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While studying the genetics of the evening primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana, de Vries (1905) found an unusual variant among his plants. O. lamarckiana has a chromosome number of 2N = 14. The variant had a chromosome number of 2N = 28. He found that he was unable to breed this variant with O. lamarckiana. He named this new species O. gigas.

Still not enough? Then how come you still believe in gravity? After all,

And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.
Joshua 10:13

To digress a little, I noticed that your accusation of an ad hominem argument was directly preceded by an ad hominem argument. Slick there, buddy.

While studying the genetics of the evening primrose, Oenothera lamarckiana, de Vries (1905) found an unusual variant among his plants. O. lamarckiana has a chromosome number of 2N = 14. The variant had a chromosome number of 2N = 28. He found that he was unable to breed this variant with O. lamarckiana. He named this new species O. gigas.

Still not enough? Then how come you still believe in gravity? After all,

And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies.
Joshua 10:13

To digress a little, I noticed that your accusation of an ad hominem argument was directly preceded by an ad hominem argument. Slick there, buddy.

Although the theory of evolution has many supporters, such as Sagan, this has no relevance to the truth of the matter.

"Evolution" is a fact as much as "gravity" is a fact. There are several theories of evolution to explain how it works, just as there are theories to explain how gravity works.

Today we can see evolution's supports slowly crumbling, because of new evidence.

Such as....?

In immense numbers of years it took to evolve these features, they would have simply served as a useless hunk of flesh that made life difficult.

Wrong. See the talk.origins website.

I wish I had moderator privs today. :-b

>It is an unfortunate state of affairs, but no one can claim to know that a paticular project is patent-free.

It's dangerous to surrender on this point, though. I don't think programmers should yield to Fraunhofer and their ilk based on probable intersections of original code and generalized patents. The Xiph crowd are proactive in determining that they have legs to stand on. You may not realize that commercial distribution of MP3 files encumbers upon the proprietor a royalty of not less than US$15,000 per year payable to Fraunhofer.

I can't support the nihilistic concept that independent media artists, producers, and disseminators should accept this barrier just because patent-holders would prefer we didn't try to get around it. Surely we shouldn't cast programmers as a hopeless bunch who will accept that the software they write should never approach the edges of a flat earth.

More on the evolution of the horse.

Sitting quietly, doing nothing,
Spring comes, grass grows by itself.

http://www.bearfabrique.org/s aur opods/sauropods.html
http://www.talkorigi ns. org/faqs/sauropods/sauropods-misc.html (The section "Blood pressure would have been too high", especially)

Anybody got a link to something more recent?

If you want to believe in creation, that's fine. But don't pretend it's science.

]$`};L(;/proc);[I(;];<C{;};1S[;`\/while=1E1L[`\p roc{>=

1. talk.origins archive and FAQs

Here's a summary addressing these old misconceptions;

1. Evoltion isn't chance.

2. Evolution does not necessarily contradict the existance of any specific god(s), but may contradict what people think those god(s) are like.

3. Evolution is fact not theory or philosophy. The 'theory of evolution' part is an explanation of how observed evolution is interpreted.

4. Did I mention evolution isn't chance?

5. God(s) are not necessary to explain how evolution works. This might seem to be an attack on god(s), but it's really apathy toward them; they don't matter in studying the evidence.

6. On a similar theme: The addition of any god(s) or other unexplained force to explain anything is no different then saying 'I don't know' or worse 'I already know, so I'll stop looking'.

7. If a specific god did do it, do you think you know how it did without looking?

8. Oh, and btw...evolution still isn't chance.

Well, I am generally socially liberal and fiscally moderate-to-conservative. Which puts me more in line with Gore than with any other candidate, including Nader. But what really solidifies my vote is the future of the supreme court: "Even while disavowing any anti-abortion litmus test, Republican nominee-apparent George W. Bush has said he will seek to appoint more Justices like Scalia and Thomas to the Supreme Court." While these justices claim to want to follow the original intent, they seem to ignore the intent of James Madison regarding the rights of conscience. Additionally, when individual rights and liberties come in conflict with the powers of a civil authority, they almost always vote to support the civil authority. That is the biggest reason I'll be voting for Gore.

Cheers,

Craig

--

The ozone hole is even in doubt according to some scientists.

b&

I doubt it. There are many more isotopes, each with much greater half-lives than c14. Each is valid for a different range of years. For example, from http://www.talkorigins .org/faqs/faq-age-of-earth.html#howold:
The most direct means for calculating the Earth's age is a Pb/Pb isochron age, derived from samples of the Earth and meteorites. This involves measurement of three isotopes of lead (Pb-206, Pb-207, and either Pb-208 or Pb-204). A plot is constructed of Pb-206/Pb-204 versus Pb-207/Pb-204.

I mean come on, how can you prove to me that 2 + 2 is 4? What the hell is a 2? And what's a 4? Someone told him that 2+2 was 4 and he believed them. Talk about gullible. And if 2/2 = 1, and 0/2 = 0, why does 0/0 = undefined instead of 1? or 0? Math is just as much specious religious raving as any OTHER religion. It's all a matter of perspective.

In math, things are not proven in isolation, but only under the assumption that certain axioms are true. For example, one can use the Peano axioms to define natural numbers and addition on them. Roughly, 0 is a natural number, and it has an unlimited number of successors, also in the natural numbers (using the notation a' is a successor of a). So, 1=0', 2=1'=0'', and 4=0''''. Addition is defined in two cases: a+0=a, and a+b'=(a+b)'. So, 2+2=0''+0''=(0''+0')'=((0''+0)')'=((0'')')'=0''''= 4. Of course, no one is forcing you to use the Peano axioms, you can come up with your own system of arithmetic if you wish. Math doesn't claim that 2+2=4 is fundamentally true no matter what context you're in, only in the context that 2, 4, and addition are defined in a certain way. The same idea applies with division

Micro-Evolution can be demonstrated and is obviously factual. However Macro-Evolution has no such proof. No one has yet been able to change one species into another, no one has been able to demonstrate Macro-Evolution in any fashion, hence it's still bullshit.

Speciation has been observed. See the Observed Instances of Speciations FAQ and Some More Observed Speciation Events on talkorigins.org.

I mean come on, how can you prove to me that 2 + 2 is 4? What the hell is a 2? And what's a 4? Someone told him that 2+2 was 4 and he believed them. Talk about gullible. And if 2/2 = 1, and 0/2 = 0, why does 0/0 = undefined instead of 1? or 0? Math is just as much specious religious raving as any OTHER religion. It's all a matter of perspective.

In math, things are not proven in isolation, but only under the assumption that certain axioms are true. For example, one can use the Peano axioms to define natural numbers and addition on them. Roughly, 0 is a natural number, and it has an unlimited number of successors, also in the natural numbers (using the notation a' is a successor of a). So, 1=0', 2=1'=0'', and 4=0''''. Addition is defined in two cases: a+0=a, and a+b'=(a+b)'. So, 2+2=0''+0''=(0''+0')'=((0''+0)')'=((0'')')'=0''''= 4. Of course, no one is forcing you to use the Peano axioms, you can come up with your own system of arithmetic if you wish. Math doesn't claim that 2+2=4 is fundamentally true no matter what context you're in, only in the context that 2, 4, and addition are defined in a certain way. The same idea applies with division

Micro-Evolution can be demonstrated and is obviously factual. However Macro-Evolution has no such proof. No one has yet been able to change one species into another, no one has been able to demonstrate Macro-Evolution in any fashion, hence it's still bullshit.

Speciation has been observed. See the Observed Instances of Speciations FAQ and Some More Observed Speciation Events on talkorigins.org.

I mean come on, how can you prove to me that 2 + 2 is 4? What the hell is a 2? And what's a 4? Someone told him that 2+2 was 4 and he believed them. Talk about gullible. And if 2/2 = 1, and 0/2 = 0, why does 0/0 = undefined instead of 1? or 0? Math is just as much specious religious raving as any OTHER religion. It's all a matter of perspective.

In math, things are not proven in isolation, but only under the assumption that certain axioms are true. For example, one can use the Peano axioms to define natural numbers and addition on them. Roughly, 0 is a natural number, and it has an unlimited number of successors, also in the natural numbers (using the notation a' is a successor of a). So, 1=0', 2=1'=0'', and 4=0''''. Addition is defined in two cases: a+0=a, and a+b'=(a+b)'. So, 2+2=0''+0''=(0''+0')'=((0''+0)')'=((0'')')'=0''''= 4. Of course, no one is forcing you to use the Peano axioms, you can come up with your own system of arithmetic if you wish. Math doesn't claim that 2+2=4 is fundamentally true no matter what context you're in, only in the context that 2, 4, and addition are defined in a certain way. The same idea applies with division

Micro-Evolution can be demonstrated and is obviously factual. However Macro-Evolution has no such proof. No one has yet been able to change one species into another, no one has been able to demonstrate Macro-Evolution in any fashion, hence it's still bullshit.

Speciation has been observed. See the Observed Instances of Speciations FAQ and Some More Observed Speciation Events on talkorigins.org.

I should hope not, those kind of changes happen all around us, all the time. The only question is whether we pay attention to them or not.

... Macroevolution, on the other hand, is different. It is an assumption that small changes across a long period of time could create huge changes eventually. This has not been proven or disproven, as it requires large periods of time to work.

Here's why I pressed the "Reply" button. The "micro" vs. "macro" distinctions are not used by real biologists. They were coined by creationists who could no longer deny that evolution took place and wanted to distance themselves from its larger implications.

In other words, they since they could no longer deny that it was possible to walk down the street, they claimed it was impossible to walk from San Francisco to New York City. 8-)

However, in general, the trend appears to be to more simplicity (specifically in the case of vestigual organs) than more compelxity. If anyone has evidence to counter this, I would be interested to see it.

Maybe I can help you there. Check out Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events. The first link especially may interest you. It gives numerous examples of polyploidy in plants, in which the number of chromosomes double. This, while a relatively simple genetic change, is an increase in complexity. Is that what you were looking for?
--

I should hope not, those kind of changes happen all around us, all the time. The only question is whether we pay attention to them or not.

... Macroevolution, on the other hand, is different. It is an assumption that small changes across a long period of time could create huge changes eventually. This has not been proven or disproven, as it requires large periods of time to work.

Here's why I pressed the "Reply" button. The "micro" vs. "macro" distinctions are not used by real biologists. They were coined by creationists who could no longer deny that evolution took place and wanted to distance themselves from its larger implications.

In other words, they since they could no longer deny that it was possible to walk down the street, they claimed it was impossible to walk from San Francisco to New York City. 8-)

However, in general, the trend appears to be to more simplicity (specifically in the case of vestigual organs) than more compelxity. If anyone has evidence to counter this, I would be interested to see it.

Maybe I can help you there. Check out Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events. The first link especially may interest you. It gives numerous examples of polyploidy in plants, in which the number of chromosomes double. This, while a relatively simple genetic change, is an increase in complexity. Is that what you were looking for?
--

Pardon the nitpick, but while perhaps speciation is arguable, there is no small amount of evidence for it, both in the lab and in the field. Check out Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events from the Talk.Origins Archive. Some of the examples given occurred relatively near to me in Northern Idaho and Eastern Oregon.
--

Pardon the nitpick, but while perhaps speciation is arguable, there is no small amount of evidence for it, both in the lab and in the field. Check out Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events from the Talk.Origins Archive. Some of the examples given occurred relatively near to me in Northern Idaho and Eastern Oregon.
--

Pardon the nitpick, but while perhaps speciation is arguable, there is no small amount of evidence for it, both in the lab and in the field. Check out Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events from the Talk.Origins Archive. Some of the examples given occurred relatively near to me in Northern Idaho and Eastern Oregon.
--

Certainly we can't consider the evolutionary history of flagella or blood clotting to be settled. But it stands to reason that piecing together the evolution of a complex system, particularly one which does not fossilize, is going to take a little while, not so?

--

• If evolution really did violate 2LT, how do you know that it's evolution that's wrong rather than 2LT? Both are based on a myriad observations. If there were a conflict, we would have to go back and review those observations, the interpretations of those observations, and the theories based on those observations/interpretations. If there really were a conflict, one or the other (or both) would indeed have to be modified, but you cannot say in advance which it would be, nor what the nature of the modification would be. It's all conjecture until you demonstrate a conflict and then do the grunt work of pining down what the actual problem is. Such is the nature of scientific progress.
• Fortunately, there is not any conflict. (Or rather, no one has ever actually demonstrated one.) Gas coalescing into planets is nothing more than a relaxation to a lower energy state. (It puzzles me that you would even suggest that this violates 2LT. Does water pooling in the pothole on your street also violate 2LT? If you can argue that convincingly, there's a Nobel out there waiting for you.) As for the macroscopic species, I propose an argument that they have "fallen" into an energy state that is "low" and "stable" with respect to their environment. That's what environmental niches are all about. [Perhaps I'm stretching the metaphor. If so, visit the link or wait for a physicist to respond.]

Canar dun said:

I also believe in speciation to some degree. If animals have tendencies only to mate with others that look similar to themselves, eventually they'll segregate, and a "species", by definition of the term, will be born. However, this does not explain for the addition of entire chromosomes and these chromosomes actually making sense and so on. Not one mammal descended from the first mammalian species has lost any of the five fingers.

To be honest, on reading this I'm smelling a furry critter with horns who lives under bridges and has a strange craving for Cuban cabra sandwiches :). If so, good job. You got me. :)

If this is NOT a troll, though...well, it seems someone has never been to a farm or a livestock show. :)

There is an entire class of mammals--the Arctiodactylia or "even-hooved" animals--that has lost one, and sometimes three, of the original five toes mammals had. Probably the most common member of the order in the US right now is the common cow; just to to a farm or a petting zoo, and count the number of toes on a cow. (Or deer, or any such critters. It's only the largest order of herbivorous animals on the planet; I'm sure you can find a member or two.)

For that matter, the second-largest order of herbivorous mammals has a large family that actually has lost two to four toes in its history. (I'm talking about the equines. In fact, we have one of the better fossil records that detail how they've lost toes throughout their evolution--they went from five to three to one toe. In fact, you occasionally have the rare "throwback" horse born with three toes; the loss of the last two toes occured fairly late in horse evolution. At least one "cousin" of the equines, the tapir, has three toes, and rhinos have five. If you want to see examples, just look at a zoo or at a horse-farm or go down to the track. Heck, watch the Kentucky Derby if you want. :)

For that matter, the entire "felid" branch of the Carnivora (which includes cats, "civet cats" and "genet cats", hyenas, and some older forms like Smilodon) has lost the fifth toe on its hind feet, and their front first toe is reduced to a dewclaw (which is the state of fifth toes in canids such as wolves, dogs and foxes, too; expect them to lose the hind dewclaws in a few million years). The main reason cats still have dewclaws on their front toes is that kitties can use them fairly well as thumbs, especially if not declawed (if you want them to demonstrate, get a can of cat-treats and let kitty fetch her own out). I will leave out the obvious joke about what will happen when cats evolve opposable thumbs and thus no longer need humans as their thralls for world dominance. :)

For that matter...we'll take it beyond mammals. The other major group besides the synapsids (one of the two great lineages of land animals besides amphibians; synapsids include mammals, theraspids or "proto-mammals", and "mammal-like reptiles" like Dimetrodon) happens to be the same group that reptiles and archosaurs belong to, including birds. They, too, have a fairly extensive history of digit-loss:

Last toe digit (our equivalent of our pinkies) lost sometime near when archosaurs first evolved; even modern crocs, which are the modern representatives of one of two branches of the archosaurs (the other being the bird/dino branch), only have four toes

Fourth toe (rough equivalent of ring finger turns non-functional in theropod dinosaurs during early evolution (about the time they separated from hererrasaurs, in the late Triassic)

Fourth finger lost in most theropod dinosaurs around evolution of the Maniraptora (the subclass of theropods that includes birds, as well as most of the meat-eating cast of the Jurassic Park movies besides dilophosaurs and compys), around early-mid Jurassic

Third finger (equivalent to the "flip the bird" finger) lost in tyrannosaurs

Fourth toe lost entirely in ornithomimosaurs

Sometime during development of powered flight (late Jurassic-early Cretaceous) finger claws lost and second and third fingers fuse while thumb develops as alula

In surviving theropod dinosaurs (aka birds) all have lost except thumb and first two fingers on front limbs and first two fingers were fused (there may have been a reversal in phorusracoid birds, which largely hunted as large land predators in the Americas until 2 million BC to 100,000 years ago); many, if not most, ground-running birds have lost the fourth toe entirely, in most birds it is a dewclaw, and only a very few birds (perching birds) use the fourth toe at all as a functional digit

I won't get into snakes. There is recent evidence they evolved from mosasaurs (a type of swimming reptile), and they not only lost digits but limbs altogether (the only snakes with limbs today are boids, which have claws used for mating attached to very tiny legs; early snakes have more substantial limbs, but nothing huge).

But perhaps, well, mere synapsid/reptilian split critters aren't enough. Let's throw amphibians in, too. :)

At least one sub-branch of amphibians has lost limbs as well (caecilans); there are several branches of frogs that have reduced digits to four per limb, too.

For that matter...the main reason most animals have five limbs is that five limbs is an incredibly ancient structure--literally coming about before land animals (we are now starting to find fossils of animals at around this time--we now know they evolved as swimmers first and evolved limbs to scoot about on bottom, and early "tetrapods" had varying numbers of digits per limb (some with five, some with seven or even eight digits per limb).

For more info on this, including some good lineages, you might want to go here or here.

As for Pascal's Wager...well, the wager relies on five very big assumptions:

that such a thing as God exists

that such a thing as Hell exists

that a God would be enough of a ratbastard as to throw someone into a place of eternal torment just because the poor sot hadn't ever heard of aforementioned God and/or disagreed with the "official" account based on empirical evidence

that what folks see as God might not be the processes of Nature, or that God may well have created stuff by evolution

that people are meant to blindly follow a leader instead of use the brains that God and/or evolution gave them in the first place so as to better understand the mysteries of life :)

Myself, well...if there is a God (which...if there is one, I think it might be Nature, but that's only my viewpoint) Sie either honestly doesn't give a damn one way or the other (in which case God is basically Nature, and the whole idea of appealing to a God is moot unless you mean something like apologising to cows before you eat them), or isn't enough of a ratbastard to chuck someone into a pit because the fossils pretty much show not only that horses evolved from tapir-like critters but that birds evolved from very close cousins of Deinonychus and we all came eventually from fishy-looking critters. If Sie is such a ratbastard, I'm not afraid to say that not only would I gladly burn in Hell in such a case, but such a ratbastard neither deserves my worship nor my respect. :) (And no, I don't buy the whole "Fossils were there to test us" crap, either...that makes God out not only to be a complete ratbastard, but a troll and a cruel ratbastard who gets his jollies off sending people to Hell for basically his idea of a practical joke. In which case, He can go straight to Hell, if you pardon the expression.)

This is a strawman. Evolution does not deal at all with the beginnings of the universe. It deals with changes in populations over time. Look here: What is Evolution?

Before this debate goes any further, everyone read the
Charles Miller
--

You are referring to the chemist who resigned from science in 1980 and now serves as the "adjunct professor of chemistry at the Institute for Creation Research"?

Chittick uses science to attack science, a curious position. Let's examine his credentials. Chittick got his PhD at a tier 3 school. He taught a two private colleges, the University of Puget Sound (a tier 3 school)and George Fox College (a highly rated private religious school with 1700 students).

Chittick also championed the Coso Artifact as a kind of Geode that was proof against evolution. Later the artifact was revealed to be a 1920s era Champion Spark plug. Chittick is not a brilliant scientist who is challenging the scientific norm. He is a buffoon with a little bit of knowledge and a whole lot of willingness to overlook inconvenient facts in favor of his faith.

All this, and more, can be learned by starting at the talk.origins site.

You are referring to the chemist who resigned from science in 1980 and now serves as the "adjunct professor of chemistry at the Institute for Creation Research"?

Chittick uses science to attack science, a curious position. Let's examine his credentials. Chittick got his PhD at a tier 3 school. He taught a two private colleges, the University of Puget Sound (a tier 3 school)and George Fox College (a highly rated private religious school with 1700 students).

Chittick also championed the Coso Artifact as a kind of Geode that was proof against evolution. Later the artifact was revealed to be a 1920s era Champion Spark plug. Chittick is not a brilliant scientist who is challenging the scientific norm. He is a buffoon with a little bit of knowledge and a whole lot of willingness to overlook inconvenient facts in favor of his faith.

All this, and more, can be learned by starting at the talk.origins site.

> Different, but equally valid, assumptions about what the original isotopes were leads to carbon dating results that agree with the 5,000-7,000 year universe lifespan espoused by new-earth creationists. The problem lies in the fact that there isn't a way to verify either set of assumptions.

Never heard of tree rings, ice cores, and spring flood deposits, I suppose?

It's trivially easy to rule out the "5,000-7,000 year universe lifespan espoused by new-earth creationists", unless you want to posit a creator god that fakes the evidence to make his/her creation look older than it is. (One wonders whether a god that would fake the physical evidence might not just as well fake the revelations as well!)

Rather than rehash all the jaded old arguments here, I direct the interested reader to the talk.origins FAQ archive.

--

Um... evolution *is* taught as a theory, and the fact that you used the phrase "Evolution is just a theory" demonstrates that you do not know what a scientific theory is. I'd explain further, but this site talk.origins (specifically here) does it *much* better. If you don't go and immediately read a good portion of that site (start from the top) then I'm sorry, but you have no place saying that evolution is "just a theory" as if that's supposed to be meaninful. Evolution is a theory the same way fluid mechanics, gravitation, and thermodynamics are all just "theories".

Um... evolution *is* taught as a theory, and the fact that you used the phrase "Evolution is just a theory" demonstrates that you do not know what a scientific theory is. I'd explain further, but this site talk.origins (specifically here) does it *much* better. If you don't go and immediately read a good portion of that site (start from the top) then I'm sorry, but you have no place saying that evolution is "just a theory" as if that's supposed to be meaninful. Evolution is a theory the same way fluid mechanics, gravitation, and thermodynamics are all just "theories".

Oh, here's a link to lots of people who spend just as much time refuting ridiculous creationist claims. All these links are kind of interesting if it's raining out and you have NOTHING at all better to do. Actually, I'd recommend the last link for sheer information density.

The inverse square law that the force of gravity is reduced by x^2 when the distance is reduced by x

The hypothesis of Newton (considered to be correct) that every particle attracts every other particle

Einstein and his Theory of General Relativity which explains space and mass as products of each other (i.e. space bends around mass)

Einsteins Theory of Special Relativity that equates Energy to mass and has as a hypothesis the idea that nothing can go faster than light

Those are some of the different facts and ideas that are all connected by the same umbrella, namely the Theory of Gravity. Most of these were proven by experimentation, and as such, we are really certain that our modern theory of gravity is correct. If we ever find some situation that does not obey these laws then we will have to re-think and correct our theory. That is the way science works.

Now let's consider the more controversial theory of evolution. Bearing in mind that theory does not mean "maybe" but instead serves only to easily explain and unite different known facts and ideas we find that it also is correct. This explains why there are transitional fossils (you can find them online) which show an unknown species that is between two known species in both anatomy and the fossil record. The theory of evolution explains the experiments with fruit flies that you yourself brought up. In order to understand the Theory of Evolution you should understand its mechanisms. I highly recommend Biology by Cambell, the most popular freshmen bio book. It will explain the principle of genetic drift, isolation, speciation, mutations that allow for better reproductive success - basically all the different methods that fall under the general category of evolution.

Now let's look at Creation "science" objectively. A big difference between creationism and "real" science is that creationism can not be invalidated. It is not falsifiable. Ask yourself what would you need to see in order to stop believing in the bible and the Genesis account of creation. Chances are nothing will ever make you reject this idea. This violates every law of science. Look at the Bible itself. I've read it. Every page, every word. I think that it is remiss of myself to argue for evolution while being completely ignorant of the other side.

Consider the following:
Matthew 17:28 "I tell you solemnly that some of you standing here will not taste death before they see the son of Man coming with his Kingdom" spoken by Jesus. And yet everyone there that he addressed back in ~20 A.D. is now dead. Where is the Kingdom? This is one of many passages that do not turn out true. If this were science and we got 1, just 1, case that contradicted itself we would have to throw the theory out. You base your ideas on old science that has long been discredited.

As my last thought I recommend that you not force this idea on your children. Anyone who believes creation "science" as fervantly as you tends to be a target for ridicule, and in my opinion, rightly so. You are clinging to an ad hoc theory without the tools to even intelligently argue it. You just look foolish is all. That's the reason that this is not taught in schools. It is a patently false idea that does not belong in a science classroom because it is not even remotely scientific. To think otherwise would be to deprive your children of a decent education. Look at the most fervent believes of this crap: Alabama. Then look how often Alabama is at the bottom of everything.

If you are looking for some the real truth please visit the following:

Myths of Creation "Science"

The Rule Book for Sciene

Biology by Cambell

This article by Ted Holden was interesting indeed.It also broadened my horizont a little, although not by design. The story so far:

Fired up /. and clicked on interesting article. It smelled fishy:

Extrapolating from human body structures to sauropodic ones was bad enough. Taking the conclusion - sauropodes were too heavy too support themselves - as main evidence that earths gravity was smaller in the Jurassic sounded like total bullcrap. What drug is this guy on? Took a quick look at the rest of his site and found a variety of themes, with "R.I.P. Evolution" sticking out. A Creationist on the loose, oh my. Still, while his arguments do sound foul, I find it necessary to check them up. Back to /. , maybe one of the posters has something valid to say. And yes, an anonymous coward and bebot point to articles on talkorigins.org. This helps. Ted Holden is known there, and is arguments are falsified in a very plausible way.

Okay, so this was interesting, I had my fun and I had some facts checked, which is always a good thing. On the other hand: Following scientific discussions from an amateurs point of view is difficult, so do raving lunatics like ted really have to be considered/slashdotted? Maybe yes, but it's still frightening that some people are that far out of touch with reality.

Interesting link referenced in this story. It links to none other than the web site of a well known creationist kook of talk.origins named Ted Holden.

The theory in his site is that dinosaurs must have experienced a reduced gravity (with respect to the present value) to be able support the massive weight of the larger species.

To support his argument he compares a very strong powerlifter to dinosaurs using the square cubed assumption for scaling (force produced by muscles goes up as a square of body length because it depends on cross section while weight goes up as the cube because it depends on volume).

Of course, the problem with all of this is that this scaling is way too simplistic since we are comparing apples to oranges (Homo sapiens to various sauropods, to be exact). Proof of this is that, contrary to Holden's claims, it doesn't even work for elephants.

From Holden's example, Kazmaier, weighing in at 340 lb., can do a 1000 lb. squat (not the strongest adjusting for body weight, see here, for an example). To see how this scales to a normal weight male (I shall consider myself at 175 lb. the norm for the sake of argument) we take the ratio my weight to Kazmaier's of 175/340 = 0.51. Taking the square cubed assumption it turns into .51^^(2/3) = .64 . meaning a normal 175 lb. person being able to lift .64 * 1340 lb. = 861 lb. to match Kazmaier's performance. As this figure includes body weight it turns into the ability to squat 861 lb.- 175 lb. = 686 lb.

Now, the most I've squatted is 450 lb. (which turns into 450 lb. + 175 lb. = 625 lb.) and I consider myself to have (for a nearly untrained person) near freakish lower body strength. I can assure any and all that I cannot move around comfortably with 450 lb. on my shoulders and can barely take some faltering steps in this situation (and, though I don't know the rules of powerlifting, I'pretty sure that the lift would not have been good enough to count in a competition --not that anyone would be likely to be impressed anyway).

Let's see what the most is that one can weight if the best lifting they can do would match my performance (better to compare myself --freakish lower body strength and all-- rather than a real athlete pushing the limits).

Using Holden's formula (which is correct, though its assumptions are flawed), we get:

625/175^^(2/3) = X/X^^(2/3)

Adult elephants, on the other hand, can weight a lot more than 8000 lb.. And to those who may point out that my own bipedalism puts me at a disadvantage, I shall point out that circus elephants seem to be able to get on their back feet with great ease (it certainly seems to take a lot less effort than it takes for me to squat a mere 450 lb.)

Thus, taking a more reasonable lift for the scaling exercise and following Holden's assumptions, not only should elephant's fail carrying around their own weight, but they should fail miserably.

But elephants, even very large ones, seem to manage quite well, thank you very much. Thus, my claim that Holden's assumptions do not really hold up under scrutiny is supported

Here is the link that gives the intro to the basic wacko theorywith links, etc.

Next we have links to the Expanding Earth theory (with another one here, with some nice graphics, but which is again wacko. It holds that the reason for the shifting of the continents is based on the earth expanding like a balloon, with the crust spreading in sections. The pretty graphics explain the idea nicely. It is tied into the interesting explanation of how dinosaurs could be so big.

Next we have a collection of somewhat related FAQs about science vs areas of psuedo science here, followed by a nice basic intro to plate techtonics here and here.

Some nice graphics related to plate techtonics can be found here and here as well.

the main point being that the continents have been separated and combined into a large single land mass many times through the history of the planet.

so the idea of shifting gravity and an expanding earth is probably a little silly.

I definitely think it's worth a look, and it's a pity that by giving this article a score of 0 some people will miss out on reading these arguments.

/. really needs to get its shit together on the science articles... way too many of 'em contain some awfully embarressing nonsense in them. All the faster-than-light, quantum woo-woo nonsense, and now this creationist bullshit makes /. look like a bunch of rubes.

I once read a creationist article ...

They are full of it, aren't they? If you want other hoots of laughter, check out the alt.origins archive;

1. www.talkorigins.org

The archive does treat the creationists with repect, though reading the details shows that they really do have a grasp of reality that lacks opposible thumbs!

Start with this one.

You might start in this section first.

Actually start off with this question. You know about tree rings? Well many things lay down layers year after year in the same fashion. For instance glaciers. If you go to Greenland, drill, and count, you get a record that goes backwards in time a few hundred thousand years, not only saying the Earth is older than that, but also saying that there have been no global floods, etc in that time. The 160,000 year record from Vostok is good enough to make my point though.

Please folks. The fact the Earth is no spring chicken has been an accepted fact of science since before Darwin, and it something we have lots of independent confirmation on.

Regards,
Ben

Start with this one.

You might start in this section first.

Actually start off with this question. You know about tree rings? Well many things lay down layers year after year in the same fashion. For instance glaciers. If you go to Greenland, drill, and count, you get a record that goes backwards in time a few hundred thousand years, not only saying the Earth is older than that, but also saying that there have been no global floods, etc in that time. The 160,000 year record from Vostok is good enough to make my point though.

Please folks. The fact the Earth is no spring chicken has been an accepted fact of science since before Darwin, and it something we have lots of independent confirmation on.

Regards,
Ben

Start with this one.

You might start in this section first.

Actually start off with this question. You know about tree rings? Well many things lay down layers year after year in the same fashion. For instance glaciers. If you go to Greenland, drill, and count, you get a record that goes backwards in time a few hundred thousand years, not only saying the Earth is older than that, but also saying that there have been no global floods, etc in that time. The 160,000 year record from Vostok is good enough to make my point though.

Please folks. The fact the Earth is no spring chicken has been an accepted fact of science since before Darwin, and it something we have lots of independent confirmation on.

Regards,
Ben

Your understanding of science is nil. Can you even state the second law of thermodynamics? It does not forbid "intelligent, higher-ordered structures from coming into being from structures from less order". It says that entropy is statistically unlikely to decrease in a closed system. Clue: the Earth is not a closed system. It receives an enormous amount of energy from the Sun, for one. If your "formulation" of the second law were true, it would be impossible for highly-ordered systems such as ice to form from disordered systems like steam. See the FAQ, for instance. If you have any intellectual curiousity remaining, you might want to look around the rest of that site to see why the creationist propaganda you bought into is scientifically invalid.

OK, I`ll bite. The Big Bang theory is the widely-accepted theory amongst scientists of how the universe came into being. There`s basic information at this NASA site.

The theory of evolution by natural selection is the widely-accepted theory amonst scientists of how life developed and is still developing. Here`s a good introduction taken from the extensive talk.origins FAQ.

The two theories are complementary, not conflicting.

OK, I`ll bite. The Big Bang theory is the widely-accepted theory amongst scientists of how the universe came into being. There`s basic information at this NASA site.

The theory of evolution by natural selection is the widely-accepted theory amonst scientists of how life developed and is still developing. Here`s a good introduction taken from the extensive talk.origins FAQ.

The two theories are complementary, not conflicting.

One of the points Behe repeatedly uses is the notion of irreducible complexity. Behe says that a system is "irreducibly complex" if removing any part of the system causes it to cease functioning. He then goes on to claim that such systems cannot have arisen from successive slight changes. This is, simply, incorrect.

Consider a stone arch. It is clearly irreducibly complex, for you cannot take away any stone without the whole arch collapsing. And yet, the stone arch can be constructed by successive slight changes. What you do is you make a big pile of stones to serve as scaffolding, lay down the arch's stones on top of the scaffolding, then remove the scaffolding. This is incomplete, of course, as an analogy to an evolved system; we would have to find an evolutionary advantage, or at least lack of disadvantage, for each one of the scaffolding stones. But the stone arch analogy does demonstrate that irreducible complexity isn't a "magic bullet" to demonstrate that a system cannot evolve.

I'm not qualified to address the specific examples that Behe uses to support his position, though, For example, I don't know enough about the blood clotting cascade to comment in detail on it; I have seen critiques that purported to demonstrate how the structure could have arisen by successive slight modifications, all advantageous by themselves, but I'm afraid I've lost track of any links to them. On the other hand, I think that Behe is being unfair in some of his other examples. For example, he points out that we have absolutely no idea how the bacterial flagellum may have evolved. Well, of course not! We still have only a very rough understanding of how the bacterial flagellum even works; how can we possibly expected to guess how it could have worked in the past?

You can probably find better critiques of Behe's arguments at the talk.origins archive.

Really? How, then, do you explain that the Lewis and Clark party got from the East coast to the West coast of North America? (Hint: They didn't take the freeways.)

How did the mountain men who left their names all over California arrive if not on foot (theirs or a horse's)?

The fact that you or I don't have the necessary woodcraft to do it doesn't mean that it can't be done and, in fact, was done. If I really wanted to, I could learn those skills and walk to N.Y. without massive infrastructure or pulling a trailer full of freeze dried food. So could you.

You're trying to duck the basic argument: There is an evolutionary process that is working today and has caused new species to form. (See Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events for details.) It is seen in the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the beak size of Darwin's finches.

Your Argument From Incredulity about walking to N.Y.C. is about as weighty as some of the other postings on evolution: They don't believe it is possible, so didn't even check to see if it has happened.
--

Really? How, then, do you explain that the Lewis and Clark party got from the East coast to the West coast of North America? (Hint: They didn't take the freeways.)

How did the mountain men who left their names all over California arrive if not on foot (theirs or a horse's)?

The fact that you or I don't have the necessary woodcraft to do it doesn't mean that it can't be done and, in fact, was done. If I really wanted to, I could learn those skills and walk to N.Y. without massive infrastructure or pulling a trailer full of freeze dried food. So could you.

You're trying to duck the basic argument: There is an evolutionary process that is working today and has caused new species to form. (See Observed Instances of Speciation and Some More Observed Speciation Events for details.) It is seen in the evolution of antibiotic resistant bacteria and the beak size of Darwin's finches.

Your Argument From Incredulity about walking to N.Y.C. is about as weighty as some of the other postings on evolution: They don't believe it is possible, so didn't even check to see if it has happened.
--

And as for the whole "atheistic evolution" crap, I should point out that probably the majority of the believers in evolution are religious; Christians in fact.

I should also point out that evolution has very little at all to do with the beliefs of atheists. I'm an atheist, and whether evolution is true or not has nothing to do with my beliefs. If evolution isn't right, something else may be. It's not some silly dichotomy "if evolution is wrong than the only other explanation is God". And it certainly isn't "if evolution is wrong then the only other explanation is the Christian God".

Then you move on to the usual religious bigotry about atheism, so I should mention that responsibility or lack thereof also has nothing to do with my beliefs. I do believe that I am responsible for my life course, and my atheism is not an escape from "responsibility".

"Although accepted by many people as a fact, Darwinian evolutin is actually only a theory ..."

... "macroevolution" ...

... "10 complex chemicals", Behe's "irreducible complexity" ...

... fossil record ...

Of course, you can also round out your new education with the talk.origins FAQs, talk.origins Must-Read FAQs, Five Major Misconceptions About Evolution, etc.

"Although accepted by many people as a fact, Darwinian evolutin is actually only a theory ..."

... "macroevolution" ...

... "10 complex chemicals", Behe's "irreducible complexity" ...

... fossil record ...

Of course, you can also round out your new education with the talk.origins FAQs, talk.origins Must-Read FAQs, Five Major Misconceptions About Evolution, etc.

"Although accepted by many people as a fact, Darwinian evolutin is actually only a theory ..."

... "macroevolution" ...

... "10 complex chemicals", Behe's "irreducible complexity" ...

... fossil record ...

Of course, you can also round out your new education with the talk.origins FAQs, talk.origins Must-Read FAQs, Five Major Misconceptions About Evolution, etc.