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The Irony of Creationist belief

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
Then you post:

Four Famous Transitional Fossils That Support Evolution


Lol!

First you say, “…in spades”,
then you post an article that discusses … 4?!


You see a problem with that?

Just in case you don’t follow….

4 does not equal “in spades”!

As for one of them - archaeopteryx - has been known since the 1800’s! And Gould still said what he did.

The problem “persists” today.

Why do you think he & Eldredge came up with Punctuated Equilibrium?


Most of us are likely aware that the link is JW creationism, thus not an actual peer-reviewed scientific source.
 

AdamjEdgar

Active Member
Then you post:

Four Famous Transitional Fossils That Support Evolution


Lol!

First you say, “…in spades”,
then you post an article that discusses … 4?!


You see a problem with that?

Just in case you don’t follow….

4 does not equal “in spades”!

As for one of them - archaeopteryx - has been known since the 1800’s! And Gould still said what he did.

The problem “persists” today.

Why do you think he & Eldredge came up with Punctuated Equilibrium?

your statement there isnt accurate. I will address the first one (birds with teeth support intermediary evolution of species) where the writer admits:

All birds contain the genes for making true teeth in their genomes!
From many studies of mammalian teeth we know there are at least six genes involved in constructing the dentin and enamel of teeth. All six of those genes are found in modern birds.
But if they have all these genes for making teeth, why don’t they have teeth? It is very simple, although they all have the genes, those genes all have serious errors in their code or in some cases large pieces of the genes are missing. These are programs for making enamel and dentin that are not used by the birds because they are too messed up to work. (R. Joel Duff, “A Flock of Genomes Reveals the Toothy Ancestry of Birds,” Naturalis Historia, February 2, 20218, A Flock of Genomes Reveals the Toothy Ancestry of Birds.)​
The writer also goes on to say:

A YEC could appeal to the fossil record and say since there were some birds that had teeth maybe all birds were created with teeth. Maybe birds lost their teeth because of Adam’s sin. Maybe beaks are the result of a degraded and less-perfect world. I think this is a bit silly.
Of course said writer would think that is a bit silly, the writer isn't a creationist! I personally do not believe that all reptilian animals were created in the form that we see in the fossil record in any case, my view personally is that when sin entered this world, Satan also attempted to influence the breeding of the animal kingdom either directly or via human temptation to manipulate animal breeding. Those who believe in Creation believe that Adam was created far more capable mentally and physically than we are. We are far less capable our physique and life expectancy and these are due to the negative influences of sin over thousands of years. It is my view that one of the reasons for the flood of Noahs time was to wipe out some of the results of that corruption. The bible s[specifically tells us that God saw evil in humanity and that man was doing evil continually, however, what often gets ignored:

1. the biblical claim that God killed an animal to provide clothing to Adam and Eve,
2. that the ground would be cursed and would produce weeds and tares


So sin brought death to everything...not just mankind. That consequence of sin (such as corruption) I am certain included some of the creatures we find in the fossil record today
 
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AdamjEdgar

Active Member
The claim being rebutted is God directly poofed animals and plants out of thin air rather than the natural world doing it in accordance to his will.

Given the only evidence we have of the creation account is biblical, what is your biblical evidence that rebuts the Creationist claim here?
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
Given the only evidence we have of the creation account is biblical, what is your biblical evidence that rebuts the Creationist claim here?
The verses in Gen 1 itself that says God wills the earth and the water to bring forth the plants and the creatures and then wills the creatures to multiply. So Gen 1 itself rebuts the creationist claims.
 

metis

aged ecumenical anthropologist
It might have been his signature you saw

Possibly, so thanks. I also was rushed, which may have contributed to my error. I also made another error on another post-- not a good day for me.

Either way, I bad. :confused:
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
Why do you think he & Eldredge came up with Punctuated Equilibrium?

The article is a lie.

PE is about how stability in environment "slows down" evolution as species achieve their local optimum. "Local optimum" meaning that there aren't many, or any, pathways available to evolutionary mechanisms for further "improvement" in adaption to the niche the species inhabit.

Change in environment (= advent of desease, migration, geological change, climate change, .........................) shifts local optimums, meaning new pathways available to evolutionary mechanism for further "improvement" in adaption to the niche the species inhabit, open up again. So evolutionary change accelerates once again.

PE is an observable mechanism which can be lab-tested as well. It's not meant to "explain away" anything at all.
Neither is it an "alternative" for evolutionary processes.

It's just a phenomenon within evolutionary change. More specifically, it deals with the rate of change over time.
 

sayak83

Veteran Member
Staff member
Premium Member
:oops: It seems that evolutionists can't agree on what to believe.
So far Creationists have neither provided the requested evidence of living things being instantly created, nor shown how creationism is Biblically valid given Gen 1 description of how creation and diversification of living things happened.
The OP is unanswered entirely despite attempts to divert from the topic.
 

Hockeycowboy

Witness for Jehovah
Premium Member
The article is a lie.

PE is about how stability in environment "slows down" evolution as species achieve their local optimum. "Local optimum" meaning that there aren't many, or any, pathways available to evolutionary mechanisms for further "improvement" in adaption to the niche the species inhabit.

Change in environment (= advent of desease, migration, geological change, climate change, .........................) shifts local optimums, meaning new pathways available to evolutionary mechanism for further "improvement" in adaption to the niche the species inhabit, open up again. So evolutionary change accelerates once again.

PE is an observable mechanism which can be lab-tested as well. It's not meant to "explain away" anything at all.
Neither is it an "alternative" for evolutionary processes.

It's just a phenomenon within evolutionary change. More specifically, it deals with the rate of change over time.
It’s no lie….

Do you realize the problem that a punctuated, ie., burst or spurt, “rate of change” presents for species? “Punctuated” observable mutations in offspring would result in parents abandoning or killing their young, which we often find in the animal kingdom when offspring are different from their parents.

In other related news:

 

wellwisher

Well-Known Member
Thermodynamic Fail, Entropy stays the same or decreases in living things until death at which point it begins to increase.
Whatever math you think you are talking about is wrong too though Monte Carlo simulations are used in biology as well as other sciences.
Entropy staying the same only applies to closed systems; black box. Such systems will reach a steady state and then stop changing in terms of entropy. Life is open system and therefore entropy will increase via the second law. We breathe, eat and eliminate waste. Steady state is never achieved. Even in death, we decompose, give off gases, depolymerize and dehydrate; open system. Although a good old fashion Egyptian tomb may reach close to a closed system over time; mummy.

You are partially right about an aspect of life that decreases entropy. This is connected to structural polymers of life, RNA, DNA and protein. As we grow and add these polymers, they define lower entropy, relative to their free monomers or base units; amino acids to protein will lower the entropy due to loss atomic freedom.

These structural materials, by defining lower entropy, create an entropic potential or a potential to increase the entropy within life. One of the bottlenecks in Abiogenesis is making protein from amino acids. This reaction does not want to proceed all by itself since it lowers entropy, relative the all free amino acids just floating in water bending and vibrating. You need to add energy to force this situation, such as dehydration on clay by solar energy. This is useful to life, in that in this way we can control the chaos of entropy and make it useful by setting a zone where entropy increase is most likely to occur; on an enzyme.

The big gun that causes the overall entropy of the body to increase is metabolism. The structural entropy of the body's polymers is low. Metabolism is a dynamic response to this entropy deficit. All the food we eat is broken down into smaller and small molecules, all the way to CO2 and H20, with the extraction of energy. The entropy potential enhancement or need to increase is part of the catalytic assistance on enzymes that can result in enthalpy or internal energy change; makes extra energy available to drive synthesis.

Being an open system, the CO2 and water from metabolism is continuely lost through breathing and sweating, etc. However, the polymers of life remain as part of our bodies structures, in a more or less permanent state of lowered entropy. This structure, changes with the stages of life. These more or less permanent structures perpetuates the entropic potential, for food gathering and eating, with the needed entropic increase evolving to consciousness. Neurons have the highest metabolic rates and the structural matrix of the brain, has evolved other ways to increased entropy; neuron firing and ionic currents, that result in the consciousness. Like the body, when we build a bridge, we lower structural entropy of steel atoms and the bridge becomes very dynamic; traffic is drawn to it to increase the entropy. The 2nd law is instinctive.

There are two aspect of entropy, structural and dynamic. The first gets lower as we grow, while the second amplifies as are grow, to help compensate and achieve a net gain in system entropy; 2nd law.

My take on the contrast between Evolution and Creation is based on the mathematical/philosophical approach of each. Life Sciences still use a dice and cards approach. This approach is not consistent with the repeatable order found in life. If life behaved like the life science approaches life of dice and cards, life should be an unpredictable mess of random events. We should not see the exacting template relationships on the DNA. Every birth would be like a lottery with no sure things. They are not modeling life in a way that represents the sure things of life which are in the majority.

Creation, on the other hand, assumes God who is all knowing and all powerful. Conceptually, such an entity would use a much more planned and logical approach to life. Life as we know it is very ordered down to the repeatable nanoscale. We can teach cellular replication since this is very repeatable and not subject to dice and cards every time it happens, like the main math of the life sciences. Do you see the irony? Why use math connected to disorder, to model 99.9% order? Would not used ordered math; rational? No common sense.

Ny guess is this is driven my making money, connected to the medical industries. There is more money in the 0.1% disorder; sickness and mutations, than in the 99.9% organized order within life. If all your body order is perfect, you are not a money cow. Everything is treated as though disorder is the rule; for making money; risk due to the assumption all is disordered. Evolution is treated like a disease; mutation, and not part of an ordered path that leads to even better and better order, as we see in more evolved things. The structural order, by improving, allows more and more control over the dynamic entropy; disorder is better controlled. The DNA is now near perfect, not worse.

I use the concept of entropy as one of my main variables in the water model, since this has to increase, based on natural laws. This provides a vector path for the structural and dynamic order. Water is more connected to the dynamic aspect of entropy, since all reaction occurs in the more fluid water and very often involve adding or taking away water. Entropy is not about dice and cards, or the few exception to the rule, but is fundamental sense of ordered direction; has to net increase over time in the whole universe.

There is concept connected to entropy, called states or entropic states. These are like molecular steps of increasing entropy with fixed entropy values. In life and evolution, these steps are part the fixed and structural features of life, like DNA and they help to order the dynamic. These steps allow for things to remain the same; sweet spots. These entropic states, quantum jump upward in steps, which can be predicted by adding the two; structural and dynamic as mediated by water.
 
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Pogo

Well-Known Member
Entropy staying the same only applies to closed systems; black box. Such systems will reach a steady state and then stop changing in terms of entropy. Life is open system and therefore entropy will increase via the second law. We breathe, eat and eliminate waste. Steady state is never achieved. Even in death, we decompose, give off gases, depolymerize and dehydrate; open system. Although a good old fashion Egyptian tomb may reach close to a closed system over time; mummy.

You are partially right about an aspect of life that decreases entropy. This is connected to structural polymers of life, RNA, DNA and protein. As we grow and add these polymers, they define lower entropy, relative to their free monomers or base units; amino acids to protein will lower the entropy due to loss atomic freedom.

These structural materials, by defining lower entropy, create an entropic potential or a potential to increase the entropy within life. One of the bottlenecks in Abiogenesis is making protein from amino acids. This reaction does not want to proceed all by itself since it lowers entropy, relative the all free amino acids just floating in water bending and vibrating. You need to add energy to force this situation, such as dehydration on clay by solar energy. This is useful to life, in that in this way we can control the chaos of entropy and make it useful by setting a zone where entropy increase is most likely to occur; on an enzyme.

The big gun that causes the overall entropy of the body to increase is metabolism. The structural entropy of the body's polymers is low. Metabolism is a dynamic response to this entropy deficit. All the food we eat is broken down into smaller and small molecules, all the way to CO2 and H20, with the extraction of energy. The entropy potential enhancement or need to increase is part of the catalytic assistance on enzymes that can result in enthalpy or internal energy change; makes extra energy available to drive synthesis.

Being an open system, the CO2 and water from metabolism is continuely lost through breathing and sweating, etc. However, the polymers of life remain as part of our bodies structures, in a more or less permanent state of lowered entropy. This structure, changes with the stages of life. These more or less permanent structures perpetuates the entropic potential, for food gathering and eating, with the needed entropic increase evolving to consciousness. Neurons have the highest metabolic rates and the structural matrix of the brain, has evolved other ways to increased entropy; neuron firing and ionic currents, that result in the consciousness. Like the body, when we build a bridge, we lower structural entropy of steel atoms and the bridge becomes very dynamic; traffic is drawn to it to increase the entropy. The 2nd law is instinctive.

There are two aspect of entropy, structural and dynamic. The first gets lower as we grow, while the second amplifies as are grow, to help compensate and achieve a net gain in system entropy; 2nd law.

My take on the contrast between Evolution and Creation is based on the mathematical/philosophical approach of each. Life Sciences still use a dice and cards approach. This approach is not consistent with the repeatable order found in life. If life behaved like the life science approaches life of dice and cards, life should be an unpredictable mess of random events. We should not see the exacting template relationships on the DNA. Every birth would be like a lottery with no sure things. They are not modeling life in a way that represents the sure things of life which are in the majority.

Creation, on the other hand, assumes God who is all knowing and all powerful. Conceptually, such an entity would use a much more planned and logical approach to life. Life as we know it is very ordered down to the repeatable nanoscale. We can teach cellular replication since this is very repeatable and not subject to dice and cards every time it happens, like the main math of the life sciences. Do you see the irony? Why use math connected to disorder, to model 99.9% order? Would not used ordered math; rational? No common sense.

Ny guess is this is driven my making money, connected to the medical industries. There is more money in the 0.1% disorder; sickness and mutations, than in the 99.9% organized order within life. If all your body order is perfect, you are not a money cow. Everything is treated as though disorder is the rule; for making money; risk due to the assumption all is disordered. Evolution is treated like a disease; mutation, and not part of an ordered path that leads to even better and better order, as we see in more evolved things. The structural order, by improving, allows more and more control over the dynamic entropy; disorder is better controlled. The DNA is now near perfect, not worse.

I use the concept of entropy as one of my main variables in the water model, since this has to increase, based on natural laws. This provides a vector path for the structural and dynamic order. Water is more connected to the dynamic aspect of entropy, since all reaction occurs in the more fluid water and very often involve adding or taking away water. Entropy is not about dice and cards, or the few exception to the rule, but is fundamental sense of ordered direction; has to net increase over time in the whole universe.

There is concept connected to entropy, called states or entropic states. These are like molecular steps of increasing entropy with fixed entropy values. In life and evolution, these steps are part the fixed and structural features of life, like DNA and they help to order the dynamic. These steps allow for things to remain the same; sweet spots. These entropic states, quantum jump upward in steps, which can be predicted by adding the two; structural and dynamic as mediated by water.
Just one question, does the expectoration of this word salad increase or decrease your entropy?
 

TagliatelliMonster

Veteran Member
It’s no lie….

It is and I just told you how it is.
I explained what PE is actually all about. You handwaving it without addressing a single point mentioned is not how to properly respond to it.

Do you realize the problem that a punctuated, ie., burst or spurt, “rate of change” presents for species? “Punctuated” observable mutations in offspring would result in parents abandoning or killing their young, which we often find in the animal kingdom when offspring are different from their parents.
Your imagined problems are of no consequence.

I can only repeat myself. PE explains how the rate of change in evolutionary processes changes and how this relates to environmental stability and species reaching their local optimum (aka: stasis). During such periods, natural selection favours the status quo. Meaning that any phenotype changes will more likely then not be selected against. Once environmental stability /local optimum is upset, selection pressures change. Now the status quo is no longer favored. Phenotype changes (which occur all the time) will now have much higher chance of being selected for. So the rate of evolutionary change will increase.

How this relates to Gould, is that stasis in the fossil record served as a hint for him to co-develop this model. And when tested (with simulation and lab experiments) it turned out to be bang on.

In contrast, in Darwin's idea of a steady rate of change over time, this didn't fit the fossil record. The fossil record shows short periods of much change followed by longer periods of stasis.

Dishonest creationists then used that and pretended as if it is some dishonest attempt by Gould to "explain away" some imagined lack of "transitional fossils".
This is just wrong. There ARE transitional fossils and many of them. It's just that they aren't found in a "steady spread" but in more "burst like" fashion, which is what PE explains.

So now you have learned something. Or at least, you had the opportunity. But I predict you will be back handwaving this all away with at best another fallacious non-scientific link to creationist propaganda followed by a repeat of the same willful ignorance.

However, I would love you to surprise me. I don't have high hopes though.

Try a real source instead of creationist propaganda.
 

Audie

Veteran Member
I accepted that it was not very good at offering advice not to long ago.
But its non-judgemental listing skill more than makes up for it.

Though I have thought more than once it may be guilty of enablement...
Enable not, lest thou be enabled
 

9-10ths_Penguin

1/10 Subway Stalinist
Premium Member
We do, huh? You should have told
Stephen Jay Gould.

He wrote: “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our text- books have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.”

Excerpt from:
Evolution’s Erratic Pace - "Natural History," May, 1977

Stop with inaccurate statements.
Shame you didn't keep on reading Gould. He has several essays in the 90s that outline clear transitional fossil sequences point-by-point.
 
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