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How do Creationist Explain This?

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
You do realize that evolution is based on the genome for which we can trace back to our ancestors.

Bears for instance comes from the genome shared by dogs and seals. Not through breeding of course, but through the genome that was imparted from a common ancestor.

It's also interesting know that butterflies are pretty much an evolved moth. And you're right moths will stay moths until they adapt , branch out, and form a new species. Like butterflies. Who knows what butterflies will lead too over the course of evolution?

Your cladistics need a little work. For example butterflies, since they evolved from moths, are still moths. They will always be moths. One cannot evolve out of one's clade. All butterflies are moths but not all moths are butterflies. The descendants of butterflies will always be butterflies (and moths) even if they lose the ability to fly, they will still be butterflies.
 

Kangaroo Feathers

Yea, it is written in the Book of Cyril...
Your cladistics need a little work. For example butterflies, since they evolved from moths, are still moths. They will always be moths. One cannot evolve out of one's clade. All butterflies are moths but not all moths are butterflies. The descendants of butterflies will always be butterflies (and moths) even if they lose the ability to fly, they will still be butterflies.
Probably worth explaining that the old King Phil Classes Ordinary Families as Generous and Special kingdom model has been superseded by the cladistic model, largely as a result of advances in genetics. Some people are genuinely unaware that what they learned in high school biology is not current.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
Probably worth explaining that the old King Phil Classes Ordinary Families as Generous and Special kingdom model has been superseded by the cladistic model, largely as a result of advances in genetics. Some people are genuinely unaware that what they learned in high school biology is not current.
Yep, I am getting there. It is why questions about the link between man and ape are not proper. To use Aron Ra's favorite example one would not ask about a link between German Shepherds and dogs.
 

Twilight Hue

Twilight, not bright nor dark, good nor bad.
Your cladistics need a little work. For example butterflies, since they evolved from moths, are still moths. They will always be moths. One cannot evolve out of one's clade. All butterflies are moths but not all moths are butterflies. The descendants of butterflies will always be butterflies (and moths) even if they lose the ability to fly, they will still be butterflies.
Your correct. That should have been worded better on my part. :O]
 

QuestioningMind

Well-Known Member
So it may seam. But, we need to take into account the other part of the puzzle.....DNA (information blueprints).

We can only adapt and keep adapting to a limited point by what are DNA info allows.

The only way this aventual large change could happen is if the blueprints got rewritten.
And that's precisely what genetic mutation can do... rewrite the blueprints.
 

SkepticThinker

Veteran Member
Did you ever hear of the Non Sequitur Show?

Even I found out just how ignorant I was on evolution myself until I came across this Aron Ra and Kent Hovind debate. I came away a hell of a lot more knowledgeable of evolution than I ever was prior to viewing the debate and was wholly impressed and floored with Aron Ra's ability to articulate evolution to lay people in a way that is understandable. I am in utter amazement by just how well this man can teach and be interesting at the same time. I've learned more about Evolution from him than I ever learned in school.

Aside from the obvious entertainment this brings with the exchanges between Aaron Ra and Kent Hovind, Aaron explains evolution in such a way here that if anyone watching and listening to this dosent walk away with a better understanding of what evolution is and how it works at the conclusion, oh woe is ye!!

The debate is 2 hours long, so fire up the popcorn if you want to learn a little bit about evolution while listening to the loonyness of Hovind ramblings.


This is awesome! Totally worth the listen. I couldn't agree more about Aron Ra.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
I actually came across a few on YT. That's a lot of material so I know I'm in for a lot more education and of course watching Hovind bungle his way through.

I noticed Aron has made quite a few vids with other creationists as well as various talks and I have to admit I like him a lot better than Richard Dawkins. If for anyting, it's for his amazing ability to teach in a way that you can understand and comprehend. It's so refreshing to have people like him around.
And the debate continues as I posted earlier, this was posted on Aron Ra's channel today:

 

youknowme

Whatever you want me to be.
Creationists simply believe what is obvious to all logical thinkers....there is an Intelligent Designer of all things.

How does intelligent design rule out the notion that variability stems from one or a few sources?
 

74x12

Well-Known Member
Natural selection will preserve favorable variations while removing unfavorable variations. If this is true, then over time small changes will accumulate into large changes.
You're forgetting that favorable changes in one category can actually be overall detrimental. Let's take breeds of dogs for example. You have various kinds of dogs specialized to do specific things better. For example grey hounds are very fast and pit bulls are good at fighting.

But as is well known; a "mutt" is overall a healthier dog. Because it's gene pool is more diverse and so even though it's only a mutt; yet it is overall more adept at survival.

What we have in this experiment is a petridish environment where the best way to survive is to resist antibiotics. But is that true in the real world? Not as much. The regular "normal" bacteria will probably be more adept survivors in the real world; except maybe in a hospital where they use large amounts of antibiotics.
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
You're forgetting that favorable changes in one category can actually be overall detrimental. Let's take breeds of dogs for example. You have various kinds of dogs specialized to do specific things better. For example grey hounds are very fast and pit bulls are good at fighting.

But as is well known; a "mutt" is overall a healthier dog. Because it's gene pool is more diverse and so even though it's only a mutt; yet it is overall more adept at survival.

What we have in this experiment is a petridish environment where the best way to survive is to resist antibiotics. But is that true in the real world? Not as much. The regular "normal" bacteria will probably be more adept survivors in the real world; except maybe in a hospital where they use large amounts of antibiotics.

Yes, this demonstrates a couple of ways that evolution works too. First small populations change faster than large ones. In case you did not know, but populations increase in diversity as the population grows and as time goes on. If a relatively small population exists for a long time it will be more diverse than a small population that just got through either a speciation event or a population bottleneck. Cheetahs went through a rather extreme version of this that effectively refutes the Noah's Ark myth.

It also demonstrates how small populations non-diverse populations face threats in continued existence. If a population does not gain "new information" fast enough it is at risk of going extinct. Cheetahs have teetered on the brink for quite some time. It is still questionable whether they will be able to come back and become a healthy species again.
 
The possible combinations of genetic code in even the simplest of lifeforms is mind boggling huge, and that does not even taken into account how the code is read, considering context matters to interpretation.

Heres the thing though, a very large book dont mean the blueprints can be just anything. Our blueprints are different from trees or lions.

Blueprints for a house or car are different then blueprints for a skyscraper building.
 

Salvador

RF's Swedenborgian
The Bible says that God created the various "kinds" of living things in separate creative periods....he does not mention species. Species are simply variety produced within a single taxonomic family. It is obvious that the Creator loves variety.

Adaptation is a mechanism by which creatures can undergo small, cosmetic changes that can facilitate any alteration in food source or change in environment.

Since creation is direct, then there is no need of a common ancestor. The only place we see common ancestry is in science's diagrams. They cannot provide any real evidence that does not include inference and assumption. It's really guesswork.

The evidence is not overwhelming in facts, but definitely overwhelming in volume. Genetic evidence simply points to the fact that all living things have the same Creator who used the same basic materials for all living things. It is not proof of relationship with each other, but relationship to the God who put us here.

The fossils cannot speak unless science gives them a voice.

Creationists simply believe what is obvious to all logical thinkers....there is an Intelligent Designer of all things.

The fossil record isn't the only evidence in support of evolution. There is other collaborating evidence, such as overwhelming genetic evidence of common ancestry between humans and other great ape species. ...:)

Specific examples from comparative physiology and biochemistry:

Chromosome 2 in humans

Main article: Chromosome 2 (human)

Further information: Chimpanzee Genome Project § Genes of the Chromosome 2 fusion site

Figure 1b: Fusion of ancestral chromosomes left distinctive remnants of telomeres, and a vestigial centromere
Evidence for the evolution of Homo sapiens from a common ancestor with chimpanzees is found in the number of chromosomes in humans as compared to all other members of Hominidae. All hominidae have 24 pairs of chromosomes, except humans, who have only 23 pairs. Human chromosome 2 is a result of an end-to-end fusion of two ancestral chromosomes.

The evidence for this includes:
The correspondence of chromosome 2 to two ape chromosomes. The closest human relative, the common chimpanzee, has near-identical DNA sequences to human chromosome 2, but they are found in two separate chromosomes. The same is true of the more distant gorilla and orangutan.
The presence of a vestigial centromere. Normally a chromosome has just one centromere, but in chromosome 2 there are remnants of a second centromere.
The presence of vestigial telomeres. These are normally found only at the ends of a chromosome, but in chromosome 2 there are additional telomere sequences in the middle.

Chromosome 2 thus presents strong evidence in favour of the common descent of humans and other apes. According to J. W. Ijdo, "We conclude that the locus cloned in cosmids c8.1 and c29B is the relic of an ancient telomere-telomere fusion and marks the point at which two ancestral ape chromosomes fused to give rise to human chromosome 2
Chromosome2_merge.png

Figure 1b: Fusion of ancestral chromosomes left distinctive remnants of telomeres, and a vestigial centromere

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evidence_o...on_descent

Endogenous retroviruses (or ERVs) are remnant sequences in the genome left from ancient viral infections in an organism. The retroviruses (or virogenes) are always passed on to the next generation of that organism that received the infection. This leaves the virogene left in the genome. Because this event is rare and random, finding identical chromosomal positions of a virogene in two different species suggests common ancestry. Cats (Felidae) present a notable instance of virogene sequences demonstrating common descent. The standard phylogenetic tree for Felidae have smaller cats (Felis chaus, Felis silvestris, Felis nigripes, and Felis catus) diverging from larger cats such as the subfamily Pantherinae and other carnivores. The fact that small cats have an ERV where the larger cats do not suggests that the gene was inserted into the ancestor of the small cats after the larger cats had diverged. Another example of this is with humans and chimps. Humans contain numerous ERVs that comprise a considerable percentage of the genome. Sources vary, but 1% to 8% has been proposed. Humans and chimps share seven different occurrences of virogenes, while all primates share similar retroviruses congruent with phylogeny.

Fig.1.jpg


The first individual of the genus Homo-species formed from a couple of Australopithecus hetero zygotes, each of whom had the same type of chromosome rearrangements formed by fusion of the whole long arms of two acrocentric chromosomes, mated together and reproduced viable and fertile offspring with 46 chromosomes.

This first generation of Homo habilis then incestuously bred with each other and reproduced the next subsequent generation of Homo habilis.

References:
  1. J. Tjio and A. Levan. 1956. The chromosome number of Man. Hereditas, 42( 1-2): 1-6.
  2. W. Ijdo et al.1991. Origin of human chromosome 2: an ancestral telomere-telomere fusión. PNAS, 88: 9051-9056.
  3. Meyer et al. 2012 A high-coverage genome sequence from an archaic Denisovan individual. Science, 338:222-226.; K. H. Miga. 2016. Chromosome-specific Centromere sequences provide an estímate of the Ancestral Chromosome 2 Fusion event in Hominin Genome.Journ. of Heredity. 1-8. Doi:10.1093/jhered/esw039.
chromosome_fusion2.png


There's plenty of evidence humans share common ancestry with other great apes.

Evidence of common descent - Wikipedia

ERVs provide the closest thing to a mathematical proof for evolution.. ERVs are the relics of ancient viral infections preserved in our DNA. The odd thing is many ERVs are located in exactly the same position on our genome and the chimpanzee genome! There are two explanations for the perfectly matched ERV locations. Either it is an unbelievable coincidence that viruses just by chance were inserted in exactly the same location in our genomes, or humans and chimps share a common ancestor. The chances that a virus was inserted at the exact same location is 1 in 3,000,000,000. Humans and chimps share 7 instances of viruses inserted at perfectly matched location. It was our common ancestor that was infected, and we both inherited the ERVs.

Johnson, Welkin E.; Coffin, John M. (1999-08-31). "Constructing primate phylogenies from ancient retrovirus sequences". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 96(18): 10254–10260. Bibcode:1999PNAS...9610254J. doi:10.1073/pnas.96.18.10254. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 17875. PMID 10468595[
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
I believe in MICRO evolution, not macro.

So, small changes WITHIN a kind, but no big changes where it goes from one kind to another.

So, elephants dont turn to lions. Lol

Macro is just lots of micro

Why should an elephant turn into a lion? The phosphatherium evolved into the elephant. Lions evolved from miacoids
 

Deeje

Avid Bible Student
Premium Member
Microevolution can't explain how them 10,000 types of animals filling up Noah's Ark ended up as millions of species. ...:D

Since the specimens that survived on the ark were selected by the Creator and brought to Noah, science already knows that varieties of one family of creatures can be produced by their habitat and food source, it seems to me that if God chose them, he could also manipulate their future life any way he chose. He caused the flood, so why not the diversification of what he rescued? With adaptive capability, God did not need every species of every kind on the vessel.

The Bible does not concentrate on the details concerning the animal kingdom aside from saying that "fear of man" was now going to equip these creatures with a new survival advantage, since only after the flood were humans given permission to consume animal flesh.

The post flood history is centered on man and how quickly his rebellious spirit resurfaced after such a devastating conclusion to an old world where lessons were obviously not learned. Everything is part of a bigger story. But we humans never learn.
 

Jose Fly

Fisker of men
Since the specimens that survived on the ark were selected by the Creator and brought to Noah, science already knows that varieties of one family of creatures can be produced by their habitat and food source, it seems to me that if God chose them, he could also manipulate their future life any way he chose. He caused the flood, so why not the diversification of what he rescued? With adaptive capability, God did not need every species of every kind on the vessel.
So yet again, when a Jehovah's Witness is questioned about a specific detail of the Biblical Flood, their answer is nothing more than "God did it".
 
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