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Science vs. Creationism

Commenting on their findings, Grützner and his coworkers lamented: “This suggests an evolutionary link between mammal and bird-sex chromosome systems, which were previously thought to have evolved independently” Yet, Darwinians place mammals on the planet 100 million years before birds!

Supplementing what heyhey expressed so well, mammals and birds are both types of lizards, and lizards have a variety of sex mechanisms, including some that are ZW. The link between mammals and birds is that both come our of the ZW lizard branch.

Khamsi asks the obvious question: “What is the advantage of having so many sex chromosomes?”

Not every evolutionary trait is an advantage. Primates do not produce vitamin C because of an evolutionary mechanism know as genetic drift.

Sexual reproduction in animals with two sex chromosomes has a “selective disadvantage” of at least 50%—a disadvantage that will not budge!

Actually, there are many advantages to sexual reproduction, which is why it is the dominant form of multi-cellular life.

Evolution cannot explain the origin of two sex chromosomes—much less ten!

Again, the issue is not the lack of an explanation, but the presence of too many explanations, and no good way to choose among them.

As it turns out, the common “survival of the fittest” mentality cannot begin to explain the high cost of first, evolving, and then maintaining, the sexual apparatus.

The benefits outweigh the costs for multi-cellular beings.

Surely, to an open and honest mind, this beautiful complexity points to a Great Designer.

Actually, complexity points to a lack of a designer, if it points any way at all. Designers prefer simplicity.
 
The platypus poses some interesting problems for evolutionary scientists. Here is a creature that appears to be right in the middle of a supposed evolutionary transition, yet fossils dated to millions of years ago look almost identical to the modern animal.

If the platypus is a transitional specimen, why did it seemingly stop evolving? Why has it remained virtually unchanged for its entire existence?

Well-adapted animals don't make major morphological changes. That said, among other changes, we know that some early platypuses kept their teeth, and they came in a variety of sizes.

https://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/mammal/monotremefr.html

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/11/05/giant-platypus-fossils-australia-species_n_4218149.html

Even the minor changes are disappointing to scientists, as they could more aptly be considered de-evolution. For instance, the fossilized adult platypus had functioning teeth. Yet modern platypuses lose their teeth at an early age, leaving only a horned plate with which to grind and mash their food to a pulp, prior to swallowing.

Hardly advancement at all!

1) Evolution is about adaptation. There is no advancement; that term is biologically meaningless.
2) What makes you think teeth are better than no teeth for a platypus?

Though it spends the majority of its time in water, the platypus never evolved an ability to hold its breath for very long, typically no more than 30 seconds. How is it that an animal living primarily in the water for “millions” of years still cannot hold its breath for more than half a minute?

Apparently 30 seconds is long enough for the platypus to thrive. Why would it need more?

Instead of gliding skillfully through the water, this poor animal would have flailed about, with no method to navigate or find food.

Actually, it would have been a shore predator, hunting in shallow waters where it could walk.

Given this unlikely scenario, this must have happened another way. The fossil record indicates that the platypus appeared fully formed, with all of its “adaptations” perfectly balanced.

How do fossils tell you when something first appeared?
 
Are there any fossil records of a "proto-platypus"? Just curious. But not curious enough to inquire of the google.
 
Supplementing what heyhey expressed so well, mammals and birds are both types of lizards, and lizards have a variety of sex mechanisms, including some that are ZW. The link between mammals and birds is that both come our of the ZW lizard branch.



Not every evolutionary trait is an advantage. Primates do not produce vitamin C because of an evolutionary mechanism know as genetic drift.



Actually, there are many advantages to sexual reproduction, which is why it is the dominant form of multi-cellular life.



Again, the issue is not the lack of an explanation, but the presence of too many explanations, and no good way to choose among them.



The benefits outweigh the costs for multi-cellular beings.



Actually, complexity points to a lack of a designer, if it points any way at all. Designers prefer simplicity.

While this may be true of some designers, you fail to embrace your own principles consistently. The benefit of diversity in design is a statistical gain in sustainability. . . . a very real "net gain" versus cost.

In short, if you want to maximize the chances of life you design more kinds of life, more systems to sustain life processes, and design multiple competitors for every imaginable niche.

Folks like you who imagine only gods who think like you do, or deny even those possibilities, have less imaginative resilience than folks who leave open all possibilities in a universe with a scale so much beyond all possible "experience" or "experimentation" from the perspective of a few years of life on one little planet, in one little solar system, in one little galaxy. . . .

clearly, you're stunting your intellectual career hanging out with a few "progressive" ideologues. . . .spend more time in here, and we'll help you come out of your little shell, man.
 
While this may be true of some designers, you fail to embrace your own principles consistently. The benefit of diversity in design is a statistical gain in sustainability. . . . a very real "net gain" versus cost.

In short, if you want to maximize the chances of life you design more kinds of life, more systems to sustain life processes, and design multiple competitors for every imaginable niche.

Folks like you who imagine only gods who think like you do, or deny even those possibilities, have less imaginative resilience than folks who leave open all possibilities in a universe with a scale so much beyond all possible "experience" or "experimentation" from the perspective of a few years of life on one little planet, in one little solar system, in one little galaxy. . . .

clearly, you're stunting your intellectual career hanging out with a few "progressive" ideologues. . . .spend more time in here, and we'll help you come out of your little shell, man.

Philosophy isn't a discipline of science...
 
Folks like you who imagine only gods who think like you do,

babe, the whole point of the Intelligent Design argument is that we can recognize intelligent design in life. If you pull out the 'god doesn't design like we do', then we have no basis at all to claim we can recognize God's design from the undesigned. You're snuffing out that argument completely, and much more thoroughly than I try to.
 
babe, the whole point of the Intelligent Design argument is that we can recognize intelligent design in life. If you pull out the 'god doesn't design like we do', then we have no basis at all to claim we can recognize God's design from the undesigned. You're snuffing out that argument completely, and much more thoroughly than I try to.

OB, the whole point of the ID camp is to discover the design of an unlimited "intelligence" whose work we all are.

If we want we can forever chase one another's intellectual tails and maybe have a lot of fun. And that is "as planned", as well.
 
Wow posted this int he wrong thread it would appear....lol
 
Actually, complexity points to a lack of a designer, if it points any way at all. Designers prefer simplicity.

....with a statement or belief as highlighted above, the ONLY thing I can conclude with "One Brow" is that most colleges are OUT of marijuana.....because Brow smoked it ALL! How in the world do you figure that "complexity points to a lack of a designer" whereas "Designers prefer simplicity!"

The more "complex" a thing is, the more thinking, planning, preparation and design must go into it! You take modern day cars, for example. Years ago, I could lift the hood on my car, immediately locate the "air cleaner" and change it! Now, you lift the hood on these extremely complex automobiles....and it takes just 30 minutes to locate the blasted thing!

Molecular biologist James Watson called our brain “the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.”

In The Brain Book the author states: “Within our own heads lies one of the most complex systems in the known universe. Its power and versatility far surpass that of any man-made computer.”

The Universe as well as all living things on earth SCREAM complexity and complexity SCREAMS a designer!
 
Wow posted this int he wrong thread it would appear....lol

In the LTE, science sits in the same class as philosophy.

Just like it does in colleges. Arts. . . . . and crafts. . . . . are the other class. That's where I'd think "community organizers" sit, too.
 
OB, the whole point of the ID camp is to discover the design of an unlimited "intelligence" whose work we all are.

Yes, that's what I said. It's an attempt to discover design by recognizing the signs of design. If, as you say, the design is completely unlike what we design, than we won't be able to recognize it. Personally, I'm quite fine with that position.
 
The more "complex" a thing is, the more thinking, planning, preparation and design must go into it!

Exactly. That's why designers prefer simplicity.

You take modern day cars, for example. Years ago, I could lift the hood on my car, immediately locate the "air cleaner" and change it! Now, you lift the hood on these extremely complex automobiles....and it takes just 30 minutes to locate the blasted thing!

That's an example of a trade-off. The car is designed as simply as possible, within the demands on weight, power, gas mileage, reliability, safety, etc. Designers do not make things more complex than necessary.

The Universe as well as all living things on earth SCREAM complexity and complexity SCREAMS a designer!

I agree the universe screams complexity. However, any time you leave a system to function on its own, it grows more complex, more random, and less functional. Complexity, if it screams anything at all in this regard, screams a lack of a designer.
 
In the LTE, science sits in the same class as philosophy.

Just like it does in colleges. Arts. . . . . and crafts. . . . . are the other class. That's where I'd think "community organizers" sit, too.

What's the "LTE"?
 
Exactly. That's why designers prefer simplicity.



That's an example of a trade-off. The car is designed as simply as possible, within the demands on weight, power, gas mileage, reliability, safety, etc. Designers do not make things more complex than necessary.



I agree the universe screams complexity. However, any time you leave a system to function on its own, it grows more complex, more random, and less functional. Complexity, if it screams anything at all in this regard, screams a lack of a designer.

While I can see the point of view you're speaking from, it seems to me that you've got your nose too close to that grindstone, with not enough scope in your world view to see the other aspect CJ and I are talking about. You aren't even keeping Darwinian precepts in focus while you try to defend your narrow view. Darwinian precepts, as expostulated in The Origin of Species, would point to the fact that the evolutionary process leading to more variety in life as the pieces fall into different functional arrangements, or gradually change under some set of conditions which will select for different survivors/development trails naturally. . . . .

You are locked into some kind of argument that requires designers to be "limited" and unable to conceive of systems which are not unlike things which have already been made and found to work. Thus, if it isn't just the simplest way of doing it, they won't think of it and couldn't make it work. And of course everything you look at you will think just fits that expectation, just like everything we find in nature must be interpeted on the model you already embrace.

I think it can all fit just as well within the scope of the handiwork of an intelligent designer, simply using the principles which we see as "evolutionary change" as one aspect of approaching the problem of how to keep the ball rolling. I don't think it's impossible that such a designer can, like we are learning to do, effect some changes on purpose.

You're the one who is limiting the possibilities with a preconceived dogma. Perhaps even more than CJ who simply postulates an almighty creator who can conceive of complex systems literally de novo and speak a word, so to speak, and have it all happen, like now......

If there are natural laws that are self-existing or eternal, it is only reasonable to suppose that any intelligent being, however defined, might use those principles, on purpose and with designs to accomplish something. . . . maybe simple, but maybe more complex as well. . . . .

When we have billions of humans operating on the surface of this planet, exerting intelligent actions on the life systems at our hands every day seeking more efficient ways of producing food and fiber, more attractive plants, juicer veggies or whatever, you are still denying the possibility of "Intelligent Design".

How stupid do you actually insist upon being, anyway. The folks who argue ID and attribute this to an "unobservable god" nevertheless have the proof they want in the things that "unobservable god" has created, and they love their God as they imagine or define their God, but they are not as far from the reality of things as you are. Whether there is such a God or not, the whole fabric of life is filled with living things which possesses some form of "intelligence" and which do stuff on purpose, or design. Which greatly augments the purely "random" or materialistic sort of processes. . . .

It is something evolutionists must incorporate into their schema for development, or if they won't they will just go on being idiots.
 
Darwinian precepts, as expostulated in The Origin of Species, would point to the fact that the evolutionary process leading to more variety in life as the pieces fall into different functional arrangements, or gradually change under some set of conditions which will select for different survivors/development trails naturally. . . . .

There is a difference between "left on its own" and "made subject to selection". If every organism can survive to reproduce, and the reproduction is random instead of selective, than you would see very complex, strange features emerging fairly quickly.

Thus, if it isn't just the simplest way of doing it, they won't think of it and couldn't make it work. And of course everything you look at you will think just fits that expectation, just like everything we find in nature must be interpeted on the model you already embrace.

Designers always start with what has worked in the past, and build on that as simply as they can manage. So much so, that to make truly novel antennae, they use evolutionary methods:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna


I think it can all fit just as well within the scope of the handiwork of an intelligent designer, simply using the principles which we see as "evolutionary change" as one aspect of approaching the problem of how to keep the ball rolling. I don't think it's impossible that such a designer can, like we are learning to do, effect some changes on purpose.

If your point is that it's possible there is a designer, I agree. However, the ID/creationist argument is that our biological history is impossible without a designer, and/or they have positive evidence for a designer. I have no objection to the existence or positive evidence for a designer in principle (and would welcome it in some ways); I object to the falsity of the evidence offered.

You're the one who is limiting the possibilities with a preconceived dogma. Perhaps even more than CJ who simply postulates an almighty creator who can conceive of complex systems literally de novo and speak a word, so to speak, and have it all happen, like now......

For that matter, maybe it was done last Tuesday. If you believe that God made the universe on Tuesday, March 18, 2014, and just made it seem older, including giving us all memories, I can offer no evidence against it. That does not require me to consider it seriously; you need to provide positive evidence for that.

When we have billions of humans operating on the surface of this planet, exerting intelligent actions on the life systems at our hands every day seeking more efficient ways of producing food and fiber, more attractive plants, juicer veggies or whatever, you are still denying the possibility of "Intelligent Design".

Not the possibility, just the accuracy of the evidence so far offered.

Whether there is such a God or not, the whole fabric of life is filled with living things which possesses some form of "intelligence" and which do stuff on purpose, or design. Which greatly augments the purely "random" or materialistic sort of processes. . . .

I generally agree, although that is more metaphorical than I would normally describe it.
 
....with a statement or belief as highlighted above, the ONLY thing I can conclude with "One Brow" is that most colleges are OUT of marijuana.....because Brow smoked it ALL! How in the world do you figure that "complexity points to a lack of a designer" whereas "Designers prefer simplicity!"

The more "complex" a thing is, the more thinking, planning, preparation and design must go into it! You take modern day cars, for example. Years ago, I could lift the hood on my car, immediately locate the "air cleaner" and change it! Now, you lift the hood on these extremely complex automobiles....and it takes just 30 minutes to locate the blasted thing!

Molecular biologist James Watson called our brain “the most complex thing we have yet discovered in our universe.”

In The Brain Book the author states: “Within our own heads lies one of the most complex systems in the known universe. Its power and versatility far surpass that of any man-made computer.”

The Universe as well as all living things on earth SCREAM complexity and complexity SCREAMS a designer!
^^^he is right.
more complexity ::::> smaller probability of evolution
 
^^^he is right.
more complexity ::::> smaller probability of evolution

Can you provide evidence to back that up?

For example, antennae produced by evolutionary means are much more complex in shape than designed antennae. So, from what I can tell, more complexity => greater chance of evolution, if it implies anything at all.
 
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