I’m sorry, I didn’t specify that they remain the same as in message #237.
bodswood, I think we’re reaching a conclusion here. You seem, gradually, to be coming around to accepting this statement as true:
Species die out and other species which weren’t there before take their place, over millions of years.
If during the course of this thread you do accept it, could you tell us explicitly? You might have different beliefs about how those new species appeared, but you would still be accepting the inescapable conclusion that they appeared, rather than coexisted with every single other species ever. It would take some courage on your part but I feel it would make the thread a useful example to others who might follow after you.
Until then, some agree/disagree tick boxes for you. Which parts of the Cosmological timeline do you accept?
[ul][li]The universe is around 14 billion years old, as evidenced by eg. the galactic red-shift and the Cosmic Microwave Background.[/li][li]The Earth is around 4.5 billion years old, as evidenced by eg. the presence of “long-lived” isotopes of uranium and radium but the absence of any shorter half-lives in the Earth’s crust.[/li][li]Rock strata can be dated using radiometric dating to form the geologic timescale (see also continental drift).[/li][li]Humans, apes, horses, gulls, tigers etc. (indeed almost any creature around today) only appear in the very, very top strata of the Earth, far above dinosaurs and far, far above trilobytes.[/ul][/li]
If you accept each of these, you are drawn inexorably to accepting the statement in italics (the fact of evolution) as true. It is then no great leap to allow fossils to be placed on this timescale, allowing us to build a timeline of evolution. Again, you may disagree how prokaryotes existed 3 billion years ago and humans exist now, but you cannot escape the fact that they do.
One final question which, hopefully, should bring the entire problem into focus:
If humans have been around for billions of years, how come we only started building, writing and metalworking in the last few thousand?
As I’ve said before, I have no problem with evolution as a built-in adaptation mechanism. But for you anti-creationists out there, the old chicken or egg first question always haunts me if I try to think of non-divine evolution only as a means of the development of life on Earth.
Can anyone give an answer to even this rudimentary question of which came first, the chicken or the egg? Can anyone explain how it is that stomachs “evolved” at the same time teeth “evolved” yet the species didn’t die out during the time that one was evolving separate from the other? Or did teeth and stomachs, along with esophaguses all develop simultaneously, and if so how did we get our nourishment in the thousands or millions of years it would take for this process to evolve? How did complexities such as eyes develop when we had no awareness of the need for them at the stage when we were blind, and how did eyeballs and optic nerves spontaneously generate at the same time? Or did we spontaneously and completely randomly, without any divine intervention, just happen to develop them as a coincidence? And how did the skull know to accommodate them by remoulding itself to provide eye sockets?
And why, of all the animal life on this planet, has no rudimentary being ever been discovered that died during these preliminary and undeveloped stages? All that has ever been discovered to my knowledge are a few vestigal sproutings here and there of limbs that are no longer needed, etc. And even these few evidences of evolutionary adaptation are regressive in that they are appendages that are shrinking, not developing out of nowhere.
I’m not looking to make fun here. I’d really like to know what the commonly accepted explanation is for how such highly developed and well engineered humans and animals came into being through evolution only, with no guiding or intelligent force whatsoever coming to bear on them.
Unless of course, we are really just a giant space terrarium populated by aliens from another world…but then, where would the aliens have come from. 
Starving Artist, talk.origins answers all of those questions (as we have been saying for 5 pages). One need not consider a tooth, stomach or eye appearing from ‘nowhere’. One can start from a calcified jaw, primitive digestive sac or light sensitive cell and move towards teeth, stomachs and eyes in small, eminently feasible steps.
“Evolution is cleverer than you are”, as they say.
Thank you, I check it out.
Sorry, I was interruped. I mean I’ll check it out. Thanks again.
The egg. The chicken evolved from something that wasn’t a chicken but came in eggs.
I’m not sure I understand this, but it seems that you believe that evolution has a set “goal” and works towards that goal, in this case the teeth and stomach arrangement of the modern human being. This is not the case. There were small changes along the way that eventually, by chance and natural selection, led to the arrangement we have today. And we’re not done in any sense. In a few hundred thousand years, if creationism still exists, someone will ask how we got our nourishment back in 2004 AD, since we didn’t have any gnorzyars yet.
Through tiny changes. It probably started with light-sensitive spots on the skin. They turned out to be an advantage and so got better and better until the very good and very complex arrangement we have today. Which is still also evolving.
Yeah, more or less.
The same way that the bodies of malformed babies know how to accomodate the malformations. A baby with one eye will have one eye socket.
There are in fact some, I believe (and some creatures with, for example, rudimentary eyes remain alive), but the answer to your question is that very few dead animals become fossils, and those that don’t are lost forever.
The short answer is, well, evolution through tiny steps (and, I’m sure, some occasional big mutations that happened to catch on). It took a long time, but it happened. And it’s still happening today. There are the bats of Sulawesi, for example.
Or take me. Most of my friends and relatives, unlike much of the world, can consume cow’s milk despite being adults, without suffering any ill effects. This is a mutation, and a fairly late one if I recall correctly. I don’t have this mutation, so I’m lactose intolerant. These are all facts. Now, imagine that being lactose intolerant is a barrier to reproduction. No girl likes me because I can’t drink milk. Poor me. Or maybe milk is a really important part of the available diet. That means I don’t get to pass on my genes, whereas lactose tolerant people do. Next generation has fewer lactose intolerant people, who have it even harder to find mates. Some generations later, only lactose tolerant people exist. Humans have now evolved to being lactose tolerant.
It works the same with anything you can think of. No, humans cannot arise directly from amoebas. But the amoeba can have a mutation that makes it better than other amoebas, and then it’s on its way to becoming Stephen Hawking.
I wasn’t there, and I don’t have the cites. These are educated guesses on my part. However, most of these are easy to explain through natural selection.
The egg existed for millions of years before the bird that we today call a chicken. At some point, a not-quite-chicken laid an egg that contained a just-barely-chicken.
Stomachs (although not as specialized as ours) existed long before teeth. In fact, guts existed before bones. Jellyfish have something akin to a stomach (a place to store food while it’s being digested). Chewing isn’t necessary for nourishment. Even toothless modern humans can eat.
I would guess that the thing that eventually developed into the vertebrate eye started as a touch receptor (I’m not going to go all the way down the chain to how nerves developed, but we can reason that out if you’d like, and I’m sure there is even evidence for how it happened). This touch receptor evolved the ability to sense heat. This receptor was duplicated, because multiple receptors gave the organism a survival benefit. The receptor mutated to detect a slightly different spectrum of photon. Some receptors specialized to detect green, some blue, some red, some just general intensity of photons. Grouping them together allowed the organism to better identify whether the light was coming from something dangerous. This group of receptors was useful, so organisms with this group protected gained a survival advantage over organisms without it protected. Allow the process to continue for a billion years or so, and you have a human eye, complete with all of the things that make it work better than the pre-eyes that came before it.
We’ve found plenty of evolutionary dead-ends. You might want to read about the Cambrian explosion, although the seeming “explosion” of organisms was probably mostly due to the new development of hard parts that fossilized more easily (it isn’t necessary that there were suddenly more organisms, there were simply more organisms forming fossils). Some of the random developments worked better than others, and led to modern organisms. Others didn’t work so well, and those organisms were out-competed.
The reason we don’t see a TON of the failures is because, well, they were failures. If only one organism ever has a given mutation, the chance of that organism leaving behind a fossil is vanishingly small.
Well, there technically aren’t any “engineered” humans and animals, except those developed through human intervention (selective breeding and genetic engineering). The rest are well suited to their environments, but I wouldn’t call them engineered 
Do I know that no intelligence played a part? No. However, if a deity was guiding evolution, he was micromanaging unnecessarily. It seems clear that competition for resources coupled with mutation can do a perfectly fine job of weeding out the less fit organisms.
Substitute “deities” or “deity” for aliens, and “from… somewhere… outside, or something” for “from another world”, and the “answer” seems equally weak to me. Any such guess can be only a guess, and it still leaves the original question–something like “Where did the stuff that makes the stuff come from” unanswered. Natural selection, especially if you reduce it to its core of “given time, things that are more likely to survive will survive more often than things that are less likely to survive”, explains the same things without multiplying entities, and we have evidence that it is true. There’s no need to bring in aliens, deities, or pink unicorns.
As for the origin of the universe, well, that’s a different question. I’m willing to say, “I don’t know,” but I hope that someday we’ll have a good theory that explains it (not that the Big Bang isn’t a good theory, but I don’t think it’s 100% established as “very probably true” yet, and I still can’t grok why the Big Bang happened… hmm, starting a new thread, actually)…
I didn’t think I needed to repeat the qualifier “theists of the sort that call atheism a religion.” Read it again with that qualifier and see if you disagree.
Highly developed, I will grant.
“Well engineered” is a bit problematic. I can think of a lot of engineering changes that would improve most animals (including people). For example, large brains in humans impose a large strain on women giving birth. A design that allowed women to deliver through an abdominal opening instead of through the constricting pelvis required for upright motion would have made childbirth easier and safer. Why not have six appendages rather than four, to allow swifter locomotion while continuing to permit opposable thumbs and manual dexterity? Read any collection of horse magazines and you’ll see numerous articles bemoaning the “bad design” trade-offs inherent in that animal. To achieve its speed and power, the horse has simplified and streamlined parts of the horse’s legs that result in a weaker system, more susceptible to breakage. The horse’s digestive system is notorious for being cranky and easily disturbed.
This is not to say that there are no wonderful feats of engineering demonstrated in the natural world, but the idea that all (or even most) animals are “well engineered” arises from a failure to inspect the actual “designs” that have been implemented. Evolution makes do with the raw materials of previous generations on which it builds changes that happen to be successful in keeping enough individuals alive long enough to breed another generation. Much of it is quite amazing, but only in a backyard mechanic sort of way.
I’m going to address only this part of your post because no one has pointed out the mistaken premise: There are no “preliminary” or “undeveloped” stages. Evolution doesn’t decide to create an eye and then go about making quarter-eyes, then half-eyes before it gets there. Every organism is fully developed for how it lives its life. Changes are compounded on existing changes in a random way, with traits that aid in survival/reproduction favored in future generations. It only appears directed when we look at the developmental stages in hindsight.
And if you think creating an eye requires divine intervention, how much more complicated creating a deity must be!
Nevermind, no new thread. This one satisfied me (feel free to start a new one if you find a flaw in that thread, or point me to a different thread; just let’s avoid turning this thread into a Big Bang thread). Summary of the thread, as I see it:
The Big Bang is the point before which we can’t make predictions
“Before the Big Bang” is meaningless, because time is wrapped up in space, both of which seem to originate at the Big Bang. However, I’m not sure it isn’t POSSIBLE that there were space-time dimensions in other universes “when” the Big Bang occurred. However, that leads me to…
At this point, any conjecture of conditions “before” the Big Bang (however you might define “Before” when time didn’t exist) are purely conjecture. We have no way of detecting what happened “before” the Big Bang, because the Big Bang is the point where our understanding breaks down.
In other words, “I don’t know”, and I’m willing to live with that… unless M theory or something can explain “before” the Big Bang
Talk about bad design! How about teeth? As Mark Twain so aptly pointed out, they are usually developed with quite a bit of pain and then when fully developed, fall out and are replaced by another set. And this set is subject to all sorts of ills. The notorious shark, on the other hand, was the recipient of the Great Designer’s grace in having teeth that are continuously replaced, sort of like a converyor belt.
Maybe it was “designed” that way because the shark makes a living with teeth whereas humans don’t, at least not entirely. However Dr. Bergan Evans in The Natural History of Nonsense maintains that problems with teeth are a significant cause of death in wild predators. And, of course if the Great Designer designed the shark’s teeth that way because the shark is a meat eating predator, why not the teeth of all meat eating predators?
Just another take on this. This question has the implicit assumption that the layer of the egg with the first chicken was clearly a non-chicken. Actually the distinction between chicken and almost chicken would be very hard to find. Check out ring species in talkorigins, for example. What probably happened is that a population of ur-chickens got isolated, and slowly diverged from the root stock. At some point they became unable to interbreed with the ur-chickens. The first such could be called the first chicken, but you’d probably never be able to tell.
I don’t know my chicken history, but I bet chickens were bred by people, right? If so, the chicken raisers did the isolating.
That evolution proceeds by immediate jumps (a clear non-chicken produces a chicken) is one of the fallacies of those who don’t understand it that does not get often addressed.
[quote[
And why, of all the animal life on this planet, has no rudimentary being ever been discovered that died during these preliminary and undeveloped stages? All that has ever been discovered to my knowledge are a few vestigal sproutings here and there of limbs that are no longer needed, etc. And even these few evidences of evolutionary adaptation are regressive in that they are appendages that are shrinking, not developing out of nowhere.
[/QUOTE]
This is another fallacy - that intermediate forms shouldn’t be able to survive. There are lots of intermediate forms around today, if you just look. Flying squirrels might be on their way to true flight. My favorite example is the elephant seal. In late November you can visit Ano Nuevo California, and see the seals on the beach. They go here to breed. They only breed out of water, and bear young out of water, but only can eat in the water. In the water they are graceful out of it they are ungainly to say the least. The females must store up food, go to the few places where they breed, breed, and bear young. You’d hardly think such a thing was viable if you didn’t see it yourself. Perhaps someday there will be mutation that lets a population of elephant seals bear young and breed in the water. I’m sure that would be advantageous. Then they might well lose the ability to go on land at all, and beome purely aquatic like whales. But we can’t say they are headed that way, for evolution has no direction. Elephant seals might well go extinct, or might linger on in this way for millions of years, or might even figure out how to eat on land.
Anyone who sees a seal and then demands to see a transitional form has no imagination.
Bodswood, please forgive me for taking so long to get back to you on this. My life is rather hectic at the moment. I believe that, as a human being I am created in God’s image; I also fully accept evolution as the best explanation we have on hand for the way lifeforms, including human beings, are the way we are. How does evolution rule out a Cosmic Originator? I gave you my reasons for believing what I do, and explained how my knowledge of science, such as it is, enhances my wonder. Is being made in His image linked to physical form? Doesn’t the human soul count towards being made in His image? Evolution says nothing about the creation of the soul because that is not its provenance.
Most of the Christians I’ve met who believe one cannot believe in evolution and be a Christian also believe that non-Christians are doomed to an eternity of suffering. As an Anglican Christian, I find this to be wicked an insulting. As I said a few days ago, I am what God made me, yet, by that definition, I will burn in hell despite an absolute faith in Jesus.
By the way, I should advise you that I am rather familiar with the cultural difficulties your claiming – I was born in England and raised by English parents in America. I’m quite familiar with juggling cultures, but what would you expect from one some would consider a heretic?
Respectfully,
CJ
Actually, when I think of the chicken or the egg question, I don’t think in terms of other animals at all. I wonder how the egg itself came into being with no chicken to lay it; and if the chicken came first, how did the chicken come into being without an egg for it to hatch from?
Also, and if this has already been covered I apologize, but talk of evolutionary process aside once life had begun, how do non-creationists scientifically explain life coming into being in the first place, even in the most primitive one-celled animal? It seems to me this is the key question in regard to creationism vs. evolution. Life itself has to come into being before evolution can even begin.
It was covered. Evolution has absolutely nothing to say about how life began-- only about how life changes once life exists. Right now, no one has a well accepted theory about life began-- we simply don’t know for sure. But all that means is that the state of our science right now is missing some key information, not that there is something wrong with science itself. We do know there are self replicating molecules out there, and we do understand what the basic building blocks of life are (amino acids), but we just don’t know how it all came together to make life.
How do creationists explain the origin of God? The concept of God simply pushes back one step further the point where we say “we don’t know how that came about”. It does absolutely nothing to explain the “ultimate question”-- all it does is rephrase it.
This question was already answered. The egg came from its parent. There is no single generation in which any difference would by noticable. There is no “moment” or demarcation of speciation. The process is so gradual that you don’t see it.
A very good analogy is languages (bodswood, are you listening?) languages change over time. Sometimes two communities can start by speaking the same language but if the languages are segregated, then each will morph into a separate language which is distinct from the parent language.
French, Spanish and Italian are all descended from Latin. At what point did people stop speaking Latin and start speaking Italian. When was the change? Did one generation just spontaneously begin to speak differently than its parents? When did Old English turn into Middle English?
We can take this much further. There is a huge family of modern languages which are all descended from one ancient language called Indo-European. From Indo-European came Greek, Latin and Sanskrit, just to name a few. From those languages we have virtually every European language now extant. English has the same parent as Dutch as Russian and as ancient Sanskrit.
Language, over time, “speciates” into other languages which are quite distinct from the parent languages and the same parent language can produce some incredibly divergent and dissimilar “descendants.”
But can we ever see it happening. Can we every really locate a moment of “speciation?”
Evolution is like that.
Chickens were not the first to lay eggs, of course. Animals have been producing eggs ever since sex evolved. The chicken-like egg - the amniote egg - also predates chickens by a substantial time period, and was a significant step in the process of moving from “fully aquatic” to “partially aquatic” to “fully terrestrial”. The eggs of birds are only slightly modified from those of their reptilian ancestors, so there were eggs for chickens to pop out of long before there were chickens to pop out of them.