't.

 

Natural selection can be seen to have insurmountable social and practical inconsistencies.

 

By all means, tell us what they are, so that we might be able to have a somewhat intelligent debate.

 

Natural selection has severe logical inconsistencies.

 

Like what? It's stood the test of time for many logical people, do you actually have new information, or are you going to argue about an eye and a four chambered heart? (once again, notice that you provide NO information, NO data, NO theory, and, most importantly, NO sources.

 

The rock strata finds (layers of buried fossils) are better explained by a universal flood than by evolution.

 

How so? We had a long discussion about this a while back, and it was found that a flood doesn't explain most of the actual evidence, only a small fraction of the evidence that creationist like to point to. It's like saying that all humans have bleached white skin and red eyes because there are albinos.

 

God is the divine creator. After you read these evidences, I want you to think.

 

No He isn't, it's the Great IPU. And I do think. I think that you need to learn basic science, logic, and find decent sources, like these:

 

http://web.mit.edu/lking/www/writing/origins.html

http://www.archaeologyinfo.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution

http://www.talkorigins.org/

[pgrmdave]

Point is...you imagine riding the light beam, THAT is science fiction NOT science fact, it cannot be done experimentally. L'Engle imagined the "tesseract," Kim Stanley Robinson made Mars habitable with windmills, Tolkien imagined a whole race of creatures (Hobbits), etc. It makes for good philosophical discussion, but that doesn't make any of it fact.

 

Yes, it is science fiction, and after it is theorized, it has to be tested, mathematically, and experimentally. But, the truth is that it is the only way for science to really advance, we need to imagine new ideas. Can you give me an example of a single scientific theory that didn't start out as an imaginative thought?