Creation vs. Evolution

[Lisa0825]

A side note, I didn't want to bring it up really, but here goes... Chimps have 48 chromosomes to a humans 46 and share 98% of our DNA. Donkeys and horses have 62 and 64 chromosomes respectively and share less common DNA (the number escapes me at the moment) and can produce offspring. An experiment that will never take place but has crossed plenty of minds would be to see if chimps and humans can hybridize and the commonly accepted theoretical answer is yes. It would be ethically unsound to try it, but my money is on the probability it would work.

R

OH MAN.... that explains A LOT!

I can't post it, because it would be deleted, but anyone who knows me well can probably guess what is going through my head right now!LOL

 

[H2Andy]

that chimp is lying!!

 

[Green_Manelishi]

we know there were simple organisms for a long time, and nothing else. then we see more complex organisms. then, worms, for example, but no birds or cats.

then worms and birds, but no cats.

then, finally, after a long time, cats.

so did God create simple organisms? then wait a long, lont time, thren create more complex organisms (multi-cell); then wait a few million years and create worms, then wait a few more million years, then create birds, then wait a few moe million years, then create cats?

because that's what the fossil record shows. here are the two answers offered by science (evolution) and religion (creationism):

simple organisms evolved into progressively more complex ones; or

at certain intervals, a supernatural being created a new batch of more complex organisms, and kept doing that for millions of years.

i find the first one simpler, more plausible, and needing less elements (no supernatural being) to work given what we know.

"We" know?

No "we" don't know. We weren't there to observe what you claim is the evidence for evolution. For all of the scientists that claim the universe and earth are billions of years old there are scientists researching and building evidence indicating a young earth. It's a similar situation for the "gradual" fossil record.

 

[wreckchick]

GM, do me a huge favor and just point me at some resources you have that show evidence of the young earth or creationist theory generally. I'd prefer peer-reviewed scientific journals, but I'll take what I can get. I still feel like we're coming from different places where I can't really understand your point of view without the source material.

Thank you!

R

 

[H2Andy]

"We" know?

No "we" don't know. We weren't there to observe what you claim is the evidence for evolution.

yes, we do know.

we know, for example, that dynosaurs walked around, and then went extinct. i know that, even though i wasn't there (just like i know that two people had sex and then i was conceived, even though i wasn't there when it happened)

we also know that the progressive appearance of more and more complex creatures in the fossil record coincide with what we'd expect to find if evolution were correct.


for example, i don't see advanced animals such as mammals back when the first vertebrates appear in the fossil record. in fact, it takes millions and millions and millions of years for the vertebrates to slowly get more and more complex until we find mammals.

so we do know quite a great deal

For all of the scientists that claim the universe and earth are billions of years old there are scientists researching and building evidence indicating a young earth.

really? then they must be very creative to get around the overwhelming evidence that the Earth is incredibly old.

as Biscuit says, can you point us to some authoritative sources that claim they have evidence that the earth is "young" (whatever that means?)

 

[Bobbin-along]

H2Andy,

I myself tend watch with amusement people bickering over how creation vs. evolution is the "right" one. I get peeved when we talk about "fact" and evolution in the same sentence. Which is what was starting to rear it's ugly head in this thread. As far as OR, sure I know exactly what it is, but then again I wasn't sure exactly how it was germane to the correlation between the bible's idea of how the earth was made and more "scientific" theories. God's hand in creation is more figurative to me than literal, so I don't have much stress over the whole God made x, then God made Y. I don't believe we are a Lego set and God is a 4yo kid who decides to make us one day. The bible model of the earth's development looks alot like evolutionary goo theory. So why do people get so upset?

There are two distinct camps of evolution in academia (the evolutionary goo theorists and Genu-evolutionists) ane one more commonly embraced ideal recently being called an adaptationist.

I believe in adaptation, it clear, demonstrable, and factual. You can selectively breed a Species. I have yet to see us be able to migrate across classes, even in the plant world where we can force change quicker than animals. Not saying it's bogus, just saying it's not demonstrable thus it's not a fact, it's a theory. When we can make a virus a mold, or a philodendron a cactus then I can add it to my fact list.

The jury is out for me regarding genu-evolutionists and evolutionary goo. I don't have a simple theory I embrace over another. But I am willing to explore everything. Evolutionary goo theorists saw we came from ecto plasma, which became single celled orgs which then became, fish, then reptiles, then birds and mammals (including primates) then viola humans. Total crossing of phylums and sub-phylums to get to humans. It's a big stretch and hasn't been demonstrable yet even at the Genus level. Genu-evolutionists tend to be a bit more conservative in how species evolve, still embracing the primate-human link but not willing to express themselves beyond how animals evolve beyond the Genus classification.

As a side note: There is nothing more fun that sitting down for lunch as the only physicist (with their own ideas of the creation of the world) in a room full of genu and goo evolutionists. By far one of the best lunch dates I've had. Course I didn't marry the guy who invited me, I married another physicist.

 

[Warthaug]

Bryan,

Adaptation of a virus or any body is demonstrable and provable. Nobody is arguing you about that. But you haven't been able to demonstrate a virus mutating/adapting/evolving into a mold, or an amoeba, or an euglena.

Because that would be a biological impossibility. You might as well ask that the sun turn purple to prove that fusion is the source of the suns power.

As for the argument that we haven't seen new species, that is a load of crap. Over 2000 speciation events have been observed (i.e. we've seen the creation of over 2000 now species, and recorded those events in the scientific literature). As for changes like cow turning into whales, that wouldn't be expected in our lifetimes. As anyone who knows anything about evolution will tell you, those types of changes (i.e. creation of higher-order groupings, such as families genus and phylum) take hundreds of thousands of years and longer.

However, we do have a lot of evidence showing that this change did, in fact, occur. Firstly, there is the fossil record which outlines the changes which resulted in cows and whales pretty clearly. In support of that is genetic evidence - you can easily determine the relationship between species, and reconstruct the genetic changes which resulted in the formation of those species, using modern genetic techniques. You can also date when those changes occurred. And those genetic measurements, even though they were preformed completely separately from the fossil evidence, support the same conclusions - both on the ancestry of whales and cows, and on the timing of those events. And that is true of pretty much every other evolutionary relationship studied to date.

In fact, there are four separate lines of study which all come to the same conclusion – comparative physiology, comparative biochemistry, genetics and fossil evidence all say the same thing – whales and cows are closely related, vis-a-vis a common ancestor. All four methods rely on completely different methodologies and are independent of each other. Those capable of dating the common ancestor (genetics and fossil evidence) give the same date.

And just to clarify, the "cows don't turn into whales" comment is 100% wrong from an evolutionary point of view - cows didn't turn into whales. Rather, another animal (now extinct) evolved into both species. It's more of a "cousins" or "siblings" relationship, rather then a parental relationship, between cows and whales.

That's where people really have issues, and rightly so. Until we can do that, evolution beyond species is always a theory.

Do you know the definition of a theory? Gravity is "only" a theory. Atoms are "only" a theory. The pathogen origin of disease is "only" a theory. Hell, every accepted scientific concept is "only" a theory. Contrary to how the word "theory" is used commonly, in the scientific world "theory" has a very specific definition. A theory is: a set of facts, propositions, or principles analyzed in their relation to one another and used to explain phenomena.

A fancy way of saying it's an idea/model which:

a) explains all pre-existing data in regards to its subject area
b) makes testable hypothesis (questions) in regards to its subject area, and
c) accurately predicts the results of the questions raised in b.

So to become an accepted scientific theory you need a little more then an idea - you need data, you need supportive experiments, and most importantly, you need to have little or no conflicting data. The theory of evolution is ~150 years old, and to date, every experiment, every observation, and tested hypothesis has agreed with the theory.

And contrary to what the creationists claim, in the entire history of evolution there has not been one piece of scientific data which has disagreed with the theory. Most creationist “disproof’s” are based on ignorance of evolutionary theory, rather than any valid criticism of that theory.

Bryan

 

[wreckchick]

Evolutionary theory does not describe straight-line evolution as you seem to describe. Speciation is bushy. There are lots of branches and false leads and extinctions and plain old failed species along the way. The stronger, better adapted specimens continue on until there is an established species. A species of philodendron will become a different or a couple different philodendron progenies base on a proto-philodendron. We may call it something else at the genus level, but the common ancestry still exists. Think of it like sports bracketing but in reverse. You start with one thing and it splits into many things some being more closely related than others.

Again, Straw Man.

R

 

[wreckchick]

In the midst of the bazillion posts in this thread, I completely forgot to rebutt an arguement I saw many pages back. The arguement was that people can't interbreed with close relatives because we're too genetically similar and it cause problems while other creatures can because there is more genetic diversity. This is false.

In fact, we can interbreed in the worst possible way which would be a parent/child cross and chances are nothing bad would happen. The only way offspring have negative chromosomal impacts is when there is a flaw in the genetic material that cause the bad thing. Consequently, if the mutation causes a GOOD thing, it's the fastest way to create more individuals with that positive trait. It's actually called line breeding and it's pretty popular in livestock and other domestic animals as well as in horticulture.

Cheetahs are the most genetically similar species that I know about. It has been said that all cheetahs are more closely related than human siblings. It will likely be their downfall since they don't have enough genetic diversity to enable adaptive change.

R

 

[lamont]

"nothing" is a weird word. Nothing for most humans means a lack of something tangible or of interest. How many times has the dog barked and when you looked out the door you said "There's nothing there, be quiet".

You are right, nothing is something. In the spoken history of the world, it was probably more understandable to say "nothing" than to explain gasses (partially because it wasn't until recently in human history that we managed to understand gasses). Big Bang, creationism, and most development theories start us from a "nothing" state and build into what we have today. But Nothing can be something, even though we can't see it, taste it, or smell it, energy is always present and energy is something.

Actually the Big Bang theory is only experimentally validated back to about the time when matter and energy decoupled in the early universe and it cooled down from a plasma. There's also some compelling argument for it still working at earlier times and at higher energies than we can achieve in colliders due to the way that inflationary universe theories can explain the observed structure in the cosmic microwave background radiation and in early galactic evolution. Extrapolating the big bang backwards in time is entirely conjectural, though, and just results in infinite temperature and energy density, and infinities are often just an indication that the theory breaks down at that point -- similarly the actual infinite curvature of space-time at the exact center of a black hole is probably an indication that general relativity breaks down there or long before there. At the point of infinite energy density the big bang theory is just math, nobody has been able to experimentally test the idea that its good back that far.

You can make of that what you will. A lot of people turn the big bang theory into a creationism myth by treating the inifinte energy density prediction as being correct. A lot of people on both sides of the debate focus on that prediction and draw conclusions about it like it was the most important part of the theory, which it isn't -- the most important bit of the theory only goes back to when the universe was 3000K about 12-18 billion years ago. We know that much is a fact, but we don't necessarily know what happened before then. As you move further backwards in time, the theory gets fuzzier until it eventually becomes entirely philosophical conjecture.

And if you want to think about nothing, consider that space-time is a 4 dimensional curved manifold and what exists outside of the universe? If you embed it into a flat 5 dimensional co-ordinate system what the stuff that isn't the universe? You don't have to go back to the beginning of time to warp your mind thinking about nothingness...