From a Creationist organization, so Have at it! I'd like to see examples with references to any statement made in this article that you deem absolutely, unequivocally false. http://www.icr.org/home/resources/resources_tracts_scientificcaseagainstevolution/
The whole article seems misguided. The basic claim is that we don't see evolution going on which makes no sense. No one would see a process that takes hundreds of thousands of years. They say that if evolution were going on we would see species with varied evolution within them. Everything alive today is in evolutionary flux, so each species is currently a possible step to a new one. Some species are so well adapted that they do not evolve much. Roaches have been around millions of years just like they are. Species that evolve to better utilize the niche of whatever environment they live in quickly replace their less effective ancestor. Big environmental changes wipe whole species out at times and only the lucky or slightly better adapted survive. There is no reason we should see transitional phases in evolution. On top of that we do see changes in ourselves. The remains of early humans, some of them in large mass graves, have almost no genetic dental problems. Buck teeth, english snaggletooth and so on did not seem to exist for early man. Their mouths were slightly larger than modern humans also. I am not talking about neanderthals or other subspecies, I am talking about good old homo sapiens. We are physically changing. Of course if anyone is determined to think evolution a myth or bad science then nothing will deter them. Articles like this one will continue to pop up and they will read them and agree with them, because they are not really saying anything. They are just telling people what they want to hear.
I don't understand how you can say there is no way we should see transitional phases in evolution. How can the lack of empirical evidence be so easy to dismiss? You describe microevolution well. Isn't evolution, e.g. ape man evolving into human artistic rendition that everyone accepts as truth, macroevolution, for which there is no evidence? - - - Updated - - - If can't see it (observation) nor duplicate it (experimentation) how can you say there's empirical evidence that we evolved from apes?
You've got to be kidding me. There IS no scientific case against evolution. Let's just start at the top, and give up long after we should, OK? Sheer equivocation. This is like saying belief in gravity is remarkable. But the sneaky part here is the equivocation on the word "belief". Creationists' "tuths" are arbitrary beliefs, so they project that and think everyone else is the same. Evidence is key here - creationists don't know what it is, science requires it (as clearly defined). Two unequivocal falsehoods here. First, that it's a belief, and second that there is no evidence. Indeed, the claim of "no evidence for macroevolution" requires decoding, since biologists do not distinguish micro from macro evolution at all the same way creationists do. The way creationists do it is simply flat false, based on false assumptions derived from a false model. And it's worth noting that people have known since before written history that life forms change over time. The question was always, what causes these changes? But notice that the word "evolution" is commonly used to refer to BOTH the FACT that life forms change, and the set of proposed explanations of the mechanism. Creationists switch back and forth between these two meanings indiscriminately. And off we go into the land of quote-mining, which is taking individual sentences entirely out of context, in an attempt to trick the reader into thinking these people are saying exactly the opposite of what they said. I guess if God has handed you the Truth, who really cares if that Truth is defended by lying. Evolution is happening every time any organism breeds or reproduces. Without exception. Flat false. It's observed in freshman biology labs. The canonical illustration is bacteria adapting rapidly to antibiotics. But it's observed in every organism ever found. It's a constant process. I don't really know whether to chalk this up to stupidity or dishonesty. EVERY living organism is potentially transitional. Every past organism that didn't go extinct without spawning off a new species was transitional. So the claim here is completely flat false. Creationist doctrine says that since no new "kinds" can evolve, every existing "kind" is simply one of many starting "kinds" that didn't go extinct. And since no new "kinds" are possible, a "transitional" must be halfway between one existing kind an another. The famous "crocaduck". And since there are no crocaducks, there's no evolution. But of course this is stupid. New species occur steadily (if slowly), and it's possible to identify dozens and dozens of populations currently going through the process of speciation (in terms of increasing breeding isolation). For most animals, the speciation event itself might last a million years before the branch is complete. But claiming that slow means nonexistent is dishonest. Claiming that no new species are possible is ignorant. Anyway, I see no reason to plow through the rest of this claptrap. Every single sentence is false, misleading, misrepresented, based on known incorrect models, or on dishonest quote-mining. Creationists use foregone (and wrong) conclusions as their postulates, arriving at their foregone conclusions in a tight circle, over and over. This is what happens when evidence simply doesn't matter. So we need to flip the question around. In this article, can anyone find any statement that is scientifically correct? Remember, in order to JOIN the ICR, a "scientist" must sign a pledge that he will never find anything in conflict with creationist interpretation of scripture. This is the essence of "creation science" - START with the wrong answers, promise never to notice they're wrong, and go out and defend those answers whatever it takes (no honesty allowed, since the answers are wrong).
The empirical evidence fills entire libraries. It has been filling thousands of journals for well over a century. Saying there's no evidence because you refuse to look at the evidence is dishonest if you understand what you're looking at, and ignorant if you don't. The "ladder of evolution" is a misrepresentation. The evidence for evolution at all scales is simply enormous. It's observed all the time. It's duplicated in freshman biology labs everywhere. Humans ARE apes. What are you trying to say here?
Some people are born without wisdom teeth. As we no longer need them to crush bone in our diet, we can see evolution is in fact alive and well. Also, we can watch viruses evolve and even study it. In fact everything in the Universe evolves from our vantage point. Our sun will evolve and so will the earth. Everything evolves.....except for the people who don't acknowledge facts. They die off and help the rest of us evolve into more intelligent beings by not passing on those flawed genes.
Well, biological evolution is qualitatively very different from stellar evolution. Biological evolution is a feedback process. So a closer analogy not using biological reproduction, would be the evolution of scientific ideas. Because there IS a feedback process there - propose an idea, construct a test, modify the idea based on the test results, construct a new test based on the modified idea, test that, and continue iterating.
Hong Flu From Wiki The Lung fish Evolution does not concern itself with how life arises, only what happens once it has happened. it is like blaming the Theory of Stellar evolution for a light bulb not working
Agreed a star is not a living organism under any test of the concept the are aware of. It is akin to saying a fart evolves into a bad smell
The second sentence is unequivocally false, to wit: The statement can only be defended through a series of quibbles, equivocations and outright falsehoods. 1. There is no such thing as macroevolution as distinguished from microevolution. The former is simply a lot of the latter, and any boundary between them is artificial and arbitrary. 2. "Kind" is obviously not a meaningful scientific word, and is used by creationists primarily to preemptively set opportunities for goal post moving. They started using it (and its superficially more "scientific" synonym "baramin") when it became clear that they could no longer argue that speciation never occurs and has never been observed; even they have been forced to admit that it is and it has. Rather than admit that their decades old claims had been proven wrong, they chose to semantically redefine their way out of trouble. As a result they borrowed the word "kind" directly from the Bible and use it to mean an ambiguous larger taxonomic category within which evolution is allowed. Unfortunately, Creationists use it so flaccidly and flexibly that they sometimes define "kind" to be a category so broadly that it allows for more evolution than is necessary to move between a human and a chimpanzee. 3. There is a vast amount of observable and repeatable evidence for "macroevolution" between "kinds" as different as human and ape, reptile and mammal, amphibian and fish, land mammal and whale, reptile and bird. If each of those sets are not "distinct kinds" then the very phrase is meaningless as used by Morris. This evidence comes from multiple independent sources, all of which are mutually supporting, something inexplicable were evolution not true. Some of those sources include the fossil record, comparative genetics, and comparative anatomy. This is one of those places where the creationist response is "The Big Lie." They will insist for example that there are no transitional forms in the fossil records, even when there are tens of thousands of examples of such forms. I could go onto the next sentence, but you only asked for one.
Henry Madison Morris (October 6, 1918 – February 25, 2006) was an American young earth creationist and Christian apologist. He was one of the founders of the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research. He is considered by many to be "the father of modern creation science."[1] He wrote numerous creationist and devotional books, and made regular television and radio appearances.[not verified in body] His methods and conclusions have been disputed by many in the mainstream scientific community and some creationists. Snip Morris wrote in The Remarkable Birth of Planet Earth (1972) that the craters of the moon were caused by a cosmic battle between the forces of Satan and the armies of the archangel Michael. David Vogel, Professor of Biology at Creighton University, reviewed the book explaining "his theology is shallow; his exegesis is maddening; his science is wrong; and he tops it off by offending millions of Bible-believing Christians who also accept evolution More ... if you need a laugh. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_M._Morris
Other than after the fact and in the fossil record, how would you recognize a "transitional" phase? That requires you to know what the end result of a transition might look like, and last I looked nobody alive was actually capable of precognition. The only reason we can identify the thousands of transitional forms between reptiles and mammals is because we already know what a mammal looks like. But when they were alive and there were no modern mammals, how would you have known what they were eventually going to evolve into? Living animals are never going in any obvious direction. They are complete and perfectly adapted organisms in their own right. But again, that speaks only to living organisms. The fossil record is filled with transitional organisms, and every single such fossil is empirical evidence of the transition. Evolution is both. Macroevolution is simply a lot of microevolution with an arbitrary line between them. And again, there is a vast amount of evidence for macroevolution from multiple, independent and mutually confirming sources. But of course, here you are quibbling. You can observe macroevolution because it is recorded in the fossil and genetic record. You just can't observe it in real time with your own eyes. And by the way, most scientific experiments cannot be seen in real time with your own eyes. Yet we never seem to get these silly creationist quibbles with the experiments performed at Fermilab or CERN. You can also replicate the experiments any time you want by going to the field and searching the strata for more of the same fossils, or sequencing again the DNA. Every source of evidence for macroevolution is explicitly observable and repeatable.
This is rather interesting. Morris had a PhD in hydraulic engineering. He did in 2006. There is no date to this article- 1980? 2000? The claims are fairly old and tired. This NOVA program addressed many of these claims http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/intelligent-design-trial.html Besides that a quick Google search brings us this http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution The Scientific Case for Common Descent http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/ The Origin of Whales and the Power of Independent Evidence How do you convince a creationist that a fossil is a transitional fossil? Give up? It is a trick question. You cannot do it. There is no convincing someone who has his mind made up already. But sometimes, it is even worse. Sometimes, when you point out a fossil that falls into the middle of a gap and is a superb morphological and chronological intermediate, you are met with the response: "Well, now you have two gaps where you only had one before! You are losing ground!"
My thouhts are that the controversy might be quieted by the assumption that evolution is not gradual. It happens in sudden discontinuties as a result of extinction events. Following a mass extinction, environemntal niches are rapidly refilled by different organisms. Solar variables are another suspect. Sudden changes in electromagnetic radiation can have a profound impact on biology. Galactic variables like gamma ray bursts are yet are another suspect. None of this solves the problem of gaps in the fossil record, but it might also be the case that the gaps exist because they were opened by unusual geologic, or even cosmic forces. There is much to be learned. I believe it's wrong to allow the issue to fall into an either/or debate between revised creationism and evolutionism as we understand it today. If we only take what we know at present and try to extrapolate a theory or a dogma, we end up with absurdities either way.
I think there will always be gaps in some evolutionary changes- after all fossils are not that common. But there are well established chains of evolution with clear transitional forms- and if we have 2 or 3 examples that show evolutionary transitions- do we really have to worry about the others that we have either not found yet, or that have been destroyed by the ravages of time?
... not to mention, Tiktaalik roseae is a perfect example of a transitional fossil AND the predictive ability of the Theory of Evolution. The problem with those who attempt to claim Evolution isn't valid is, they don't understand Evolution or what the theory of Evolution explains.
No, it does not. It happens slowly and is happening at all times. While it's true that mass extinctions leave plenty of niches, and it's true that other species radiate into these niches through speciation, it's not true that they do so any more rapidly than biological processes permit. So if (say) one niche opens up and a new species fills it within a million years, this is no faster than if a million niches open up, and new species fill them in a million years. Do you have any source for these speculations? Evolution at the genus level or above takes millions of years. By most accounts, that's not really "sudden" -- unless your timescale granuarity is 10 million year intervals. No, we do not. The poof theory is absurd. Current evolutionary theory is astoundingly well researched.
yup the transitional fossil record is impressive...and yeah the problem isn't with a lack of evidence there's a growing mountain of evidence, the problem lies with the creationist themselves who have a deplorably science education and/or very questionable cognitive abilities...
Correct. Creationist/Fundies wish to redefine the theory of Evolution...(crocoduck) and then ask, "Explain that!"...when in fact, that's not at all what the Theory of Evolution postulates. They do this because arguing the Theory of Evolution based on the Science is something they cannot do.
Alarmingly, this is often not the case. There are creationists (like Jonathan Wells and Kurt Wise) with Ivy League PhDs in biology. I think you are mistaken in confusing ideology with either knowledge or intelligence. When the ideology tells you that evolution does not happen, and you are unable to question this, then evidence becomes irrelevant. You are not trying to determine what is most likely to be the case based on observation and test, you are defending what IS the case based on personal conviction. Read just any of the anti-evolution arguments presented in any of these threads, and you find that few of them CARE what evolution is, what they theory says, what the evidence is on which the theory is based. They never present support for any positive position, but they work hard to find ever more emphatic ways to find objectionable something they can't even describe.
Alarmingly, this is often not the case. There are creationists (like Jonathan Wells and Kurt Wise) with Ivy League PhDs in biology. I think you are mistaken in confusing ideology with either knowledge or intelligence. When the ideology tells you that evolution does not happen, and you are unable to question this, then evidence becomes irrelevant. You are not trying to determine what is most likely to be the case based on observation and test, you are defending what IS the case based on personal conviction. Read just any of the anti-evolution arguments presented in any of these threads, and you find that few of them CARE what evolution is, what they theory says, what the evidence is on which the theory is based. They never present support for any positive position, but they work hard to find ever more emphatic ways to find objectionable something they can't even describe.
An example of evolution in human beings is some people are immune to aids because their cells don't have the attachment sites for HIV. Those people are more likely to survive, reproduce, and pass this trait to their offspring than people whose cells have the attachment sites for HIV.
Exactly. One theory is every now and then a neutrino hits a piece of DNA and alters it causing those changes in certain individuals. Sometimes its beneficial sometimes it isnt. The strong survive and pass along that gene if it is. Evolution makes perfect logical sense.
The logical conclusion that can be drawn from Science, is that you and I...and all of the 60 - 100 trillion cells, that comprise you and I, are no more than evolved spontaneous autocatalytic reactions in which at least one of the reactants is also a product. Although this does indeed indicate a spontaneous organization from disorder to order it does not violate the 2nd law of thermodynamics because the entropy of the Earth and the Universe increases to offset this decrease in entropy from a self-organizing reaction. As an example of an autocatalytic reaction, the spontaneous degradation of aspirin into salicylic acid and acetic acid. You and I, and every living organism that has, is or will exist, as Science will assert, are no more than a set of chemical reactions which are self sustaining given an input of energy and food molecules. We are the equivalent to algae growing on the surface of some back water pond.... no more, and no less. So Science will assert. Obviously there's all sorts of social pathology that will result if this assertion is accepted as fact....human life will no longer have any intrinsic value for one thing.
