I have heard that. Of course, every time I heard it the person saying it seemed like they had a fairly dull and unhappy life, so they weren't the best examples of its possible truth.

I didn't have time to read all of the posts, so forgive me if I repeat something that has already been said.

I believe in creation and evolution, but not evolution as commonly accepted.  I believe in evolution the same way we have applied it in selective breeding of domestic animals, i.e., evolution at the direction of an intelligence.

I believe that God created life, man included.  To believe that life was generated spontaneously and that from a single cell, it gained complexity until it became the complex creatures we are today requires a greater leap of faith than I can handle.  

Traditional evolution teaches that animals compete for advantages and this forces an animal to change in order to gain an advantage.  Supposedly beneficial changes cause an animal to prosper and those changes are passed down.  Evolution also teaches that the changes are very gradual and it takes thousands or millions of years for an elephant like animal to make the change to a whale or for a reptile to become a bird.

This is another ludicrous leap of faith.  Something tells me that a lot of elephants will have to suddenly decide to start swimming, keep at it for generation after generation, all the while loosing their ability to forage on land, which they are really good at, while they try sucking on plankton and turning their feet into fins.  Meanwhile, they keep from getting eaten by the sharks, their babies don't drown when they're born (also at some point switching from head first births to breech births), know how to swim, etc, etc.

The reptile leaps from tree to tree and decides to stretch his skin so he can glide and jump farther.  Oh yeah, grow flight feathers, a keel bone so his wing muscles will be stronger, etc.

I've got no problem with animals adapting to climate and their fur gets thicker or thinner.  I don't have a problem with a change in food making a narrower head or longer claws a competitive advantage.  I just have a problem with changing species.  The fossil record shows lots of similarities between different animals.  It is assumed that one evolved from another.  If it happened, I don't logically think it could have happened by chance.

But it doesn't require such a leap to believe that there was some tremendously advanced creature that came from nothing before that, I take it.



No mention of punctuated equilibrium and a rather stunted understanding of the process, as I see it.



Hmmmm, then how did God get here?

Since I’m not a creationist or a evolutionist I can poke at both sides.


At what point does it become advantages for a fish to replace his fins with legs?  Do the legs instantly appear or is the process that occurs over hundreds or thousands of years?
As the fin disappears, how does becoming less mobile in the water become advantages?
Ohhh, well the water is drying up you say.  What’s that? There is more food on shore? Ohh, OK at what point does mutations of such grandeur take place as this new specialized environment remains supportive of these new traits.

What mutations both lengthened the giraffe’s neck and restructured its circulatory system to provide blood to the 4th floor?  But that heart in a horse and it’ll blows its head off from the BP.  But you see, the long neck provides the ability to reach vegetation on tall trees.. A group of early giraffes lives in a lush forest with many trees and shrubs of different heights to feed on. These giraffes have necks of various lengths, with most giraffes having a medium length neck. Then a blight passed through the area, killing off all of the low growing plants, leaving only tall trees whose leaves are far off the ground. Giraffes with shorter necks now have a hard time getting food, while those with longer necks can feed on the high-growing leaves. After several generations, the giraffes in this area all have longer necks than those before the blight.
Natural selection slowly chose to keep the giraffes with longer necks to they evolved to be the length you see them today.
And in the meantime Malboro started marketing cigarettes to giraffes. The giraffe population became addicted to smoking menthol cigarettes. To bad for the giraffe that a group of mean predators moved in and only the fastest giraffes would survive. These fastest giraffes had the heart capacity to support their longer neck so that they did not die due to asphyxiating their brain.


Bullshit.

You totally misunderstand how this works, it seems.  What occurs in fish, for example, is that one member of a mud-skipping fish like the modern lungfish develops, for example, a thicker skin more able to tolerate long periods out of water than his fellows.  Normally this would disappear in a few generations because it would normally have no survival value and would be, like most mutations, neutral.  But in this particular case, it coincides with a lengthy drought, which makes it more valuable for such an animal to be able to spend more time out of water looking for food.  Thus the gene is passed on and eventually the offshoot from the lungfish type becomes so differentiated genetically that interbreeding with the original lungfish type is no longer possible and a new species is in existance.



What?  Your joke?  Yeah, it was bullshit but I thought you meant it as a joke.

Although I'm a confirmed Darwinist/evolutionist,  there are some aspect of evolution that ARE quite puzzling.

The length of a giraffe's neck is NOT one of those puzzles, though.  It's an extreme example of adaptation to conditions and it doesn't take a lot of intellectual horsepower to understand it.

What IS puzzling, though,  is how an animal can evolve the capability of flight.    If you were to assume that the flight-related structures had to develop by evolutionary pressures,  you'd also have to admit that those structures would serve no useful purpose until useful flight had actually been achieved by the species.   And useless bodily structures aren't likely to be retained as they don't contribute to survivability.

Another puzzler is that insect that blows very hot gasses out of its backside.  Bombardier beetle, I think it is.   It internally mixes two volatile chemicals in a chamber in its abdomen and the resulting reaction creates a blast of very hot gas, aimed at an attacker.    The problem here is that any bug that started to develop this capacity would die by explosion if it were to mix the chemicals incorrectly or be equipped with an inadequate combustion chamber.


Despite those oddities,  I'm still an Evolutionist and that's that.

CJ

Then please explain the mechanism of this change to me including the adaptation of internal systems (not just cosmetic).

Now you can't fall back on chaos theory or Choas Evolution you need to produce me a giraffe via natural selection. You also cannot use extinction in this case. However, in your favor, you are not required to explain why other simular species did not evolve the same way, given the same environment. Or why some species just refuse to evolve.

If your as smart as you put on you will immediatly point out the number of neck bones and Giraffe has. I'll save you the time. You also may what to touch on why the giraffe is silent.

You give me reasons to show that Earth is not entropic or a closed system and in violation of the 2nd law of thermo.

Earth is constantly bathed in radiant energy from an external source, so it is not a closed system at all.

All biological processes [b]including evolutionary increases in complexity[/b] tend to increase entropy over the long haul.  When multiple paths for energy flow are available, systems tend to choose the path that increases entropy the fastest.

By consuming resources like petrolium, forests, and fast foods, we are doing our part for maximizing entropy for the universe.  Since living organisms can change and adapt over time, it's inevitable that they would get ever more efficient at consuming available fuel.

[url]http://www.entropylaw.com/thermoevolution10.html[/url]

I don't find that much more mysterious than the giraffe's neck. There are lots of examples of animals that have what you might call "intermediate" flight capabilities that could go one way or another - back to completely land-based or to completely airborne. The ability to make long hops, perhaps with a bit of air support, seems like it might be a very useful thing for a lot of animals. Then all it takes is for the hops to get progressively longer.



I don't think that is all that hard to explain either. There are lots of animals that spew some toxic substance, thereby providing the opportunity for some of them to create a new substance, perhaps not quite as well-developed at the current version, and then improve it along the way. I am not a biologist, nor do I play one on TV, but I think you could hypothesize some ancient bombardier beetles that were born with two sacs (given the numbers of them, it seems inevitable), and one of those sacs produced a slightly different fluid, from which the rest evolved.

Well said.

The Solar System and the Universe are indeed (we think).

But what about the Earth's Biosphere?  Ingoring energy equations, the sun, etc. What can be said in relation to the diversity of life?

My point there was that if the number of species on Earth is on a decline, this would indicate that Earth is entropic and not renewing itself. In other words; slowly dieing.

Just brain food. I doubt the Life is a closed system. However, you would expect that the World's biggest influence and changer (humans) would promote evolution and the success of adaptive mutations.

At the micro level of animal physiology and the macro level of the Earth biosystem, there is a lot of science that does not understand or contradicts natural selection.

Not that I agree that creationist view is not the answer either. This view may work great for the soul but it is useless as a tool of science.

[img]http://www.answersingenesis.org/AfterEden/cartoons/ae6-26-2000.gif[/img]

I cannot ignore the sun.  If it were to be suddenly extinguished, Earth would start freezing over within hours and all life would cease sooner or later.



It could be, OTOH there is evidence of previous disasters that wiped out large numbers of species, after which life recovered.



Pardon me while I go all nihilistic here:

Eventually the Sun will swell into a big red gas bag and the Earth will be baked to a lifeless cinder.  At that point the entire history of life will have been a perturbation in the history of the matter that was fortunate enough to be part of the biosphere.  Life's contribution to the progress of time's arrow will be immeasurable in the long run.  Call it God's will if you are so inclined.

An eddy in a stream or a hurricane on the high seas seems to become more organized and complex during part of its life, but in the bigger view its job is ultimately to move heat from one place to another and increase entropy of the whole system, wherever you put the boundaries on the system.

Were not on the same page. Do you see the connection between species and population?

OK OK math boy, [:D] then assume that the sun's average yearly output has been, and will continue to be a fixed constant.

Hmmm...and what would the record of correct predictions for religion be by comparison?

Species and population counts are related because of how species interact with each other as well as how they adapt to changing conditions, but neither really matters in terms of whether or not the Earth violates the Second Law of Thermodynamics.



That would not make Earth a closed system, and any eternal power source would violate the First Law of Thermodynamics (Conservation of Energy):  The mass of the Sun will at some point reach zero as it gets converted to energy.  But if such a system was possible (say by the Sun being continually replenished from another power source) Earth's radiant heat output would over the long haul be about equal to the incident energy from the Sun.  No violation of the Second Law there.

I think the purpose of the cartoon was to demonstrate that scientists should also be treated with skepticism.

Also, you cannot predict what has already happened, by definition.

Scientists make their living by being skeptical. Creationists base their entire belief on accepting the Genesis account without skepticism.

One more post in The Thread That Will Never Die...

It is true that some Creationists read Genesis and believe it happened precisely that way, and that's the end of it. My Pleabe Year roommate at USNA believed that, and we even discussed it at length.

My opinion of people who believe that is one of admiration for their faith, but incredulity at their blindness.

I stand by my opinion that a majority of those lumped into the "Creationist" bin still support the Theory of Evolution because of the available data, but will not discard the basic prescept that God created it all in the beginning. The arguement being: Who am I to question God as to HOW he created the universe and everything in it?

BTW, I think it is possible to teach the Theory of Evolution in schools without compromising the belief in a creating God.

That's a pretty broad brush you're painting with, Wolfman.

But accurate for the so-called "Creation Science" movement, as they come right out and say (the Institute for Creation Research) that they will accept any evidence that tends to support their beliefs and reject out of hand any evidence that tends to disprove them.

It is accurate. That is what the argument is really all about. For more information see Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" program I mentioned earlier where they let the leading "Creation Scientists" speak for themselves.

I'm not going to go back through the previous nine pages, but it seems to me there were some exchanges in which a creationist posted opinions of how evolutionists think and evolutionists responding with "No- you don't understand me- I'll explain it."

So, evolutionists can't be pigeonholed, but creationists are all from the same cookie cutter?

I'm awed that I've finally encoutered the One Who Has It All Figured Out.

Well said, Brohawk! [beer]



Rik, I'm not going to state that some Creationists do exactly what you describe, or even that it's right, but I can guarantee you there are Evolutionists doing EXACTLY the same thing. It's part of Human Nature.

What bothers me the most about this whole discussion is that the loudest arguments come from the extreme sides. If you believe that God created everything, there are Evolutionists who will jump your ass and call you foolish, delusional, scary, and several other adjectives that one generally doesn't repeat in polite company.

OTOH, if you say you consider Evolution to be an apparently feasible theory, then you are a heretic who is trying to dis-prove the existence of God.

Unfortunately, nowadays in this country it's considered sport to slam those who believe in God and Creation simply on those facts alone. "What, he believes in GOD? Well, he must be a bible-thumping creationist whacko, then!" I tend to see that kind of reaction MUCH more from the so-called "tolerant" scientists than I do from the so-called "intolerant" religious folk.

I have said, and will continue to say, that Evolution in no way invalidates the FACT that this complex universe was, at some point, CREATED by God. If that simple point in conceded, I will sit down and entertain ANY scientific theory that has SOLID EVIDENCE to support it (as Evolution seems to have). The bible never has to factor into it, although if I find SOLID SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE that supports my religious beliefs, I will use that as well.

I have read books and searched the internet for information on this debate.  One [b]fact[/b] that I'm convinced of is that passions run high and there is very little objectivity.

Evolutionists are bent on disproving creationism and promoting evolution.

Creationists are bent on disproving evolution and promoting creationism.

Both sides claim to be the voice of unbiased reason.  People do not debate this issue with a sense of distilling the information and possibility of changing their views.  I doubt anything I could say would sway an evolutionist here, and vice versa.  For me, there is too much improbability for evolution to be credible.  What mechanism decided, "I want this animal to fly, so it's bone structure needs to be lightened, these legs need to turn into wings, and it needs to develop feathers."?  BTW, "Tornado In A Junkyard" by James Perloff provides some interesting reading.

The horse stopped twitching.  I'm putting away my whip.

I believe the Supreme Being created evolution.

Gwen

Now, ten pages without a lock is worth talking about!  [;)]

Evolution IS believable even if you believe in a supreme being.  Case and point:  God/Deity made possible the big bang, which in turn has evolved to this point.  An omnipotent being is certainly capable of this yes?  I'd like to share a story, taken from a book.

A Firebreathing Dragon Lives in My Garage:

Suppose I seriously make such an assertion to you.  Surely you'd want to check it out, see for yourself.  There have been innumerable stories of dragons over the centuries (see the parallel?), but no REAL evidence.  What an opportunity!

 "Show me" you say.  I lead you into my garage.  You look inside and see a ladder, empty pain cans, an old tricycle--but no dragon.
 "Where's the dragon?" you ask.
 "Oh, he's right here," I reply, waving vaguely.  "I neglected to mention that he's an invisable dragon."
 You propose spreading flour on the floor of the garage to capture the dragon's footprints.
 "Good idea," I say, "but this dragon floats in the air."
 Then you'll use an infrared sensor to detect the invisible fire.
 "Good idea, but the invisible fire is also heatless."
 You'll spray-paint the dragon and make him visable.
 "Good idea, except he's an incorporeal dragon and the paint won't stick."
 And so on.  I counter every physical teset you propose with a special reason why it won't work.
 Now, what's the difference between an invisable, incorporeal, floating dragon who spits heatless fire and no dragon at all?  If there's no way to disprove my contention, no concievable experiment that would count against it, what does it mean to say that my dragon exists?

Imagine things had gone otherwise.  The dragon is invisible, all right, but footprints are being made in the flour as you watch.  Your infrared detector reads off the scale.  The spray paint reveals a jagged crest bobbing in the air before you.  No matter how skeptical you might have been about the existence of dragons--to say nothing of invisible ones--you must acknowledge that there's something here, and that in a preliminary way, it's consistant with an invisible, fire-breathing dragon.



My point being, there are some flaws in evolution, albiet small ones.  But the same science that says evolution HAS happened over 4.3 billion years, is the same science that lets you microwave popcorn, lights you house, and makes television possible.  Who's to say GOD/Deity didn't set in motion a universe with specific parameteres such as the length of proton decay (of which, if it was a smaller amount of time, life coulnd't have evolved) and evolution?  It boils down to whether or not you believe in a certain faith that states something different than whats been found to ACTUALLY happen.  

Think on this point:  150 years ago, electromagnetism was unheard of......whats to say a spiritual realm that DOES have physical manifestations is just beyond our capable technology to detect?  It's possible.  So to say there ABSOLUTELY is a god,  is fallable, cause noone knows for SURE.  And to say there is NO god, is also fallable for the SAME reason, we DON'T KNOW yet.

BUT evolution is fact.

"Creation Science" is, by definition, the rejection of the methods used by actual science. Some creationists make various adjustments to their story because, frankly, it gets kinda silly to maintain the fundamentalist routine in the face of science, but the basic idea is that Genesis should be believed without question.

Like I said, for more information, you can study the history of such things or just take a look at the leading creationists who were featured on Penn and Teller's "Bullshit" show.