# ID vs. Evolution... support and discuss **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 8, 2006, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557 "2006-02-08T17:17:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![EEMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a6a055/32.png) [@EEMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EEMan)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/1 "2006-02-08T17:17:20Z")
Sorry that this needs to be done… but I guess we have hijacked another thread long enough… To that end I shall continue the discussion here, if you would be so kind as to all that… > [@](#): > > > [@EEMan](#): > > > > Drug resistance is an example of Natural selection… not of evolution… related, but not the same thing > > > > HeLa cells are not spontanious… therefore not germain to a conversation on evolution (a spontanious process)… all that proves is that new species can be created… the irony being, by an intelligent designer… > > That’s incorrect. These experiments are done starting with one bacteria, which is pure and which does not have resistance. The resistance comes from a mutation, which then dominates through natural selection. If the experiment were done with a heterogenous population, some of which had the immune gene and some not, then you would be correct. I guess I’m unaware of that study… details would be helpful for my understanding… however, how did they measure the ‘resistance’… if you begin with a single bacteria, what did the drug do? Obviously not kill it… or there would be no future generations to measure it… It would support gentic mutation (another theory related to evolution), but not species evolution… in that, the species itself did not become a new species… More details will be very helpful to me however… > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > There is no PROOF of evolution, as we can not test it… we do not have enough time nor historical evidence (to show the changes)… we have EVIDENCE that gives it credance, much like we have evidence for Newtonian Physics… but as we saw that was an imperfect model as well… > > Sorry, evolution is tested every time we find a fossil, and every time we do an experiment. Testing can just falsify evolution, never prove it, so you are correct that there is no proof - but then there isn’t proof for just about any scientific theory. That’s not how science works. You are absolutely correct… you can never prove anything… Finding fossils does not give pure evidence for evolution either, as we have never found the ‘missing links’ (plural, as not only the ‘missing link’ for humans… but any interspecies ‘jump’)… what that proves is there were things here previously that are no longer here (as far as we know… seems this week we found somethings we thought were gone)… But we have seen things go extint not only in historical terms… but in living memory… what seems a bit telling is that we haven’t found fossils for certain modern animals… but then that could be explained as a popluation difference (not enough of x,y, or z to have been preserved and/or not preserved enough for us to find… etc) > [@](#): > > > [@](#): > > > > I would say the existance of HeLa cells actually gives EVIDENCE that Intelligent Design is possible (as does cross breeding, and sub-speices specialization) > > Intelligent design in principle is not impossible. We just have never seen any evidence of it, and don’t need it to explain anything, so it is pointless to consider it. Sure we have… we have seen evidence, in that we are capable of it… I think the advocates of ID see it as a need to explain how so complex a system could exist without a designer… One arguement I hear a lot is … if you come across a house in the woods, you don’t think ‘hey i wonder what that evolved from’… yet things a billion times more complicated (like mitocondra) are looked as spontanious generation (of sorts)… I personally believe that evolution (that is one species was developed from another) is a perfectly reasonible explination, however… I DO find it very difficult to pathom the number of spontanious events that would be required to develop the most basic of celluar organs… not to mention the generation of more complex multicell organs… ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/2 "2006-02-08T17:24:16Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > I personally believe that evolution (that is one species was developed from another) is a perfectly reasonible explination, however… I DO find it very difficult to pathom the number of spontanious events that would be required to develop the most basic of celluar organs… not to mention the generation of more complex multicell organs… So, how do you explain how “The Designer” came into being? All that introducing a Designer into the process does is push the ulitmate explanation back further. ---
**Author:** ![EEMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a6a055/32.png) [@EEMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EEMan)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/3 "2006-02-08T17:29:02Z")
> [@John Mace](#): > > So, how do you explain how “The Designer” came into being? All that introducing a Designer into the process does is push the ulitmate explanation back further. I don’t … you will notice that I did not say **I** supported ID… and the reason I have trouble with it… is for that reason… What I said, was I find it hard to pathom all the billions of chance happenings that would need to occur to make a single functional organelle (celluar organ)… and the trillions more required to make a single more complicated organ… let alone the intricate control of each… **I** don’t have a logical reason for any of that to have happened… but it obviously did… Then again if it happened once (here on earth) what arguement could you come up with it NOT happening for a designer prior to that? Perhaps the answer IS evolution… of a designer… and design of us… who knows… That is why this particular field is pushed into the realm of ‘soft science’ and/or philosphy in **my mind** ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/4 "2006-02-08T17:29:47Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > I think the advocates of ID see it as a need to explain how so complex a system could exist without a designer… > > One arguement I hear a lot is … if you come across a house in the woods, you don’t think ‘hey i wonder what that evolved from’… yet things a billion times more complicated (like mitocondra) are looked as spontanious generation (of sorts)… I’ll just attempt to address this part. The ‘house in the woods’ argument is ridiculous for a few reasons: [ul] [li]I don’t wonder about a house because I _know_ it was built by people. I’ve seen houses being built. The existance of a thing does _not_ automatically imply an intelligent creator.[/li][li]Frankly, ‘what I wonder’ or not has no bearing on what is. That line of reasoning is basically saying, “hey you! Don’t ask questions!”[/li][/ul] A while back someone here linked to a video that that kid from… dang, I can’t remember, but some one-time sitcom star who’s now selling Christianity. Anyway, one of his arguments was that gee, bananas are such a perfect food. They fit in your hand, they have a bio-degradable wrapping that comes off easily, and they even bend towards your mouth! How could this be an accident??? Coke cans hold Coke and are convenient, and you don’t ask how they evolved, they were made, duh! So don’t ask how bananas evolved. They must also have been made, because, well, yeah. ---
**Author:** ![EEMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a6a055/32.png) [@EEMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EEMan)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/5 "2006-02-08T17:35:18Z")
> [@Eonwe](#): > > \ > [ul][li]Frankly, ‘what I wonder’ or not has no bearing on what is. That line of reasoning is basically saying, “hey you! Don’t ask questions!”[/li][/ul] > \ The ‘what I wonder’ is the begining of every scientific endeavor… It begs TO ask questions… ---
**Author:** ![edwino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/6 "2006-02-08T17:50:30Z")
Dobzhansky said that “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” That certainly holds sway still today. Evolution is certainly not a soft science. “Proof” as you define it is not required in biology or in science in general. All that is required is a hypothesis which can be tested. Those that stand up to testing and experimentation become incorportated into theory. Evolution is central to modern biology, and has been supported by experiments from many different realms of the natural sciences. Your OP has a bunch of misconceptions that have been dealt with time and time again around here: “missing links”, “too complex to have arisen by ‘random chance’”, the whole thing about finding a watch in the desert (your “house in the forest” bit). These are all addressed in the talk.origins and talk.design FAQs: [http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html](http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/faqs-qa.html) [http://www.talkdesign.org/introfaq.html](http://www.talkdesign.org/introfaq.html) If you want to tackle these individually, here’s one line for each -Missing links: we have many different fossils that can represent “missing links.” Unfortunately, when a paleontologist points to _Archaeopteryx_, the goalposts are always shifted. -Too complicated by random chance: First, all evolution deals with is the mechanism of change of self-replicating particles. Before that is a whole other field for which there is a bunch of active research but it isn’t evolution. If natural selection applies at every stage, Dawkins showed it is not only easy but likely that complexity will arise. -“Watchmaker” argument: This is a flawed analogy. Lots of things are complex, and complexity can arise in nature without a designer. Just because two things are complex means they must be designed. Drug resistance is absolutely an example of evolution. You just need to define evolution correctly – all evolution is is a change in the genetic makeup of a population over time. Drug resistance can arise in a number of different fashions, for instance by mutation or plasmid exchange or by amplification. For example _Streptococcus pneumoniae_ needs a mutation to become resistant to penicillin. That was nearly unheard of until about 15 years ago; now at least at my hospital something like 30% is resistant to penicillin. That’s evolution by the biologist’s definition of evolution. Speciation is another matter. Examples of witnessed speciation due to evolution aren’t particularly difficult to come by either, though. See the talk.origins FAQ above. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/7 "2006-02-08T17:51:08Z")
> [@](#): > > Finding fossils does not give pure evidence for evolution either, as we have never found the ‘missing links’ (plural, as not only the ‘missing link’ for humans… but any interspecies ‘jump’)… what that proves is there were things here previously that are no longer here (as far as we know… seems this week we found somethings we thought were gone)… Let me debunk this tiresome bit of creationist mythology. There are [plenty of transitional fossils](http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CC/CC200.html), including transitional hominids. This “missing link” thing is a total canard. It also needs to be said that the fossil record can never be complete because fossilization is a flukey process which can only occur under certain conditions. Evolutionary theory does not depend on the fossil record anyway and every essential of the theory can be proven without a single fossil. ---
**Author:** ![Futile\_Gesture](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/f05b48/32.png) [@Futile\_Gesture](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Futile_Gesture)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/8 "2006-02-08T18:00:06Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > I DO find it very difficult to pathom the number of spontanious events that would be required to develop the most basic of celluar organs… not to mention the generation of more complex multicell organs… That, I believe, is a very significant difficulty that explains a lot of people’s difficulty about evolution. They cannot begin to imagine the eons that these things take. They look at something and declare it not very likely. And they’re right, it’s not. But even the very unlikely can happen given long enough. Unimaginably long. Think of the longest time you can imagine. Then multiple by 1000. And that’s still not long enough. ID is the equivalent of a detective deciding that this house-breaking case is too tricky. The house was burgled, but there are no clues to be found. Well, none that don’t involve a fair bit of thought and work, and who can be bothered with that? So we should seriously consider the possibility that evil thieving goblins did it, before vanishing back to magic-land. There you go, a nice tidy resolution to the case that explains everything. Why can’t everyone be happy with that? It’s an interesting and novel _idea_, but until there’s evidence that goblins do indeed exist, is it worthy of consideration in the same way as analysing the fingerprints at the scene, something that has a proven track record at solving these kind of cases? I don’t think so. It’s an entirely vacuous and pointless conclusion that can neither be proven or disproven and does nothing to resolve the house-breaking. Our detective may have well have just given up. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/9 "2006-02-08T18:01:57Z")
> [@Diogenes the Cynic](#): > > It also needs to be said that the fossil record can never be complete because fossilization is a flukey process which can only occur under certain conditions. Evolutionary theory does not depend on the fossil record anyway and every essential of the theory can be proven without a single fossil. This is an important point. The IDers demand that we present a fossil for every possible step along the way from one creature to the next. This is impossible simply because fossilizataion was so rare. We have in some cases only handfuls of species from eras in which there were hundreds of thousands. Nevertheless, of the fossils we do have we can see clear chains of development. And every time we discover new ones they reinforce this. It’s possible that the ‘story’ of evolution is not complete. There may be things about it we still don’t understand. However, ID is not a replacement for evolution, for the simple reason that ID is not scientific. It explains nothing, it is not falsifiable, and it is not able to predict anything. It’s just a way of saying, “You don’t know everything, therefore God did it!” It’s just creationism wrapped in the language of science in an attempt to sneak it into the curriculum. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/10 "2006-02-08T18:03:15Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > I don’t … you will notice that I did not say **I** supported ID… and the reason I have trouble with it… is for that reason… > > What I said, was I find it hard to pathom all the billions of chance happenings that would need to occur to make a single functional organelle (celluar organ)… and the trillions more required to make a single more complicated organ… let alone the intricate control of each… > > **I** don’t have a logical reason for any of that to have happened… but it obviously did… > > Then again if it happened once (here on earth) what arguement could you come up with it NOT happening for a designer prior to that? > > Perhaps the answer IS evolution… of a designer… and design of us… who knows… > > That is why this particular field is pushed into the realm of ‘soft science’ and/or philosphy in **my mind** Well, what you have to ask yourself is which explanation fits best with the facts. And the overwhelming amount of evidence is that evolution by natural selection is that explanation. If you’re disinclined to accept ID, but just don’t feel comfortable with evolution, I’d suggest spending some time on the [talkorigins](http://www.talkorigins.org/index.html) site and reading about the myths propogated by the backers of ID. \*\*Diogenes \*\*mentioned the myth about the incompleteness of the fossil record… well, what’s remarkable is acutally how complete that record is. Keep in mind that looking for the so-called “missing link” that is half human and half chimp, if you will, is nonsense. No on is looking for that orgnanism because no such orgnaism is hypothesized to have existed. All forms are transitional because all forms are changing. Evolutionary biology is fascinating-- to me, it’s the most fascinating scientific subject out there. And with the revolution taking place in the field of genetics, the whole puzzle fits together incredibly well. ---
**Author:** ![EEMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a6a055/32.png) [@EEMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EEMan)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/11 "2006-02-08T18:04:32Z")
Evolution is an overloaded term… to even claim there is some unified theory of such is impossible… That said the definition of: change in the genetic makeup of a population over time. Would more accurately be a branch of Genetics… that is as much an attempt at moving the goal posts as the creationists use… The only common point from the overloaded term of evolution and intelligent design is in the formation of a species… not intraspecies change… The ‘missing links’ are not even the intraspecies ones (as defined by those in the intelligent design camp) but interspecies… as it must be… since intelligent design simply handles the beginings of a species and NOT of the changes there to… The problem with _Archaeopteryx_ is _Protoarchaeopteryx robusta_ and _Caudipteryx zoui_… showing again how thin our fossil records are… Again… those who rule out ID merely because it ‘sounds silly to them’ or they have their own pet beliefs are the same as those who are pure creationists ruling out any modification from the ‘time of god’… ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/12 "2006-02-08T18:04:52Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > I guess I’m unaware of that study… details would be helpful for my understanding… however, how did they measure the ‘resistance’… if you begin with a single bacteria, what did the drug do? Obviously not kill it… or there would be no future generations to measure it… I’ll look up the study - have you visited [talkorigins.org](http://talkorigins.org)? That is the best site for these things. if you let the bacteria reproduce, you’ll get some of the population with this mutation, so that when you do introduce the poison some will be able to handle it, and these will dominate thanks to natural selection. Mutations do not happen in response to an environmental stimulus, they are in the gene pool, and dominate thanks to it. > [@](#): > > It would support gentic mutation (another theory related to evolution), but not species evolution… in that, the species itself did not become a new species… It has never been clear to me what species means in the context of asexual beasties. However, we have seen speciation in the classic sense - that is the two subpopulations can no longer cross reproduce. I think this has been observed in some lab animals between populations, from a common source, bred in two locations. (Again I have to look it up.) Observed instances of speciation can be found [here.](http://talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html) > [@](#): > > Finding fossils does not give pure evidence for evolution either, as we have never found the ‘missing links’ (plural, as not only the ‘missing link’ for humans… but any interspecies ‘jump’)… what that proves is there were things here previously that are no longer here (as far as we know… seems this week we found somethings we thought were gone)… For missing links, take a look at [this.](http://talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/feb98.html) But to make sure we’re not talking past each other, what do you define as a missing link? You realize, right, since we’ll never find fossils showing each step of a process, and some won’t even be visible, affecting parts that don’t fossilize, every “missing link” we find will create two others. Also, what do you mean by “interspecies jump?” I assume you don’t think a cat can turn into a dog. We see transitional animals and fossils all the time. Consider the elephant seal, which I have seen up close and personal. They live in the sea almost all the year, but come to land to mate. They cannot eat while on land, so must store up fat to survive the mating and birth process. Don’t you think a mutation that allows them to mate and bear young in the water would be advantagous, since they would no longer have to go without food for long periods of time, and would no longer be limited to very small mating areas? It’s possible, since the whales did it. I’d consider the elephant seal a transitional species, though we don’t know if they ever will learn in-water breeding, and might go extinct instead. > [@](#): > > But we have seen things go extint not only in historical terms… but in living memory… what seems a bit telling is that we haven’t found fossils for certain modern animals… but then that could be explained as a popluation difference (not enough of x,y, or z to have been preserved and/or not preserved enough for us to find… etc) What do you define as modern, and how do you know we haven’t found any? For the most part, who would care? I don’t see a museum mounting a fossil cow. We have found plenty of fossils of animals from times when man lived - visit the La Brea Tar Pits, for example. > [@](#): > > Sure we have… we have seen evidence, in that we are capable of it… I meant evidence in the fossil record, of course. Since we’ve done it, we’d know exactly what to look for. > [@](#): > > I think the advocates of ID see it as a need to explain how so complex a system could exist without a designer… Except evolution explains exactly this already. > [@](#): > > One arguement I hear a lot is … if you come across a house in the woods, you don’t think ‘hey i wonder what that evolved from’… yet things a billion times more complicated (like mitocondra) are looked as spontanious generation (of sorts)… If we found the equivalent of the house, that could not be explained by natural means, that would be true. But the house has never shown up. > [@](#): > > I personally believe that evolution (that is one species was developed from another) is a perfectly reasonible explination, however… I DO find it very difficult to pathom the number of spontanious events that would be required to develop the most basic of celluar organs… not to mention the generation of more complex multicell organs… We don’t think a single cell origin came from its basic components. We have plenty of quasi-living entities, like viruses, that are just DNA. Why couldn’t a basic self reproducing molecule, that would be subject to natural selection, evolve into RNA which would then evolve into DNA, which would evolve into a really basic cell, which would evolve into a more complex cell. Remember, even the single cell animals we see today have been evolving for close to a billion years. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/13 "2006-02-08T18:13:26Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > But to make sure we’re not talking past each other, what do you define as a missing link? You realize, right, since we’ll never find fossils showing each step of a process, and some won’t even be visible, affecting parts that don’t fossilize, every “missing link” we find will create two others. > > Also, what do you mean by “interspecies jump?” I assume you don’t think a cat can turn into a dog. We see transitional animals and fossils all the time. Consider the elephant seal, which I have seen up close and personal. They live in the sea almost all the year, but come to land to mate. They cannot eat while on land, so must store up fat to survive the mating and birth process. Don’t you think a mutation that allows them to mate and bear young in the water would be advantagous, since they would no longer have to go without food for long periods of time, and would no longer be limited to very small mating areas? It’s possible, since the whales did it. I’d consider the elephant seal a transitional species, though we don’t know if they ever will learn in-water breeding, and might go extinct instead. This is very misleading. Elephant seals are no more tansitional than are any other species. It’s that kind of thinking that leads people to say evolution is directed. Every species is transitional to what will come after it. In your example, a mutation to allow breeding at sea might just as easily be disasterous for the particular male seal that it happend to, since all the females would be waiting for him on land (or vice versa). We can’t know in advance which mutations would be “good” and which would be “bad”. ---
**Author:** ![PlughPlover](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ebca7d/32.png) [@PlughPlover](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlughPlover)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/14 "2006-02-08T18:13:29Z")
Its big problem is that it’s not a scientific theory because it doesn’t actually predict or explain anything and can’t be tested. Therefore it is not science; therefore it should not be taught in science classrooms. Linnaeus used morphology (physical form) to classify life on earth. Modern biological classification tends to use evolution theory instead, or a mixture. (Now that we can decode DNA, some people think we should use DNA as the basis of our taxonomy.) If we discover an animal that we can’t classify in the existing system, we re-think the system. This is an example of evolutionary theory adapting and changing to account for new evidence, which is the proper function of science. I haven’t heard any proponents of ID proposing any experiments by which ID can be tested and adjusted in light of new evidence. ---
**Author:** ![EEMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a6a055/32.png) [@EEMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EEMan)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/15 "2006-02-08T18:15:18Z")
Again… I am NOT nor have I ever been in the ID camp… but I do NOT rule out the possibility of it, nor of other no evolutionary origions of species… > [@](#): > > They cannot begin to imagine the eons that these things take. They look at something and declare it not very likely. And they’re right, it’s not. But even the very unlikely can happen given long enough. Unimaginably long. Think of the longest time you can imagine. Then multiple by 1000. And that’s still not long enough. You are correct… but you would need to then add the time where conditions are not favorable… then add the age of the earth… which is 4.5 billion years (give or take)… and the first ammo acids start to appear about 4 billion years ago (as some speculate)… 500 million years for the building blocks… that would require a LOT of favorible conditions very very early… ---
**Author:** ![EEMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a6a055/32.png) [@EEMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EEMan)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/16 "2006-02-08T18:25:57Z")
One of the problems I have with [talkorigins.org](http://talkorigins.org) as a resources is their stated purpose > [@](#): > > The Talk.Origins Archive is a collection of articles and essays, most of which have appeared in talk.origins at one time or another. The primary reason for this archive’s existence is to provide mainstream scientific responses to the many frequently asked questions (FAQs) that appear in the talk.origins newsgroup and the frequently rebutted assertions of those advocating intelligent design or other creationist pseudosciences. When discussing the same topic, one is ‘fact’ and one is ‘not’… when we are talking about things we can not test (the origin of life for example)… it does not show much room for counter arguement… It would be much like, if I went to Rush Limbagh’s website looking for the ‘facts’ regarding Democrats ---
**Author:** ![edwino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/35a633/32.png) [@edwino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/edwino)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/17 "2006-02-08T18:28:39Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > Evolution is an overloaded term… to even claim there is some unified theory of such is impossible… > > That said the definition of: change in the genetic makeup of a population over time. > > Would more accurately be a branch of Genetics… that is as much an attempt at moving the goal posts as the creationists use… Well after getting a PhD in genetics, everything to me (even trauma surgery) seems like a branch of genetics. But I assure you, the definition used by biologists is the one that I gave. It isn’t moving goalposts at all. > [@](#): > > The only common point from the overloaded term of evolution and intelligent design is in the formation of a species… not intraspecies change… There is a complete continuum from looking at genetic change of a population and species formation. The biological definition of “species” is hard to put a finger on, anyway, and the many observed instances of speciation make us very confident that there is not some magic button being pushed to draw a line that we can automatically say that we have now had a speciation event. I assure you that if you do just a little bit of reading (talk.origins is a _great_ place to start), you will see how well-researched, well-supported, and well-accepted this field is. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/18 "2006-02-08T18:28:56Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > Evolution is an overloaded term… to even claim there is some unified theory of such is impossible… What’s impossible about it? As a matter of fact, there IS such a unified theory. It’s called the “Theory of Evolution.” What’s not unified about it? What does it fail to explain? > [@](#): > > That said the definition of: change in the genetic makeup of a population over time. That’s not the definition. > [@](#): > > Would more accurately be a branch of Genetics… that is as much an attempt at moving the goal posts as the creationists use… What goal posts are being moved? > [@](#): > > The only common point from the overloaded term of evolution and intelligent design is in the formation of a species… not intraspecies change… > . > > The ‘missing links’ are not even the intraspecies ones (as defined by those in the intelligent design camp) but interspecies… as it must be… since intelligent design simply handles the beginings of a species and NOT of the changes there to… I’m having trouble parsing all this but the “missing links” bunk was dealt with above. We not only have transitional fossils between species, we have also directly observed speciation and we can prove common descent by incontrovertible genetic evidence. > [@](#): > > The problem with _Archaeopteryx_ is _Protoarchaeopteryx robusta_ and _Caudipteryx zoui_… showing again how thin our fossil records are… Our fossil record is not that thin and the real headline about it is not that it’s incomplete but that it has never failed to confirm a prediction made by evolutionary theory. What are the odds that millions of fossils would be distributed all over the earth in precisely the stratifications predicted by evolution simply by random chance? Why hasn’t one single fossil ever been found out of place? > [@](#): > > Again… those who rule out ID merely because it ‘sounds silly to them’ or they have their own pet beliefs are the same as those who are pure creationists ruling out any modification from the ‘time of god’… ID is not “ruled out because it sounds silly.” It is not considered at all because it’s not _necessary_, it’s not _testable_ and it has no greater explanatory value than evolution. Oh…and also because evolution is a proven fact so ID attempts to answer a question which has already been conclusively answered. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/19 "2006-02-08T18:29:11Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > Again… I am NOT nor have I ever been in the ID camp… but I do NOT rule out the possibility of it, nor of other no evolutionary origions of species… But the problem is, as others have pointed, ID is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested and verified. The IDers don’t tell us anything about who the designer might be. If they said it was a giant spider living on one of Jupiter’s moons, then we could look for that spider on the moons. But they don’t. It’s an empty hypothesis. In fact, I’d go so far as to say it is antithetical to science, since it basically says “give up, the answer is a mystery”. As I said in my first post, are we supposed to believe that this designer has no “irriducibly complex” systems? Why would we assume that, since we know absolutely nothing about the designer. > [@](#): > > You are correct… but you would need to then add the time where conditions are not favorable… then add the age of the earth… which is 4.5 billion years (give or take)… and the first ammo acids start to appear about 4 billion years ago (as some speculate)… 500 million years for the building blocks… that would require a LOT of favorible conditions very very early… But (and I’m not trying to be snarky) you have no basis to say that is either too much or too little time. In fact, we don’t even know if life originated on earth. Life, or its building blocks might well have arrived here on an astoroid or a comet. ---
**Author:** ![Eonwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eonwe/32/240_2.png) [@Eonwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eonwe)\ **Post date:** [February 8, 2006, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557/20 "2006-02-08T18:30:43Z")
> [@EEMan](#): > > The ‘what I wonder’ is the begining of every scientific endeavor… It begs TO ask questions… Right, but the ID argument is specifically saying, “you don’t have any questions about x, given that [various features that make some man-made thing convenient for humans], so why should you ask questions about y?” People are asked specifically to _not_ question or delve into posibility, and to stop with the answer “because God figured it would be best for us.” Also, this line of ‘reasoning’ asserts that the fact that our environment suits us as well as it does is clear proof of ID (for the reasons stated in my first post). It completely ignores the idea that integrating successfully with our environment is one of the most clear and expected results of evolution. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/id-vs-evolution-support-and-discuss/343557.md?page=2)