Which should tell you to quick dancing around the topic by worrying about spelling and deal with issue.
Mr. Avoiding the real Debate
IGOTTHEANSWERS:
What he meant was that for natural selection to work we have to have DNA, but it doesn’t matter where the DNA came from. Just like, to build a car you need steel but it doesn’t matter where the steel came from, see?
No, Gould did not mean new species appeared “instantaneously,” he just meant that under some circumstances species can arise relatively quickly: in hundreds of generations rather than thousands of generations. This is called punctuated equilibrium, and it is not the “opposite” of Darwinian evolution; it is a refinement of it.
Please tell us exactly where and when Clarke said we were put here by a god-like being. This is what people want when they ask you for a “cite.”
Please provide a cite for this. I think you’ll find a long-period comet out in the Oort cloud is not losing significant mass, and therefore will last indefinitely. It’s only when a comet comes into the inner solar system and has mass blown away by the solar wind that it loses mass and begins to very slowly vaporize.
Helium also escapes from the Earth’s atmosphere at about the same rate, as discussed here.
Provide a cite for this, please. Anyway, even if the Earth’s current surface (assuming that’s what you meant by “earth”) would erode into the ocean in that length of time, you forget that new surface is being created all the time. I’ve been to both Hawaii and Iceland; take my word on this one.
Provide a cite, please. Anyway, so what? Are you saying the Earth must have as many humans as it would be possible to have given a certain span of years? Like there’ve never been plagues, or wars, or urbanization, or other factors that would limit or reverse population growth?
I don’t know what you’re trying to say here, but anyway I don’t think C-14 is used to date wood from the pre-Cambrian era. Wait a minute…in fact, there WAS no wood in the pre-Cambrian era! Okay, now I really don’t know what you mean. Explain, please.
If belief in the Judeo-Christian God is incompatible with acceptance of evolution, why do you suppose it is that the vast majority of Christians accept evolution? I’d really like to know.
I almost can’t bring myself to touch this one… but I will anyway… Let me make your comparison clear to you. This is equivilent of saying, “If looking in your driveway and seeing that a car is there is proof enough that a car exists, therefor saying that there is an invisible elephant in my garage is proof enough that it is there.” DNA does exist… ANYONE who doubts it may perform their own experiments to prove it. You don’t have to take anyones word for it. And for the quoted purpose it was suffient. Are you arguing now that DNA doesn’t exist?
Hmmm… I don’t think he is even remotely debating evolution happens here? Maybe arguing about the details. Even this change doesn’t make it false. He is discussing how not if.
“Instant evolution?” You clearly don’t understand what was being said. Clarke a real evolution scientist? uh, nope. But as far 2 evolutionists agreeing on anything. Millions of them agree on these few basic tennets.
- Mutation puts diveristy in a genetic population
- Natural selection first kills most mutations as they are harmful
- Natural select ignores mutations that don’t effect an organisms breeding success
- Natural preferrential keeps mutations if they provide a reproductive benefits. (Note: sometimes, a mutation can sit around in a population for great lengths of time and then a change in environment can suddenly cause it to be selected for.
and most even agree that organism change fastest when their environment changes… which often happens in bursts…
1 This is probably pretty accurate for comets once they start visiting the inner solar system. But new get tossed into the fray still. There are probably countless numbers of them in the outer system in completely pristine condition.
2 Yes helium is created by radioactive decay. The only part you are missing is that helium is lost to space every day also.
3 Again, this is probably fairly accurate. But, missing one part, the contintents are being created constantly. This isn’t a guess either. Our surveying equipment, etc is accurate today to actually watch mountains grow, etc.
4 Well, again our population COULD probably be generated in 4000 years. But, clearly the first modern (anatomically) have been around MUCH longer. Large populations adopting agricultural lifestyles in roughly that time frame would fit with the sudden growth of the population.
next 1-4: Radio carbon dating is absolutely useless to date anything past a few 10 thousand years. It’s half life is to short to reach any farther. Other radio isotopes are much more useful for more ancient dating. I would love to see the peat and nickle arguments cogently explained though.
Well, I am right with on the quantity of people believing and the accuracy of the fact. You did good on that one.
That DNA exists is sufficient for evolutionists. DNA is not an organism. Evolutionists deal with the change thorugh time of organisms. Molecular Biologists and others may attempt to explain the origins of DNA using Darwinian mechanics, but whether they can, or cannot, explain it using such has no bearing on the primary work of evolution. DNA exists, mutations happen, and natural selection does the rest.
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And here, you reveal the depths of your ignornace. Try actually reading a book or paper by Gould, and you will see that your interpretation of his quote is so mind-bogglingly…wrong. Gould is a proponent (and co-creator) of the theory of Punctuated Equilibrium. This theory is one of the pacing of evolution, not the mechanics thereof, meant as a possible explanation for the patterns of appearance we see in the fossil record. He most certainly is not an advocate of “special creation”, nor is he an anti-Darwinist.
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If Clarke is saying God put us here, then he hardly qualifies as an evolutionst, now does he? And pretty much all of the evolutionists I mentioned earlier agree with one another. Including Gould.
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Guess what? They also thought the earth was flat, that the sky was a big dome around the earth (complete with pinholes), that life could come into being spontaneously, that “angry gods” were the cause of earthquakes, volcanoic eruptions, and every other sort of natural disaster! And those don’t hold true today. So…your point was what, again?
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Because new ones can come into being. Humans have only a lifespan of about 80 years…why are they still around?
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Again, ignorance is revealed. Evolution deals with not a single one of the “facts” you’ve presented (and they certainly do not “agree” with them). Except for that “pre cambrian wood” nonsense. There is no such thing as “pre cambrian wood”, no matter what your creationist sites tell you.
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And likewise, the number of people believing in special creation has nothing to with truth. I don’t see how this argument helps your case any.
Still haven’t quite grasped that you are not supposed to bear false witness, I see.
Gould is being quoted very much out of context. The theory of Punctuated Equilibrium that he and Niles Eldredge put forth proposes that rather than the absolute gradualism that Darwin expected to find, there were long periods of little changes, interrupted by brief periods of intense change. However, as everyone who has actually read Gould knows, the “brief” periods are still reckoned in geological time. He never claimed that one species would give birth to a different species and any attempt to infer that from his statement is a willful misrepresentation.
I suppose I am wasting my time, since you are mostly interested in posting erroneous factoids rather than discussion, however:
A good (not perfect) analogy to Gould’s and Eldredge’s Punctuated Equilibrium is the Crown Forest of Northeastern North America. In a number of places where farmers have not yet disturbed the land, there are stands of mixed Maple and Beech. They last for hundreds of years until logged off or burned out. When the land has been deforested, a different set of plants grow. Grasses first populate the area until pushed out by shrubs such as sumac and quick-growing trees such as Cottonwood. This phase lasts perhaps 30 years. Following that, the cottonwoods and some white birch establish a hold, securing the land and protecting smaller trees from the wind. Among their roots, maples and beech have reseeded. After another 30 years or so, the Maple and Beech have grown up and stolen the sunlight from the second growth trees, which then die off. When the maple and beech reach maturity, “crowning” the forest, nothing will remove them except fire or axe, so they stand for hundreds of years. In comparison to the crown forest that lives for hundreds of years, the grasses snd smaller trees do not live long at all. If one used a time machine to study the crown forest for centuries, it would seem that there was no change, at all. Studying the earth, one would find few remnanats of the sumac and no evidence of the grasses. However, with the coming of a single large fire, one could see the forest destroyed and reborn in a “brief” period. If the fire occurred when a child was an infant, that child might grow to adulthood and have grandchildren and never see the crown forest since that replacement period is roughly as long as a human life. Yet, people looking at the forest over hundreds of years would hardly notice that brief interruption in the overall life of the forest.
That is the sort of thing that Gould meant by “discreet leaps” and everyone who does not deliberately twist his words knows that.
No, it isn’t. And no, I didn’t. And you shoot from the hip with what I believe to be deliberate frequency.
Tracer
Now, there you have a legitimate contradiction. Well done.
Fine then. You explain what you meant.
Interestingly, the Septuagint (the first major translation of the Old Testament into a language other than Hebrew) does not have the part in 1 Kings 7:26 about the basin holding 2000 baths. I wonder if the translators noticed the contradiction, and decided to conveniently sweep it under the rug…
Dubois not being a paleontologist is neither here nor there; he was a physician who taught anatomy, giving him quite adequate credentials to examine the fossil record. He did not hide the bones when “questioned” about his methods. He hid the bones because he did not like the sort of information sharing that is pretty well required of scientists. Eventually, he did bring them back out for review and they are a clearly identified among the scientific community as homo erectus. His “gibbon” claim has also been misquoted. He did not say that the skull plate was “nothing more than a giant Gibbon.” He did say
Note the references to large brain and erect attitude and gait. (Note also that he “allied to” the Gibbons, not that it was a Gibbon.) In other words, he correctly identified it as a predecessor species to humanity, although he differed with his peers and later scientists as to where it fell on the continuum.
Peking man is exactly the same species as Java man, homo erectus. They were only named separately because there were not enough examples found at the time that Peking was discovered to make a good comparison. Since that time, numerous examples have been discovered of the same creature throughout Asia and Africa. The fact that the initial identification was made on little evidence (from a layman’s perspective) is irrelevant considering the large numbers of corroborating finds that have been discovered. The disappearance of one of set of evidence during wartime does not particularly surprise me. (You wouldn’t happen to have an autographed copy of one of Paul’s Epistles you could show us, do you? Maybe a stone tablet with some laws burned into them in archaic Hebrew?)
As for doing homework, you have merely parroted the words of some liar such as Hovind. That does not strike me as being particularly prepared. If you are going to quote the lies of people who have been disproven for ten or tenty years, you are going to look silly claiming that others have not done enough research.
I already did that. Doing it again would not constitute progress.
Tracer
Certainly, that is one possibility among the countless many. Is there a particular reason why your bias seems, at least to me, always to lean towards suspicion of something at work that is sinister even when other possibilities are equally likely?
I tried quick dancing, but I’m a real whiteboy if you know what I mean, so slow dancing works better for me.
[sub]all your issue are belong to us[/sub]
Seriously, did you even read the second paragraph of my last post to you? What is your motive here?
1 A more real comparison is saying a factory run by robots is making cars. But we just ignore the fact that this car factory just miraculously appeared isn’t substantial? The factory is there making cars and thats sufficient? Where did something so complex come from when in your being was Hydrogen?
2 “Arise relatively quickly”. I think I just said that. Leaps and bounds were made “relatively quickly”. Its a nice little evolutionary band-aid on an open wound like NO INTERMEDIATES ANYWHERE!
3 The cite for arthur c clarke is Birmingham Post, monday October21, 1996. You guys don’t bother looking this stuff up. Whenever you have nothing to retort back you scream “CITE?” I want to see an apology after you look this up.
4 Steidl, PF ‘Planets, COmets and Asteroids’ GA 1983 pp73-106. Theres your cite for the comets. Are you going to actually use it or do you just like saying “CITE”.
The infamous Oort cloud. Entirely imaginary, never been found. You guys Laugh at me for believing in a God you can’t see. Although making up invisible clouds is okay??? Another evolutionary band-aid on massive stumbling block to evolutionary thinking. Lets see, carl sagan used Achem’s (sp?)razor in the movie “contact” that says the simplest answer is probably the right one. Do you think making up imaginary clouds in space and punctuated equillibrium is any simple answer??
5 Believe it or not the erosion figures take into account any new land masses that my arise. But your deluding yourself if you think volcanoes are putting out more land mass than is being deposited.
Here’s your cite. Tying down the sun. G. Vandeman 1983
6 The population equation. You’ve got to be kidding me that a safe number for population rate of 4000 years could possibly be massaged to fit 14 plus million years?!?! Even with plaques and floods and whatever else you can throw in. Check how big 14 million is from 4 thousand.
7 What I was saying there was that when we measure Influx of chemicals into space, ocean, rivers etc. we can measure backwards and I have a list in front of me of 50 plus items and none of them can trace back to billions of years. I listed a few. This is empirical data. what scientists can measure right now without doing any massaging of the numbers. It appears that the planet is evidently very young. In the 6 thousand year range.
Oh, wait… In fact there always has been wood on this planet!
8 Its your belief that a majority of Christians believe evolution. CITE CITE CITE. A majority of humans have been duped by evolution but like I’ve said before “a majority doesn’t make it a reality.” Check the Bible on the narrow path and majority marching down hell’s path.
typo in part 1 “in your beginning was Hydrogen”
lets not waste time worrying about spelling and grammar unless its apparently not understandable. I’ve got a degree in writing but my time is limited and I don’t have much time to proof read. I’ve got about 15 of you knuckleheads after me and I try to pick the ones who have something relatively sane to say, which is non-existant in evolutionists.
May I refer you to Matthew 7:4-5?
1 Whatever lets you sleep at night. He hid his false findings because he was trying to make a name for himself in paleontology because he was a nobody anatonomist. To quote one of Dubois students, " Dubois had the habit of just lifting a corner of the veil of a scientific conception, but he was loath to settle down and work it out thoroughly." cite Bert Theunissen, “Eugene Dubois and the ape-man from Java.”
PS you neglected to say anything about the 2 modern human skulls he found in exact same spot.
2 “large numbers of corroborating finds” I’ll take a page right out of all your evolutionists books and say it “CITE” Your view of large numbers is grossly exaggerated. Say a hand full. You can live in ignorance or you can try to find the truth by starting with “Bones of Contention” Marvin Lubenow.
I’ve done the high school and college biology, anatomy physiology thing with their evolutionary books so you won’t hit me with anything new. Unless you resort to making stuff up which I can see some do from last couple pages on this question.
Is the statement meant to detract from our debate or can we stick to it?
Havent had much time with you because all the requests. I’ll look back over what you got for me. I’m sure its the usual “you’ve got to believe it because everyone does” routine.
IGOT…
All kidding aside, please go look at a thread started by Ben this last March, entitled Post here if Creationism turns you off to Christianity. Scroll down to the 14[sup]th[/sup] reply, by a poster named Polycarp. Read what he has to say about Creationism, and consider his words. (by the way, Poly is perhaps the most Christ-like Christian I have ever met.)
MH
“Your friendly neighborhood atheist”
IGOTTHEANSWERS wrote:
<snicker> Oh, that’s a good one!
Are you asking me to another site? This ones got my hands full now. What do i want to accomplish? Keep my mind fresh. Find out how many poor souls still believe in fantasy of evolution. And hope that someone here might ask where to find books on truth. That last one I’m not holding my breath on. Besides, I’m in a site of Cecil Adams worshippers, not much can be expected.
peace