Quizzes & Puzzles5 mins ago
Creation / Evolution.
400 Answers
What can you say that you know one thing about evolution?
Answers
Quite aside from anything else, you are still setting far too much store by the people who are speaking, and far too little by what they are actually saying. Evaluate the evidence for yourself, if you can -- what one PhD says, or a Professor, or even a Nobel Laureate or two, means nothing. They may be right or they may be wrong, but who they are is irrelevant to that....
14:20 Thu 06th Feb 2020
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This is rather long, but getting the truth is never easy.
Phillip E Johnson.
This is rather long, but getting the truth is never easy.
Phillip E Johnson.
Theland// I agree with observed micro evolution, but macro evolution puzzles me.//
You believe in small changes to the genome but you cannot accept that small changes accumulate into large changes, changes big enough that one species can diverge into two different species.
It is like saying that you believe you can walk around your neighbourhood but not to the next country when in fact a person could easily walk anywhere on the planet in a couple of years.
Consider the following facts and respond with your critique on specific points. No dismissive hand waving without facts to back it up. No link to a video. I want points we can debate intelligently.
Humans and chimpanzees each have about 22,000 genes. About 99 percent of the genes we share are identical. Allowing for insertions and deletions, our genes about 96 percent the same as a chimp.
Four percent of 22,000 is less than one thousand genes. (Lets keep the maths simple.)
The last common ancestor of chimps and humans lived about five million years ago. Allowing for an average reproductive age of 20, that amounts to 250,000 generations on each side or 500,000 opportunities for human and chimp genes to diverge.
So a non-harmful change to one gene every 500 generations is all that would be required for chimps and humans to diverge from a common ancestor. Moreover, those changes can occur anywhere in the population and will spread throughout the population over a few generations if they are beneficial. So really these mutations only needed to turn up once in each several tens of thousands of matings to explain the divergence of chimps and humans from our last common ancestor.
Small changes accumulate. Seventy percent of human genes are found in Acorn worms. Our ancestral lines diverged about 570 million years ago. The genes for specific structures that are evident in both are clearly identifiable in both genomes.
https:/
We share many important genes with every living organism including bacteria. We all have a common ancestor going back about four billion years. All multicellular organisms diverged from a common ancestor between 1.5 and 2 billion years ago.
You believe in small changes to the genome but you cannot accept that small changes accumulate into large changes, changes big enough that one species can diverge into two different species.
It is like saying that you believe you can walk around your neighbourhood but not to the next country when in fact a person could easily walk anywhere on the planet in a couple of years.
Consider the following facts and respond with your critique on specific points. No dismissive hand waving without facts to back it up. No link to a video. I want points we can debate intelligently.
Humans and chimpanzees each have about 22,000 genes. About 99 percent of the genes we share are identical. Allowing for insertions and deletions, our genes about 96 percent the same as a chimp.
Four percent of 22,000 is less than one thousand genes. (Lets keep the maths simple.)
The last common ancestor of chimps and humans lived about five million years ago. Allowing for an average reproductive age of 20, that amounts to 250,000 generations on each side or 500,000 opportunities for human and chimp genes to diverge.
So a non-harmful change to one gene every 500 generations is all that would be required for chimps and humans to diverge from a common ancestor. Moreover, those changes can occur anywhere in the population and will spread throughout the population over a few generations if they are beneficial. So really these mutations only needed to turn up once in each several tens of thousands of matings to explain the divergence of chimps and humans from our last common ancestor.
Small changes accumulate. Seventy percent of human genes are found in Acorn worms. Our ancestral lines diverged about 570 million years ago. The genes for specific structures that are evident in both are clearly identifiable in both genomes.
https:/
We share many important genes with every living organism including bacteria. We all have a common ancestor going back about four billion years. All multicellular organisms diverged from a common ancestor between 1.5 and 2 billion years ago.
Evolution is not limited to biological processes. It also occurs in Chemistry. Organisms are in fact an incredibly complex crystals.
The most fundamental metabolic process by which every living thing derives energy is identical to the geological process occurring at alkaline hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor where the mineral Olivine is converted to Serpentine. It also produces a crystalline growth consisting of bubbles of similar size to bacteria.
We cannot say for certain that life came from that origin but it is definitely a plausible explanation that something similar was responsible.
The most fundamental metabolic process by which every living thing derives energy is identical to the geological process occurring at alkaline hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor where the mineral Olivine is converted to Serpentine. It also produces a crystalline growth consisting of bubbles of similar size to bacteria.
We cannot say for certain that life came from that origin but it is definitely a plausible explanation that something similar was responsible.
Mate - you think there's an omnipotent, omnipresent, being sitting in the sky.
Surely you can see how batsiht crazy that is, can't you?
I honestly believe that people who believe in god have a mental illness.
Anyway, to answer the question, I know that evolution is 100% more likely than there being a man in the sky.
What you are actually asking is for proof of evolution. Let's turn it around, prove to us there's a god. I think you might struggle.
Surely you can see how batsiht crazy that is, can't you?
I honestly believe that people who believe in god have a mental illness.
Anyway, to answer the question, I know that evolution is 100% more likely than there being a man in the sky.
What you are actually asking is for proof of evolution. Let's turn it around, prove to us there's a god. I think you might struggle.
Theland//So you are making an assumption that genetic mutations are beneficial when in fact the opposite is true.//
Not at all. You are assuming that all mutations are not beneficial. All I said is that one non-harmful mutation would need to occur in each several tens of thousands of matings.
The damaging or fatal mutations don't matter. The genomic line of individuals carry them died out long ago.
We have been down this track before. Oh no that's right, I went down this track. You slinked away and waited before you started a new thread on the same old theme. Maybe this time you will answer but I doubt it.
https:/
Theland //Mutations generally are deficient and a loss of information to the DNA causing I llness and disability.//
Yes, in general they are not a good thing though they don't necessarily cause a loss of information but a change of information. Sometimes they make no difference and sometimes they confer an advantage.
It is clear that genes sometimes make multiple copies of themselves. If this does not cause a problem the extra copies provide an opportunity for some to mutate into genes that lead to new and novel features without losing the original feature.
//Viruses and bacteria add nothing to our DNA, and I. Fact are attacked by antibodies. //
Our immune system doesn't always win. Retroviruses reproduce by splicing their genes into cells' DNA, taking over the molecular machinery and causing the cell to make viruses. If the host survives and the virus infects a germ cell, the genes can become a permanent part of the germ line and become available to the host genome where they occasionally mutate into useful features.
Approximately eight percent of our genome was inherited from viruses. Some of these genes are vital in the reproductive processes of animals.
//They do nothing to improve DNA which continues faithfully to reproduce copie of itself.//
Genes do not faithfully copy themselves. Have you ever wondered why the meiosis process is not perfect? It is because there is an optimum susceptibility to mutation. If the process were perfect there could be no change and no evolution. It is worth the risk of huge numbers fatal flaws because occasionally something good comes of it.
It doesn't matter that most of the mutations are failures that disadvantage the individual because evolution happens on populations and new features are an advantage to the population.
08:40 Sat 23rd Nov 2019
Not at all. You are assuming that all mutations are not beneficial. All I said is that one non-harmful mutation would need to occur in each several tens of thousands of matings.
The damaging or fatal mutations don't matter. The genomic line of individuals carry them died out long ago.
We have been down this track before. Oh no that's right, I went down this track. You slinked away and waited before you started a new thread on the same old theme. Maybe this time you will answer but I doubt it.
https:/
Theland //Mutations generally are deficient and a loss of information to the DNA causing I llness and disability.//
Yes, in general they are not a good thing though they don't necessarily cause a loss of information but a change of information. Sometimes they make no difference and sometimes they confer an advantage.
It is clear that genes sometimes make multiple copies of themselves. If this does not cause a problem the extra copies provide an opportunity for some to mutate into genes that lead to new and novel features without losing the original feature.
//Viruses and bacteria add nothing to our DNA, and I. Fact are attacked by antibodies. //
Our immune system doesn't always win. Retroviruses reproduce by splicing their genes into cells' DNA, taking over the molecular machinery and causing the cell to make viruses. If the host survives and the virus infects a germ cell, the genes can become a permanent part of the germ line and become available to the host genome where they occasionally mutate into useful features.
Approximately eight percent of our genome was inherited from viruses. Some of these genes are vital in the reproductive processes of animals.
//They do nothing to improve DNA which continues faithfully to reproduce copie of itself.//
Genes do not faithfully copy themselves. Have you ever wondered why the meiosis process is not perfect? It is because there is an optimum susceptibility to mutation. If the process were perfect there could be no change and no evolution. It is worth the risk of huge numbers fatal flaws because occasionally something good comes of it.
It doesn't matter that most of the mutations are failures that disadvantage the individual because evolution happens on populations and new features are an advantage to the population.
08:40 Sat 23rd Nov 2019
I do admire people who engage with the deluded on an intellectual level as to whether there's a god, because I know next to nothing about religion, and therefore I can't do the same as them.
For me it is very simple.
(1) what god? (there's bloody loads of the 'em).
(2) why is your god the only true god?
(3) there is as much proof of god as there is of leprachauns - i.e, none. nothing. zilch, zero.
If I said to a god believer that I believed, with all my heart, in leprachauns, they'd think I was nuts - and yet we're meant to believe in their belief, and worst, we're meant to respect it.
They are nuts.
For me it is very simple.
(1) what god? (there's bloody loads of the 'em).
(2) why is your god the only true god?
(3) there is as much proof of god as there is of leprachauns - i.e, none. nothing. zilch, zero.
If I said to a god believer that I believed, with all my heart, in leprachauns, they'd think I was nuts - and yet we're meant to believe in their belief, and worst, we're meant to respect it.
They are nuts.
Theland //The Blind Watchmaker//
Evolution is not a blind process. The results are judged powerfully by survival. The worst results are eliminated immediately. The good results succeed.
If you want to use a watchmaker analogy it would be more like every watchmaker has a watch. The first watchmakers had a sticks which worked as primitive sundials. They were all poked in the ground at different angles so some did a better job of telling the time. Those whose clocks gave the most accurate reading got to make a new clock and the others lost their job.
Each generation of clockmakers tried random ideas on how to make a better clock. Most of them made no difference or stopped the clock working at all so were retrenched. Some changes worked better and their makers got to keep their jobs.
Eventually some watchmakers found they could combine their ideas and together come up with a much improved clock. They really succeeded.
In fact the Watchmaker analogy pints to the greatest hole in the theist argument. If a complex thing can only be made by something conscious and more complex than the watch then it begs the question of how the most complex thing of all (their god) could have come into existence in the the first place.
Using descriptions of simple fundamental processes, science tells us how the universe evolved from a random fluctuation of the Void that produce a single pixel of amorphous energy, through to everything we see today without requiring a conscious creator at all.
Creationists have no explanation for how their god just always existed, much less where it existed or the mechanisms by which a disembodied deity actually achieved creation.
Evolution is not a blind process. The results are judged powerfully by survival. The worst results are eliminated immediately. The good results succeed.
If you want to use a watchmaker analogy it would be more like every watchmaker has a watch. The first watchmakers had a sticks which worked as primitive sundials. They were all poked in the ground at different angles so some did a better job of telling the time. Those whose clocks gave the most accurate reading got to make a new clock and the others lost their job.
Each generation of clockmakers tried random ideas on how to make a better clock. Most of them made no difference or stopped the clock working at all so were retrenched. Some changes worked better and their makers got to keep their jobs.
Eventually some watchmakers found they could combine their ideas and together come up with a much improved clock. They really succeeded.
In fact the Watchmaker analogy pints to the greatest hole in the theist argument. If a complex thing can only be made by something conscious and more complex than the watch then it begs the question of how the most complex thing of all (their god) could have come into existence in the the first place.
Using descriptions of simple fundamental processes, science tells us how the universe evolved from a random fluctuation of the Void that produce a single pixel of amorphous energy, through to everything we see today without requiring a conscious creator at all.
Creationists have no explanation for how their god just always existed, much less where it existed or the mechanisms by which a disembodied deity actually achieved creation.
Beso - I cannot compete with your superior knowledge of the sciences.
But, try to understand, that I am a juror listening to evidence from both sides.
YouTube is a tremendous asset enabling me to access top scientists in their various fields, giving superb lectures, that pick apart evolution.
I tried my best to follow your post, but I am as yet unconvinced as it too makes assumptions.
I have also tried to,listen lectures from evolutionists and the same applies, Daniel Dennet for example.
I hope,we can discuss this further and if you can find a convincing scientist, I will gladly look him/ her up and listen intently.
But, try to understand, that I am a juror listening to evidence from both sides.
YouTube is a tremendous asset enabling me to access top scientists in their various fields, giving superb lectures, that pick apart evolution.
I tried my best to follow your post, but I am as yet unconvinced as it too makes assumptions.
I have also tried to,listen lectures from evolutionists and the same applies, Daniel Dennet for example.
I hope,we can discuss this further and if you can find a convincing scientist, I will gladly look him/ her up and listen intently.
For those trying to turn this around by asking for a proof of creation, well, look around, you live in a creation.
However, I have asked the question, about creation/evolution, and it should,be,obvious that I am searching for the proofs.
If you can shed any light on it as Beso has tried, it will be much appreciated.
However, I have asked the question, about creation/evolution, and it should,be,obvious that I am searching for the proofs.
If you can shed any light on it as Beso has tried, it will be much appreciated.
Deep inside the Bruniquel Cave in southwestern France there are a number of mysterious assemblages built out of broken & stacked stalactites. They form 2 circles & 6 raised structures, nearly 400 stalactites carefully snapped off were used in making them. Uranium series dating has established that they were created 176,000 years ago. There were no Homo sapiens in Europe then; the Bruniquel Cave constructions were made by Neanderthals.
The word "creation" can be interpreted differently, when you consider it in depth. Everything that comes into being that wasn't there previously can be considered a "creation". But the use of the word tends to imply intent and a creator, which may not be so. The thing you are considering the origin of may well just come from natural processes which have no intent, merely consequence.
One must be careful looking for agreement on something that then means different things to different people and stymies a discussion when used as a foundation to make further claims.
One must be careful looking for agreement on something that then means different things to different people and stymies a discussion when used as a foundation to make further claims.
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