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CF101 addresses the problem of First Law and the creation of the universe: "Formation of the universe from nothing need not violate conservation of energy. The gravitational potential energy of a gravitational field is a negative energy. When all the gravitational potential energy is added to all the other energy in the universe, it might sum to zero".

CF001 and subsections address the problems of the Second Law and evolution:

1. The second law of thermodynamics says no such thing. It says that heat will not spontaneously flow from a colder body to a warmer one or, equivalently, that total entropy (a measure of useful energy) in a closed system will not decrease. This does not prevent increasing order because
   • the earth is not a closed system; sunlight (with low entropy) shines on it and heat (with higher entropy) radiates off. This flow of energy, and the change in entropy that accompanies it, can and will power local decreases in entropy on earth.
   • entropy is not the same as disorder. Sometimes the two correspond, but sometimes order increases as entropy increases. (Aranda-Espinoza et al. 1999; Kestenbaum 1998) Entropy can even be used to produce order, such as in the sorting of molecules by size (Han and Craighead 2000).
   • even in a closed system, pockets of lower entropy can form if they are offset by increased entropy elsewhere in the system.
   In short, order from disorder happens on earth all the time.
2. The only processes necessary for evolution to occur are reproduction, heritable variation, and selection. All of these are seen to happen all the time, so, obviously, no physical laws are preventing them. In fact, connections between evolution and entropy have been studied in depth, and never to the detriment of evolution (Demetrius 2000).

   Several scientists have proposed that evolution and the origin of life is driven by entropy (McShea 1998). Some see the information content of organisms subject to diversification according to the second law (Brooks and Wiley 1988), so organisms diversify to fill empty niches much as a gas expands to fill an empty container. Others propose that highly ordered complex systems emerge and evolve to dissipate energy (and increase overall entropy) more efficiently (Schneider and Kay 1994).

An afternoon of browsing the lists should answer some of your questions, and help you form better arguments for and against evolution. For instance:

• CB200 - Irreducible complexity can come from evolution
• CIxxx - All the Intellegent Design arguments

I think evolution best describes the world around us. However, I haven't studied all sides of the issue. This index pointed out several claims that might have been convincing for me if I hadn't heard them before. It is a good reference for those who claim to believe in evolution, but don't know all the facts. In fact, it is a good idea to just poke around that site - there is more than a week's worth of arguments.

Response: The day-age hypothesis has been put forward numerous times as support for the biblical account of creation. While it solves the time issue, it does nothing to solve the glaring inconsistencies in astronomy and paleontology. For example, light seems to appear before the sun is created, and birds are created before sea creatures.

It seems impossible to reconcile the biblical account of creation with scientific evidence. It demeans both to make the attempt.

It seems that where ever I go I here the theory of evolution being used as a fact. A theory is not a fact.

It's a theory AND a fact.

Quoting Stephen Jay Gould, because he said it so well:

In the American vernacular, "theory" often means "imperfect fact"--part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus the power of the creationist argument: evolution is "only" a theory and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory. If evolution is worse than a fact, and scientists can't even make up their minds about the theory, then what confidence can we have in it? Indeed, President Reagan echoed this argument before an evangelical group in Dallas when he said (in what I devoutly hope was campaign rhetoric): "Well, it is a theory. It is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science--that is, not believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it once was."
Well evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered.

Moreover, "fact" doesn't mean "absolute certainty"; there ain't no such animal in an exciting and complex world. The final proofs of logic and mathematics flow deductively from stated premises and achieve certainty only because they are not about the empirical world. Evolutionists make no claim for perpetual truth, though creationists often do (and then attack us falsely for a style of argument that they themselves favor). In science "fact" can only mean "confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent." I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.

Evolutionists have been very clear about this distinction of fact and theory from the very beginning, if only because we have always acknowledged how far we are from completely understanding the mechanisms (theory) by which evolution (fact) occurred. Darwin continually emphasized the difference between his two great and separate accomplishments: establishing the fact of evolution, and proposing a theory--natural selection--to explain the mechanism of evolution.

- Stephen J. Gould, " Evolution as Fact and Theory"; Discover, May 1981

This is included in an article you should read and then get back to us. It might be nice if you refrained from telling everyone how wrong they are until you first knew what you were talking about.

I'm glad to hear you're open to new evidence. I'd recommend you read this description of the fossil record of morphological intermediates.

• clay surfaces, because clay forms in nice layers and would provide a good scaffold for complex molecules
• inside iron globules, because that creates a stable environment, mimicking the behaviour of modern-day cells
• around deep-sea vents, because of the proliferation of naturally-forming complex chemicals you get there
• just in rockpools or whatever - the early atmosphere of the planet was apparently very conducive to the formation of amino acids and the like

First let me put this in perspective. Imagine someone claims they have some sort of psychic powers. You give him a test. You ask him to predict die rolls and you run the test for a thousand rolls. Now assume he predicts the first 100 rolls perfectly, and then on the last 900 he falls back to random chance getting getting one in six right (150 of the last 900 correct at random). So in total he got 250 right and 750 wrong.

That test is a positive confirmation, and it has a statistical signifigance of about 1 in 10^78. Yes his answers on the later rolls were completely worthless noise, but the test itself is indisinguishable from perfect confirmation. The fact that he got 750 wrong out of 1000 does not change the fact that the test was a perfect confimation. It is effectively impossible to get the first hundred rolls right at random, the noise in the last 900 rolls does not change that fact. (In fact even if it wasn't the first 100 in a row correct plus 150 more at random, even if those 250 correct predictions were distributed randomly, it would still be a statistically overwhelming result of 450000000-to-1 odds against lucky guessing.)

We would have statistical proof indistinguishable from infinity that there is something *real* going on. The result is indistinguishable from a perfect positive. If the theory being tested is whether this guy is psychic, well this is overwhelming posive support for his theory... it conclusively rules out a random false positive. Of course you are always welcome to suggest alternate theories... but they would have to be alternate theories that can also account for this irrefutable positive result. For example another perfectly good theory is that this guy cheated somehow. A test with a hundred correct predictions in a row is irrefutably rules out any theory that does not explain that result, and it is overwhelming support for either the psychic or cheater theory.

The theory of evolution has irrefutable support. You can certainly propose an alternative to evolution, but it has to be an alternative that is also capable of explaining the huge quantity of irrefutable evidence. And much like in our psychic example, the only two known alternative theories amounts to saying someone cheated. One of the two "cheating" explanations is to say the scientists cheated... that they are all in some vast conspiracy and lying about all of the evidence. If the scientists aren't deliberately lying, well the only other known alternative theory to evolution that can explain all of the evidence is that God cheated. That theory that God planted false evidence exactly to trick us into believing evolution. And if God is deliberately lying to us, well then everything we see and everything we hear and everything we think and everything we remember may as well be a lie.

So either (1) evolution is correct or (2) all scientists are malicious and deliberately lying or (3) God is malicious and deliberately deceiving us. The second option is not only delusional parania, but it would be a result so vast as rule out any belief in anything anyone says anywhere in society. It would be a conspiracy so vast as to turn the planet into one big The Truman Show. The third option entirely undermines any perception of reality at all, it makes any discussion of anything entirely meaningless.

Getting back to the trees, the first thing to note is that each internal node represents a common ancestor. That internal node is a creature, and at one point it was itself a leaf. The arrangment of the internal branching is the relationships between the various leaves. Here is a good tree picture. For example note that bacteria branch directly off of the root, but snakes have 13 levels of branching from the root. The tree structure carries a huge amount of information on the relationships between the leaves. It gives bacteria a unique relationship to all of the other leaves, and it gives snakes an extremely rich set of relationships

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-misconceptions .html
This is pretty poor. First off the guy makes no distinctions between micro-evolution (Which exists) and Macro-Evolution (Which has never been observed). Next he correctly argues that the second law of thermal dynamics does not affect life in our solar system per se but he does not mention how everything even formed into such an organized pattern of suns and planets in the first place. He skips over any important facts about transistional fossils and the amount of hoaxes that people still think were real to this day. He argues that beneficial mutations would accumulate but does not discuss irreducable complexity in things like the eye or the bacterial flagellum. Lastly he argues that because Evolution is called a theory that there must be something to it. Really a sad attempt overall. Also this guy is not open minded at all. In fact the opposite is true.

Do you have any idea how many hojillions of stars there probably are? Look into astronomy some time. Assuming galaxies are about the size of our own and that galactic clusters are about the size of ours ...

My point is that in this inordinately huge number of stars, surely at least one of them would happen to form in a way that would happen to lead to life.



As for why "Intelligent Design" should not be taught in schools, I don't have a problem with that so much as with the fact that it's being taught in a science class. That is absolutely the wrong place to teach anything resembling religion.



And finally, I'm guessing you didn't read my last statement properly. "Intelligent Design" is limiting God by saying that He had to nudge evolution along. That He couldn't create completely natural ways for all of this to happen.

So it's kind of taking the worst from both science and religion and mixing them into one big pseudoreligious whole. In essence, "God couldn't make a universe that could do this on its own, and science can't explain why!". Then, its proponents try to equate it with science when it doesn't stand up to even the lowest scientific standards.

There are so many better arguments that could be used than the ones which are. If you don't believe me, go read the FAQ at the talk.origins archive. There are some interesting points from all "sides" there.

Yes,, his link is broken. He dropped the final L on .html.

Here's the link he mean to post. It well documents your erroneous claimed of a lack of transitions.

As for fossil links between phyla, well your's talking about the leven just after kindom, the split between single celled microorganisms. You're talking like 400+ million years ago. The fossil record OF COURSE becomes extremely sparse the farther back you go, especially when you go back multiple hundreds of millions of years. And the entire fossil record is nothing but one huge set of transitionals. Pick any fossil dated a hundred million years ago and any living animal on the same line and you'll find fossils from about 50 million years ago that have a set of features in between them. Whales are an excellent example, fiftyish million years ago there were distinct whales with legs. You also have a the nostrils half way up the skull (modern whale nostrils have migrated all the way up to create the blowhole). With birds the farther back you go the modern bird features dissappear and more and more dinosaur features show up.

And the fossil record evidence is insignifigant compared to the new and powerful genetic evidence. Genetic evidence lays out all of biology in the irrefutable tree format of common decent. And the tree that that genetic analysis reveals matches up perfectly with the relationships and lines of decent revealed by the fossil record.

Even if there were never any fossils at all, our development of genetic analysis alone would have prompted the explanation of evolution and the conclusive confirmation of evolution.

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how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false?

Talkorigins' 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution not only lists many predictions and how they have been extensively tested and confirmed, but also explicitly explains exactly how each one could potentially have produced a falsification of macroevolution.

Most of that actually lists predictions and confirmations of the far broader/more powerful element of Common Decent, but since macroevolution is an inherent prerequisit for common decent any test (and potential falsification) of common decent is inherently a test (and potential falsification) of macroevolution.

You nore more need to witness an amoeba evolve into a bird to test evolution than you need to witness a cloud of gas condense into a star and go nova to test stellar models. Both make predictions about what we will see and what we will not see in the current universe. You take a telescope and look at additional stars, or you take a genetic sequencer and analize a newly discovered species, and you can check your observations against the predictions.

I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species.

There's no such thing as a "half way mutated" anything.

When any creature is alive, it is a fully formed, fully functional, and "most advanced version" of whatever it is. It looks almost exactly like it's parent, and it looks almost exactly like its children. However over the course of 10 million years something resembling a wolf can evolve into an almost modern whale. And if we could pop in and examine the earth at any point during that 10 million year period, there would always be populations of "ordinary species". Over time some features like legs would on average steadily shrink and other features will steadily expand, and some individual attributes would appear and spread through the population or dissapear from an individual and the absense would spread through the population.

If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?

If you are looking for something like whales with legs, or dinosaurs wth feathers, or birds with dinosar hands at the tips of their wings, sure. We have tons of transition sequences all over the place.

For a short page with a good picture of the whale sequence, look here. For a less graphic but far more extensive explanation of the evidences of the land mammal to whale sequences with extensives documentation and refferences, look here.

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how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false?

Talkorigins' 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution not only lists many predictions and how they have been extensively tested and confirmed, but also explicitly explains exactly how each one could potentially have produced a falsification of macroevolution.

Most of that actually lists predictions and confirmations of the far broader/more powerful element of Common Decent, but since macroevolution is an inherent prerequisit for common decent any test (and potential falsification) of common decent is inherently a test (and potential falsification) of macroevolution.

You nore more need to witness an amoeba evolve into a bird to test evolution than you need to witness a cloud of gas condense into a star and go nova to test stellar models. Both make predictions about what we will see and what we will not see in the current universe. You take a telescope and look at additional stars, or you take a genetic sequencer and analize a newly discovered species, and you can check your observations against the predictions.

I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species.

There's no such thing as a "half way mutated" anything.

When any creature is alive, it is a fully formed, fully functional, and "most advanced version" of whatever it is. It looks almost exactly like it's parent, and it looks almost exactly like its children. However over the course of 10 million years something resembling a wolf can evolve into an almost modern whale. And if we could pop in and examine the earth at any point during that 10 million year period, there would always be populations of "ordinary species". Over time some features like legs would on average steadily shrink and other features will steadily expand, and some individual attributes would appear and spread through the population or dissapear from an individual and the absense would spread through the population.

If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?

If you are looking for something like whales with legs, or dinosaurs wth feathers, or birds with dinosar hands at the tips of their wings, sure. We have tons of transition sequences all over the place.

For a short page with a good picture of the whale sequence, look here. For a less graphic but far more extensive explanation of the evidences of the land mammal to whale sequences with extensives documentation and refferences, look here.

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1. You are arguing against intelligent design as well as evolution, because Behe, Dembski and the other advocates of ID accept evolution as a general matter but argue that certain features are too complex to have arisen through unguided evolution. I'm not aware of any other explanation for the origin of life apart from creationism, but I'd be fascinated to hear what you believe.

2. try http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.h tml (you may need to remove extraneous spaces)

3. You misunderstand. You claim that if macroevolution occured there would be a continuum of macroevolving fossils. You accept that microevolution occured. Therefore you must logically be claiming there is a continuum of microevolving fossils (whether there is a "need" for this or not). There is no such continuum. Therefore your assumptions as to fossilisation probability are incorrect.

4. Show me your math.

5. This is just the same arguement.

6. I've never come across anyone making your claims about evolution who isn't a religious fundamentalist of one stripe or other (with the possible exception of the Raelians). If your views are not driven by religious beliefs then congratulations on being the first secular creationist.

7. I made no ad hominem attack. You are contesting a well established area of science without citing a single source and it's reasonable for me to assume your motivations are religious rather than scientific. I'm happy to be corrected on this.

8. A paradigm shift requires a competing candidate theory with greater explanatory power to replace the current theory. You offer no such competing theory. Kuhn said that to reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. This is what you are doing.

Talkorigins is quite open that it exists to debunk the lies and distortions of creationists by pointing out the misunderstandings of the science involved. The fact is that speciation has been observed both in the wild and in the lab. For example lab experiments involving fruitflies (a favourite of scientists because of its short reproductive cycle) have shown that when subjected to different food supplies for an extended period that flies were 'speciated', ie. they didn't repoduce with members of the other group even when together http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VC1fE videnceSpeciation.shtml.
Some examples from outside the lab:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_0 52_05.html
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/irwin.ht ml
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.h tml#morphological_intermediates_ex3

Anyway this whole macroevolution as seperate from microevolution (where one's provable and one's supposedly not) is an invention of creationists. Macroevolution relies on the exact same processes as microevolution, the only requirement is some (usually environmental) factor to create seperate breeding groups of a species. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB902.html

You can remain in your blissful ignorance by convincing yourself that evolution is a religion and that it cannot be observed for all I care. Just don't try and force your beliefs on other people by arguing for it not to be taught in a science classroom, where it belongs.

Talkorigins is quite open that it exists to debunk the lies and distortions of creationists by pointing out the misunderstandings of the science involved. The fact is that speciation has been observed both in the wild and in the lab. For example lab experiments involving fruitflies (a favourite of scientists because of its short reproductive cycle) have shown that when subjected to different food supplies for an extended period that flies were 'speciated', ie. they didn't repoduce with members of the other group even when together http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evosite/evo101/VC1fE videnceSpeciation.shtml.
Some examples from outside the lab:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/05/2/l_0 52_05.html
http://www.actionbioscience.org/evolution/irwin.ht ml
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.h tml#morphological_intermediates_ex3

Anyway this whole macroevolution as seperate from microevolution (where one's provable and one's supposedly not) is an invention of creationists. Macroevolution relies on the exact same processes as microevolution, the only requirement is some (usually environmental) factor to create seperate breeding groups of a species. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB902.html

You can remain in your blissful ignorance by convincing yourself that evolution is a religion and that it cannot be observed for all I care. Just don't try and force your beliefs on other people by arguing for it not to be taught in a science classroom, where it belongs.

What is observable and testable in said bacteria and insects is not, in fact, evolution, but rather natural selection and intra-species adaptation; the emphasis of "strong" traits in the gene pool as opposed to "weak" traits. [...] While it is certainly irrefutable that a species itself can change over the course of time, as this is observable, it is another thing entirely than to presume that, even given millions of years, one species becomes another entirely different species.

Ah. What is a "strong" trait, and how is this in any way different from mutation? I suggest you read up on some observed instances of speciation. Evolution has been observed creating novel species, whose members can interbreed with themselves, but cannot interbreed with members of the parent species.

One change, but requires various changes to the genetic code to be functional; the actual sac that the blood builds up in, the duct that the blood is projected through, the muscles around the sac that constrict to project the blood, the nerves that enable the muscle to contract, and the instinct to use this ability are all different parts of the genetic code, and without any one of these traits, the ability will not work, and the changes do not give the toad an advantage.

The "irreducible complexity" complaint. Not a very good argument. See also the Reducibly Complex Mousetrap. (If you're really interested in this particular question, yes, some papers on the evolution of defensive blood-squirting have been published, though this seems to be a fairly technical topic for the lay reader.)

Mathematically, it's possible that all of these traits appeared simultaneously, but it's also an extremely minute chance.

Unless they didn't appear simultaneously, in which case the probabilities don't matter. See the articles refuting "irreducible complexity," above.

Additionally, the 'jump' from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms is a bit of a stretch. What kind of a genetic change is required to make the difference between a 'colony' of individual unicellular organisms to become one single multicellular organism?

How do you define the difference between a colony and a multicellular organism? You'd just be drawing a line in the sand. (You might challenge that in a "true" multicellular organism, only some cells handle reproduction, and the rest are designed to die without ever creating a new organism. But the entire advantage of a colony is that some cells are able to die while the colony itself survives! As soon as cells band together, there is evolutionary pressure to program some of them to "commit suicide" by becoming body structures for the benefit of the colony.)

Furthermore, the mitochondria and chloroplats found in various cells are believed to have originited as parasites that eventually began to help their host. But these organelles are now a part of each cells genetic code. We already know that traits acquired through an organisms lifespan do not change their genetic code, and a parasitic organism is hardly a trait either.

You're simply wrong. Mitochondria and chloroplasts are not "part of a cell's genetic code." Mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own genetic codes, indepedent of the host cell's genome. Additionally, mitochondria and chloroplasts are only ever produced by binary division (like bacteria), and cannot be "manufactured" like other cellular structures such as ribosomes. See 'endosymbiosis.'

There are myriad things like these that just don't stand up to the kind of scrutiny that science demands; all theories, scientifically, must be considered to be false until they can be prove

What is observable and testable in said bacteria and insects is not, in fact, evolution, but rather natural selection and intra-species adaptation; the emphasis of "strong" traits in the gene pool as opposed to "weak" traits. [...] While it is certainly irrefutable that a species itself can change over the course of time, as this is observable, it is another thing entirely than to presume that, even given millions of years, one species becomes another entirely different species.

Ah. What is a "strong" trait, and how is this in any way different from mutation? I suggest you read up on some observed instances of speciation. Evolution has been observed creating novel species, whose members can interbreed with themselves, but cannot interbreed with members of the parent species.

One change, but requires various changes to the genetic code to be functional; the actual sac that the blood builds up in, the duct that the blood is projected through, the muscles around the sac that constrict to project the blood, the nerves that enable the muscle to contract, and the instinct to use this ability are all different parts of the genetic code, and without any one of these traits, the ability will not work, and the changes do not give the toad an advantage.

The "irreducible complexity" complaint. Not a very good argument. See also the Reducibly Complex Mousetrap. (If you're really interested in this particular question, yes, some papers on the evolution of defensive blood-squirting have been published, though this seems to be a fairly technical topic for the lay reader.)

Mathematically, it's possible that all of these traits appeared simultaneously, but it's also an extremely minute chance.

Unless they didn't appear simultaneously, in which case the probabilities don't matter. See the articles refuting "irreducible complexity," above.

Additionally, the 'jump' from unicellular organisms to multicellular organisms is a bit of a stretch. What kind of a genetic change is required to make the difference between a 'colony' of individual unicellular organisms to become one single multicellular organism?

How do you define the difference between a colony and a multicellular organism? You'd just be drawing a line in the sand. (You might challenge that in a "true" multicellular organism, only some cells handle reproduction, and the rest are designed to die without ever creating a new organism. But the entire advantage of a colony is that some cells are able to die while the colony itself survives! As soon as cells band together, there is evolutionary pressure to program some of them to "commit suicide" by becoming body structures for the benefit of the colony.)

Furthermore, the mitochondria and chloroplats found in various cells are believed to have originited as parasites that eventually began to help their host. But these organelles are now a part of each cells genetic code. We already know that traits acquired through an organisms lifespan do not change their genetic code, and a parasitic organism is hardly a trait either.

You're simply wrong. Mitochondria and chloroplasts are not "part of a cell's genetic code." Mitochondria and chloroplasts have their own genetic codes, indepedent of the host cell's genome. Additionally, mitochondria and chloroplasts are only ever produced by binary division (like bacteria), and cannot be "manufactured" like other cellular structures such as ribosomes. See 'endosymbiosis.'

There are myriad things like these that just don't stand up to the kind of scrutiny that science demands; all theories, scientifically, must be considered to be false until they can be prove

the creationist movement has tried to bypass the scientific process by getting their material brought in through the side door of legislation. this puts the rational people in a tough situation where they have to fight back using equally nasty methods. i think that's a shame, but i understand they have to do what they have to do.

]]]] I lived near Grantsburg, WI when they were attempting to instate creationism alongside evolution. The local school board was the one that decided to teach it, and they received letters of dissent from 350 educators and 200 pastors with crippled theology. Who's being nasty?

for the same reasons they don't want their kids taught that earth is flat, or that the holocaust never happened. because school is supposed to be about education, not making your kids "stupider".

]]]] Do you think your analogies are buying you anything? The earth IS round, we have pictures and observe ionospheric skip with RF transmissions. The Holocaust is a FACT. Evolution is a THEORY. (I'm not offended, just letting you know how your analogies appear to their recipient) I'm not saying we should force evolutionist's kids to learn anything. I was talking about the parents who want their kids to learn other theories and are bludgeoned to death by the scientific and misguided religious communities. Make it an elective. Require parental approval. That's still not going to appease AAAS and the others.

the place for contending science, is within the field of science. creationists have every opportunity to find some other explanation besides darwinism for biology. but they can't do that. they are being shut out, because they are trying to enter through the back door instead of paying with evidence.

]]]] We work with the same evidence as you; it comes out of the ground, from the earth's magnetic field, etc. Evolution does not come packaged with other evidence, it's an interpretation of evidence.

I know you think it's down for the count, but a lot of people don't, so by definition it isn't.

allow me to clue you in on how science works. it isn't a matter of what people think. it's a matter of what they can support with facts. so far, there are no alternative theories to neo-darwinian synthesis. i know that's really tough for you to deal with, but..deal with it. part of being an adult means dealing with things that can be frustrating to accept. i know it's hard when you're a kid and you find out there's no santa. same thing applies here. you just have to be strong brother.

]]]] I was talking about ideas, not facts. We don't have universally acceptable facts in the area of origins. I've been discussing an alternative theory to darwinism this whole time. It's becoming really difficult to carry on an intelligent discussion when you relate my beliefs to a belief in Santa. Again, I'm not sure what you're trying to buy yourself here. If you're getting fed up with talking, just tell me.

a lot of people genuinely don't understand the case for evolution. i admit, a lot of it can be very difficult to understand.

]]]] Aye to that!

if you still don't believe it, then you misunderstood something. explain why you don't believe in it, even though it's utterly obvious, and i'll be happy to clear up your confusion.

]]]] Your refutations to my previous objections are not acceptable, for the aforementioned reasons: high improbability, excessive complexity, and lack of convincing, unequivocal evidence.

there are no arguments for creationism. not one. no creators have been observed.

]]]] Creationism is an interpretive framework. The evidence fits it. Now you have an argument. Besides, the Creator has appeared in some limited form or another many times in Biblical history, and I have the records.

1) every life form is an intermediate. 2) many obvious lines of evolution, where the gradual changes can be clearly seen, are known. see http://www

Typical unsourced creationist claims.

You say there is only one fossil linking fish and amphibians. Absolute poppycock. Over a dozen "transitional" *species* between fish and amphibians have been identified from many hundreds of fossils. There are many other well understood transitions. There is an excellent introduction of this at http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/p art1a.htm if anyone wants the detail on this.

Your argument is also self-refuting. You claim that if evolution were correct then the fossil record would be a continuum. But you presumably accept "microevolution" even though there is no continuum of "micro-evolved" fossils. The answer is of course that the chance of an organism being fossilised, and then surviving millions of years of erosion and geological activity is is pretty damn small.

And as for a scientific revolution coming, it's a funny kind of scientific revolution that's driven by religious fundamentalists?

There are many sequences showing gradual change over a long period of time - the classic example is the evolution of the horse from a species called Hyracotherium which looks rather like a small dog. See http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/horses/horse_evol. html for more info on this.

But "half mutated" is a rather meaningless concept.

The website above shows that there are literally thousands of transitional fossils and has links to images of these fossils. To say that there are no transistionary fossils is simply false.

Macroevolution does not qualify under the scientific method, however it is being taught in classrooms, exclusively, as the only valid scientific reasoning behind how things came about.

Why is there not an equal uproar against this unscientific educational disaster?

Macroevolution does indeed qualify as a scientific theory. It is testable and falsifiable and has significant evidence to back it up. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/


The answer to that question is simple: some people have a political stance against anything remotely related to religion, and wish to shelter their little darlings from anything as damaging to their brainwashing as questioning and testing things such as by the introduction of alternative thought on a subject.

No the problem is that some religious people have a political stance against anything remotely related to evolution and wish to brainwash everyone's little darlings into thinking like they do. In order to do this they try to hold up their religious beliefs as science, even when they clearly and irrefutably are not.

The whole 'alternate viewpoints' argument is bogus. Science says nothing about wether there is or is not a god, such questions are simply out of scope to science. Teachers and students are free to discuss theological philosophies like intelligent design in religion lessons and sunday schools. There is no campaign of any kind from 'science' or scientists to interfere with or exclude religion from people's lives. Scientists just don't want science debased, twisted and misused by religious fundamentalists who seek to instate religious dogma into the science classroom.

Macroevolution does not qualify under the scientific method, however it is being taught in classrooms, exclusively, as the only valid scientific reasoning behind how things came about.

Why is there not an equal uproar against this unscientific educational disaster?

Macroevolution does indeed qualify as a scientific theory. It is testable and falsifiable and has significant evidence to back it up. http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CB/CB901.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/


The answer to that question is simple: some people have a political stance against anything remotely related to religion, and wish to shelter their little darlings from anything as damaging to their brainwashing as questioning and testing things such as by the introduction of alternative thought on a subject.

No the problem is that some religious people have a political stance against anything remotely related to evolution and wish to brainwash everyone's little darlings into thinking like they do. In order to do this they try to hold up their religious beliefs as science, even when they clearly and irrefutably are not.

The whole 'alternate viewpoints' argument is bogus. Science says nothing about wether there is or is not a god, such questions are simply out of scope to science. Teachers and students are free to discuss theological philosophies like intelligent design in religion lessons and sunday schools. There is no campaign of any kind from 'science' or scientists to interfere with or exclude religion from people's lives. Scientists just don't want science debased, twisted and misused by religious fundamentalists who seek to instate religious dogma into the science classroom.

I don't know if you caught the latest Slashdot article, but the evolutionist organizations are the ones legislating ID curriculum out of the classroom, using sneaky copyright issues.

the creationist movement has tried to bypass the scientific process by getting their material brought in through the side door of legislation. this puts the rational people in a tough situation where they have to fight back using equally nasty methods. i think that's a shame, but i understand they have to do what they have to do.

They're afraid and it shows. The question is: why? Why are they so afraid to let parents decide their kids should see a few different theories?

for the same reasons they don't want their kids taught that earth is flat, or that the holocaust never happened. because school is supposed to be about education, not making your kids "stupider".

and there aren't different theories. the only theory is neo-darwinian synthesis. creationism has no theories to offer. creationist ideas could scarcely be called hypotheses, because there's not the slightest bit of data supporting them.

Red flags pop up when the arena of ideas shuts a contender out.

the place for contending science, is within the field of science. creationists have every opportunity to find some other explanation besides darwinism for biology. but they can't do that. they are being shut out, because they are trying to enter through the back door instead of paying with evidence.

I know you think it's down for the count, but a lot of people don't, so by definition it isn't.

allow me to clue you in on how science works. it isn't a matter of what people think. it's a matter of what they can support with facts. so far, there are no alternative theories to neo-darwinian synthesis. i know that's really tough for you to deal with, but..deal with it. part of being an adult means dealing with things that can be frustrating to accept. i know it's hard when you're a kid and you find out there's no santa. same thing applies here. you just have to be strong brother.

I don't want to start throwing more accusations around, but seriously ask yourself what motivation I have to believe something I think is a lie.

it's more comforting to believe you were created for a purpose, and you'll go somewhere when you die. although i'm not saying everyone just believes because there's some kind of incentive. a lot of people genuinely don't understand the case for evolution. i admit, a lot of it can be very difficult to understand.

I've heard plenty of arguments for evolution, it's not like I've been denied the opportunity to try that interpretive framework out.

if you still don't believe it, then you misunderstood something. explain why you don't believe in it, even though it's utterly obvious, and i'll be happy to clear up your confusion.

I've also seen many different types of creationism.

there are no arguments for creationism. not one. no creators have been observed.

Why would I believe evolutionists when they tell me to just give them some more time to find the strong intermediate life forms their theory so badly needs?

1) every life form is an intermediate. 2) many obvious lines of evolution, where the gradual changes can be clearly seen, are known. see http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.h tml 3) evolutionary theory does not need any obvious transitional forms. even if we couldn't find any, darwinian theory would still be the best explanation for life, because it's the only explanation for life that we know of. if there were no obviously transitional fossils (bear in mind that every fossil is in fact transitional) we would just have to assu

Out of curiosity, how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false?

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, each of which is falsifiable.

I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species. If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?

Morphological intermediates, from the above site.

Out of curiosity, how would you design an experiment that would demonstrate that macro-evolution was false?

29+ Evidences for Macroevolution, each of which is falsifiable.

I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species. If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?

Morphological intermediates, from the above site.

Looks like someone needs to actually learn some science... Here let me help

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/abioprob/abioprob. html

Life didn't "come from nothing". It developed over time from increasingly complex molecules developing in a chemically reactive soup that was our early world.

Heck we don't even need that. There is now good radioscopic evidence that there might be some reasonable complex molecules locked up in comets that could have crashed into earth from other life rich planets (wherever they might be) but even without this it can be shown in the lab that complex life could quite reasonably developed from chemicals bashing round in a reactive substrate. Learn some chemistry, learn some maths and learn some biology... then re-read your last statement and try not to die of embarrassment

You're welcome

30 ways to falsify evolution:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

Name me one non-trivial, falsifiable, unfalsified claim of evolutionary theory.

Here's a lengthy, but not exhaustive, list

"All organisms will have the same basic DNA building blocks" is non-falsifiable.

Of course it's falsifiable. Not every organism has had its DNA studied. So every time the DNA of an organism is sequenced, it is an opportunity to falsify the prediction.

"No member of any species will act for the benefit of another with no benefit for its own" is falsified by the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.

This is not a prediction of evolutionary theory. There are many circumstances in which natural selection will favor such behavior.

I'm not aware of any fossil evidence showing half-way mutated species. If someone knows of some, could they provide a link to a reputable website detailing this evidence?

I should hope not. Evolutionary theory provides no mechanism for something to be "halfway" mutated. Note that all individual differences are due to mutation, so if you find one skull that is a bit larger or smaller than another skull of the same species, that is a mutational difference.

What gene sequencing has revealed is that there is really no difference at the genomic level between micro and macroevolution. All differences between species, as well as differences between individuals, result from exactly the same kind of changes at the genetic level--which happen to be exactly the kinds of changes produced by mutation.

For more details, see this site

Why do people still believe that there is no evidence for speciation? Dozens, if not hundreds, of observed speciation events have been published in peer reviewed journals for decades. If you for some reason disagree with the scientific methods used in proving that ALL of these speciation events did indeed occur, then you should put forward some evidence to support your claim. Of course, in addition to posting your wisdom here on /. you might also want to give those useless hacks at "Nature" and "Science" some advice on how to properly review articles.

On the other hand, it may simply be that you were unaware of these articles. That's certainly nothing to be ashamed of (everyone is ignorant about something or another), but let me leave you with one tidbit of knowledge: THIS IS EXACTLY WHY SCIENTISTS DON'T DEBATE ID PROPONENTS! Every time I (used to) get into a discussion with a creationist, I would find that he usually had a very, VERY dim grasp of the subject they were attempting to discuss with an air of authority. It gets real irritating real fast to have to explain why we don't need to know initial quantities of radioactive elements in order to properly determine that the earth is 4.5 Gyrs old, etc.

Here's a simple solution: phrase your statement differently. Instead of making an absurd claim like "there are no observed instances of speciation", just ask "Hey- this whole speciation thing. Is there any evidence for it?". You'll come off sounding less like an ignorant dogmatic Believer, and more like a curious newcomer. The person you're talking to will respect you more, and you'll have more productive conversations. Who knows- you might even learn something.

With all the public backlash and misrepresentation of what the ID movement really stands for, I thought it important to add a bit of reason into the mix, to give the majority of people speaking out against ID (who don't really understand what it stands for and just see it as a Bible-pushing fundamental Christian movement) some idea of what ID is really all about.

There are generally two ways to react to ID proponents. The first is to attempt to talk to them on the level of rational, scientific debate (thus assuming that they are working on the same level). The second is to be more cynical and try to expose them as being religiously motivated.

The reasonable "let's pretend that ID proponents are actually scientists" approach

I agree with ID proponents that certain body parts and physiological mechanisms are so complicated that we simply don't understand the intricacies of exactly how they evolved. What I don't understand is why ID people seem to believe that this means that these mechanisms are "irreducibly complex". It seems like the first, most obvious mistake here is the equation of "we don't understand how this mechanism evolved right now" with "this mechanism COULDN'T have evolved". It's the God of the Gaps, pure and simple. Oops- "Designer of the Gaps". Sorry.

All this last point shows is that, at the very least, ID proponents are practicing flawed science. They're making unjustified leaps of logic in assuming that our ignorance of certain aspects of nature demonstrates ANYTHING beyond the fact that we're not omniscient. But there's a far more serious problem, one that I believe strikes at the very core of science itself- naturalism. All scientists look at the world and assume that all causes and effects are natural- that they follow rigorous

> YM pelvic bones, which whales today still have and use to breed.

NO, he means LEGS.

"...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transition in my book..." -- Dr. Colin Patterson

you're going to regret posting this first quote, because colin patterson himself has explained that the quote was taken out of context, and misunderstood by creationists. here's his letter in response to an inquiry about the quote. read this well my creationist friend, because this is a great example of how creationists lie and distort the facts to make their arguments seem plausible.

Dear Mr Theunissen,

Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

Yours Sincerely,

[signed]

Colin Patterson

SOURCE

what he's explaining here is that any transitional fossil could be either a direct ancestor of modern day species, or it could be the descendant of one of those ancestors, and there's rarely any way to be completely sure. this in no way invalidates the fossils, because obviously they had to have ancestors. and if you don't believe in evolution, those ancestors would have been the same species, meaning that his entire point is invalid to a creationist anyway. sorry, i'm probably talking over your head. further, every fossil is a transitional fossil. every single organism that has ever lived was a transitional state between it's ancestors and descendants. there is documentation of a huge number of "obvious" transitional fossils here, in which the gradual evolution over eons is well documented. the evolution of cetaceans is an especially clear example, where we see an aquatic animal evolving to live on land, and then evolving to live in water again.

we also see many examples of vestigial featur

"...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transition in my book..." -- Dr. Colin Patterson

you're going to regret posting this first quote, because colin patterson himself has explained that the quote was taken out of context, and misunderstood by creationists. here's his letter in response to an inquiry about the quote. read this well my creationist friend, because this is a great example of how creationists lie and distort the facts to make their arguments seem plausible.

Dear Mr Theunissen,

Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

Yours Sincerely,

[signed]

Colin Patterson

SOURCE

what he's explaining here is that any transitional fossil could be either a direct ancestor of modern day species, or it could be the descendant of one of those ancestors, and there's rarely any way to be completely sure. this in no way invalidates the fossils, because obviously they had to have ancestors. and if you don't believe in evolution, those ancestors would have been the same species, meaning that his entire point is invalid to a creationist anyway. sorry, i'm probably talking over your head. further, every fossil is a transitional fossil. every single organism that has ever lived was a transitional state between it's ancestors and descendants. there is documentation of a huge number of "obvious" transitional fossils here, in which the gradual evolution over eons is well documented. the evolution of cetaceans is an especially clear example, where we see an aquatic animal evolving to live on land, and then evolving to live in water again.

we also see many examples of vestigial featur

>I'm not claiming that ID is acceptable because macro-evolution isn't verifiable, I'm claiming that neither should be taught as fact.

Actually, species have been created in the lab (a type of californian seaworm and many new fruitfly species) and others have speciated in the wild under historical observation - flowers, rats, mice, others. Check out the talk.origins link below, they have plenty of cited examples of speciation. Natural Selection allows both accurate prediction and domestication - we wouldn't have dogs, brocolli or corn if "evolution" didn't work.

>All that needs to be shown is several fossils demonstrating gradual change from 1 species to another.

Very well. Please observe the change from Australopithecus to the various species of Homo, currently represented by H. Sapiens. The shades of variation are so slight through the fossil record, yet obviously showing a several million year span of evolution and change. Paleontologists will fight over whether a skull is Homo Ergaster or just a big-brained Habilis, but they will all agree that the fossils show structured, reasonable, natural changes that can be predicted by applying Natural Selection. There, fossils showing gradual, species-changing modification. Somewhere (probably at change to Homo?) the human lines lost chromosomes among other radical shifts. A modern H. sapiens could not breed with an Australopith, or no moreso than with a chimp. Unless you deny the actual existence of our ancestors, this shows both micro and macro evolution.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.h tml#morphological_intermediates_ex3

The link has an example of what I'm describing, I also recommend the excellent "Extinct Humans" for further reading.

Akgoatley, I'm not sure where you fit on the opinion section, this is not personal: I don't understand where the controversy is, honestly. Anyone that passed high school biology should understand the basic processes of life, including Natural Selection and modern evolutionary concepts. "It's only a theory" is a bullshit argument, that people buy this shows the dire lack of scientific literacy in this country. This is people trying to deny reality and using fairy tales to placate themselves. If you need God to get through the day, I don't hold it against you. Don't turn this country into a 3rd-world theocracy because you're scared to know things. "Evolution" is only the first thing these American Taliban are after- they also question plate tectonics, the physics light and I'm sure plenty of other scientific concepts. I know this, because as a child I thrived at a 7th-Day Adventist school, but what they claimed was science, was not.

Science and technology drive this world. We are roadkill if we try to deny this - shame on Kansas for trying to shackle their children with theocratic garbage. I definitely support the AAAS in putting the copyright screws to them - this is effective political conflict.

Josh

We need a first generation of pioneers.

The claims have BEEN refuted, time and time again. The ID/Creationists, even after ADMITTING that some facet of their claims has been shown to be false, still go on to preach -exactly the same- claims at their next stop, wherever that may be.

Sheesh! Go to http://talkorigins.org/ and see for yourself. Every one of their claims has been debunked multiple times. The fact that they continue to make the same claims is clear evidence that they aren't using science, they're teaching dogma.

And YOU, by asking the scientists to repeat themselves AGAIN, when all their information is readily available to anyone, anytime, are just perpetuating the lies. Do us all a favor and go read up on it yourelf before claiming that no one is addressing the claims of the ID/Creationists.

"...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transition in my book..." -- Dr. Colin Patterson

you're going to regret posting this first quote, because colin patterson himself has explained that the quote was taken out of context, and misunderstood by creationists. here's his letter in response to an inquiry about the quote. read this well my creationist friend, because this is a great example of how creationists lie and distort the facts to make their arguments seem plausible.

Dear Mr Theunissen,

Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

Yours Sincerely,

[signed]

Colin Patterson

SOURCE

what he's explaining here is that any transitional fossile could be either a direct ancestor of modern day species, or it could be the descendent of one of those ancestors, and there's rarely any way to be completely sure. this in no way invalidates the fossils, because obviously they had to have ancestors. and if you don't believe in evolution, those ancestors would have been the same species, meaning that his entire point is invalid to a creationist anyway. sorry, i'm probably talking over your head. further, every fossil is a transitional fossil. every single organism that has ever lived was a transitional state betweeen it's ancestors and descendents. there is documentation of a huge number of "obvious" transitional fossils here, in which the gradual evolution over eons is well documented. the evolution of cetaceans is an especially clear example, where we see an aquatic animal evolving to live on land, and then evolving to live in water again.

we also see many examples of vestigial features in life, which show their ancestry.

Cockroaches and other insects may

"...I fully agree with your comments on the lack of direct illustration of evolutionary transition in my book..." -- Dr. Colin Patterson

you're going to regret posting this first quote, because colin patterson himself has explained that the quote was taken out of context, and misunderstood by creationists. here's his letter in response to an inquiry about the quote. read this well my creationist friend, because this is a great example of how creationists lie and distort the facts to make their arguments seem plausible.

Dear Mr Theunissen,

Sorry to have taken so long to answer your letter of July 9th. I was away for a while, and then infernally busy. I seem fated continually to make a fool of myself with creationists. The specific quote you mention, from a letter to Sunderland dated 10th April 1979, is accurate as far as it goes. The passage quoted continues "... a watertight argument. The reason is that statements about ancestry and descent are not applicable in the fossil record. Is Archaeopteryx the ancestor of all birds? Perhaps yes, perhaps no: there is no way of answering the question. It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way to put them to the test."

I think the continuation of the passage shows clearly that your interpretation (at the end of your letter) is correct, and the creationists' is false.

That brush with Sunderland (I had never heard of him before) was my first experience of creationists. The famous "keynote address" at the American Museum of Natural History in 1981 was nothing of the sort. It was a talk to the "Systematics Discussion Group" in the Museum, an (extremely) informal group. I had been asked to talk to them on "Evolutionism and creationism"; fired up by a paper by Ernst Mayr published in Science just the week before. I gave a fairly rumbustious talk, arguing that the theory of evolution had done more harm than good to biological systematics (classification). Unknown to me, there was a creationist in the audience with a hidden tape recorder. So much the worse for me. But my talk was addressed to professional systematists, and concerned systematics, nothing else.

I hope that by now I have learned to be more circumspect in dealing with creationists, cryptic or overt. But I still maintain that scepticism is the scientist's duty, however much the stance may expose us to ridicule.

Yours Sincerely,

[signed]

Colin Patterson

SOURCE

what he's explaining here is that any transitional fossile could be either a direct ancestor of modern day species, or it could be the descendent of one of those ancestors, and there's rarely any way to be completely sure. this in no way invalidates the fossils, because obviously they had to have ancestors. and if you don't believe in evolution, those ancestors would have been the same species, meaning that his entire point is invalid to a creationist anyway. sorry, i'm probably talking over your head. further, every fossil is a transitional fossil. every single organism that has ever lived was a transitional state betweeen it's ancestors and descendents. there is documentation of a huge number of "obvious" transitional fossils here, in which the gradual evolution over eons is well documented. the evolution of cetaceans is an especially clear example, where we see an aquatic animal evolving to live on land, and then evolving to live in water again.

we also see many examples of vestigial features in life, which show their ancestry.

Cockroaches and other insects may

Just because a test would be difficult in practice does not make a theory unfalsifiable. The parent posters suggestion may be a bit beyond our current capabilities but it is certainly physically possible. Testing the existence or not of an all powerful god is not.

Anyway we don't need another planet to test Evolution - the one we have here is quite sufficient. I think you need to read the talkorigins FAQ - http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html - it does a good job explaining all the misconceptions you seem to have about the scientific method and testability.

How about fossilized whale skeletons with vestigal legs? How about the CLEAR record of the mutations in horses that led to hooves. The fossil evidence of gradual mutation from one species to another is everywhere. You want the argument laid out for you? I can't do it better than these guys: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

"We actually don't have substantial evidence (fossil or otherwise) that mutation ever caused inter-species changes"

Come again? There's been more than adequate observation of speciation and how the ID proponents get to continually say that there isn't simply blows my mind.

This whole discussion about ID in science is baffling. That it's even allowed to be considered speaks volumes about Joe and Jane Average's intelligence.

Here are some alarming numbers on Creationism (ID)/Evolution. Only 26% believing in evolution with 42% believing that humans have existed as we do now from our very inception.

How about these? http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html

your idea that evolution means that viruses turn into birds also makes no sense.

Maybe I can help. I think that he thinks "natual selection" = microevolution and that "evolution" = macroevolution. Thus in his mind the evolution of the bird flu virus isn't really evolution, it's only evolution if it crosses some imaginary and convienently moving line to become some other "kind" of creature.

If he does read this post, I suggest he take a look at this page discussing micro vs macro evolution, and this extensive discussion of 29+ evidences of macroevolution.

-

your idea that evolution means that viruses turn into birds also makes no sense.

Maybe I can help. I think that he thinks "natual selection" = microevolution and that "evolution" = macroevolution. Thus in his mind the evolution of the bird flu virus isn't really evolution, it's only evolution if it crosses some imaginary and convienently moving line to become some other "kind" of creature.

If he does read this post, I suggest he take a look at this page discussing micro vs macro evolution, and this extensive discussion of 29+ evidences of macroevolution.

-

Yeah, those ID folks are just not trustworthy, but no one on the Darwinian side of the fence has any ulterior motives.

Dream on.

I just don't believe in the enormous extrapolation from the irrefutable principle of simple mutation to macroevolution

from http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.htm l:

Antievolutionists argue that there has been no proof of macroevolutionary processes. However, synthesists claim that the same processes that cause within-species changes of the frequencies of alleles can be extrapolated to between species changes, so this argument fails unless some mechanism for preventing microevolution causing macroevolution is discovered. Since every step of the process has been demonstrated in genetics and the rest of biology, the argument against macroevolution fails.

[macroevolution's] framework has so many holes

name one.

and is so unsupported by our observations.

mutations and selection events are observed, so you're wrong there.

Darwin's treatise hardly has more credibility than a comic book

well, with a few modifications in light of modern genetics knowledge and further observations, it is comprises the core of our entire understanding of biology. the general idea that he proposed, about life's coming about through successive mutations (regardless of whether he understood the genetic basis for these) and selection events, is a clear and obvious fact. how does that eqaute to comic book credibility exacty?

Just so happens that our observations of this world line up very well with the Bible's account of history. Incidentally, archeology has never refuted a single fact in the Bible either.

Welcome to Wonderland, Alice! How about this nifty tid-bit:

Exodus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy report that the Hebrews, numbering as many as 2.5 to 3 million, left Egypt, wandered in the Sinai wilderness for 40 years, and finally invaded and conquered the promised land. Most biblical scholars and archaeologists doubt the historical accuracy of this biblical story. Speaking at an archaeological conference at the Royal Ontario Museum, Israeli archaeologist Eliezer Oren reported that "his efforts at more than 80 sites in the Sinai from 1972 to 1982 had not turned up any support for the historical accuracy of when the exodus was supposed to have occurred" (Barry Brown, "Israeli Archaeologist Reports No Evidence to Back Exodus Story," News Toronto Bureau, Feb. 27, 1988). Oren went on to tell of the discovery of papyrus notes that reported the sightings of two fugitive slaves. "They were spotted, and the biblical account of 2.5 million people with 600,000 of military age weren't?" Oren asked.

Oh, and then there's the whole flood thing..*chuckle*.

I feel a lot more confident trusting that sort of book than the whims of evolutionary "science", which must be adjusted every few weeks.

the basis of evolutionary science hasn't changed significantly in decades. it's still darwinian synthesis. descent with modification. continual findings in genetics support that more and more every day. sure, recent fossil finds always cause us to re-evaluate specific processes, like how birds branched off from dinosaurs, or which of our homonid cousins mated with which others and lived where. that hardly qualifies as a substantial change, considering the hierarchical "tree" of biology is mostly stable and not undergoing substantial revision. humans had a common ancestor with chimpanzees about 5 million years ago. that fact isn't changing, much as creationists might like it to just go away. and the one thing that we can glean from this "wavering" in science, when it happens, is that science really is all about constantly evaluating the evidence and adjusting theories to fit, rather

your own belief (that there is no supernatural) is irrational

the origin of the first self-reproducing system is recognized by many scientists as an unsolved problem for evolution, and thus evidence for a Creator.

"Transitional fossils."

Yeah, that'd be a good one if it weren't false. Strangely, it's the one EVERYONE chooses to cite when they've got a burning desire to "debunk evolution".

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.h tml

Read more books. Post less rhetoric. Look less dumb. There's simply no excuse for this crap in 2005. The resources are freely at your disposal to learn how this stuff works. So what's the point of having an opinion about it prior to doing so?

Incidentally, C14 dating is only good for 60,000 years or so, because of the short half-life of C14. None at all should be present in anything older than that. It is interesting that C14 is apparently found in all carbon on earth, including coal deposits and even diamonds that are supposedly millions of years old.

More about that: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html/

way to plagiarize!
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTI CLE_ID=39733

Anyway, the Setterfield study you mention only used a portion of the points to obtain the decay trend for speed of light, while a best fit of the entire data set shows a slight increase in speed, with constant speed being well within the margin of error. Basically Setterfield picked the data points that would give him the results he wanted, which wouldn't be too hard if you consider that early measurements were less accurate than modern measurements, thus it is obvious that if you only select data points for the larger measurements over time, the speed of light will appear to be slowing down because the margin of error is decreasing. Of course you could do the same thing with the lower measurements and have it appear that the speed of light is increasing.

There are some more responses to the slowing speed of light myth here:
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CE/CE411.html

And here is an article about a recent NASA study that shows the speed of light is constant:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3741682/

Observed Instances of Speciation