I suspect I could convince you, actually. Your distinction between radtiation and its effects is a strange one to make. Do you see light, or just its effect on the retina? Does your radio detect radio waves, or the effect they have on the antenna? I think you’re splitting haris, really: detecting temperature is detecting IR radiation (amongst other things).
From primitive jawless fish – I know this is a big page and the bit you’re after is only a paragraph, but please read it all if you can. It tells you how something seemingly ‘perfectly jointed’ can evolve from something more primitive.
Apology accepted. In any case, disagreement between scientists over details like precisely what percentage of genes one organism shares with another is inevitable. It does not in any way impugn the truth of evolution in total.
And, of course, this is nothing to do with evolution, which is true regardless of the truth of Christ’s resurrection.
On that point, I’ll let someone like Diogenes or tomndebb correct the claims in the theruebs.com site, but note that Josephus is the only source which is anything like contemporary, and that he’s just reporting what was being said by a handful of people calling themselves ‘Christians’. It’s the equivalent of me telling future generations that Scientologists believe an alien called Xenu used nuclear weapons: I’m not saying anything about whether that actually happened, and there is barely any extra-biblical evidence that Jesus lived at all, let alone appeared after his crucifiction … er, crucifixion.
The argument from improbablility could be made about many automobile accidents.
A family starts on a vacation from Newton, MA. Along the way they make numerous stops both planned and random. In Chilicothe, MO they run into the rear end of an auto pulling out from a parking space. That auto is driven by a traveling salesman from Huston, TX who stopped to use the bathroom at a McDonalds.
If you analyzed the accident the way evolution deniers analyze the appearance of things like the knee you would conclude that the accident must have been the result of a malevolent god.
It’s just a variation of the Shabby Friar Joke. This joke is supposedly named that because a friar in the days before motorized transportation marveled at the God’s providence in having arranged things so that navigable rivers ran through cities.
No, this is a valid distinction. If I get sunburn, pain sensors in my skin detect this. That does not mean that my skin detects ultra-violet light; it only detects the effect of ultra-violet light. Clearly, there is a time delay here, so you must accept this one.
Our sensation of temperature is well-trained, and because we can feel that (say) the sun has come out or a bar heater is on, we may think we can detect infra-red radiation. However, this comes from our experience of interpreting the temperature sensors at the surface and deeper layers in our skin, combined with the movement sensors in our skin hairs. These combinations enable us to distinguish radiant heat from convection, friction, hot water, etc. Still, no sensor for radiation is involved. There is no sensor in regular skin that could be re-tuned to a different wavelength to detect light.
Thanks for the link. I did read it, and the next page, although I had to skim the sections consisting mainly of unfamiliar technical words words – which were the parts most germane to your argument. I’d have to learn a lot more about types of proto-fish before this would make sense to me as a “how” story – in other words, what were the stages, in what way was each step a viable improvement on the last, and were they credible mutations. It may well be a convincing argument covering that chapter of the story of evolution, but it’s hardly accessible to the outsider. Fair enough, though – I did ask for it!
Yes, and my pastor is indeed a theistic evolutionist. In fact, nowadays he seems more satisfied than before that evolution is a mechanism that God has used to bring about life as it is today, with or without interventions along the way.
The page that SentientMeat recommended refers to the debate within evolutionary science about different rates of evolution. “Punctuated equilibrium” (sudden bursts of evolution followed by stasis) sounds at first a very puzzling phenomenon, all the more so when held alongside gradual speciations. I see that there are coherent suggestions as to how these might work (e.g. Wikipedia ), but it will take a while for these ideas to sink in. Anyway, it looks as if there are well-developed answers to my objection about transitions.
It’s probably time to wrap up this thread. Thanks to those who took the time to tackle my objections. I dropped one objection before I even posted it – the claim repeated by creationists that there have been no recorded beneficial mutations. I only had to Google “beneficial mutations” to resolve that one for myself! The “nylon bug” story (a phase shift mutation) is particularly striking. Aside from bacterial mutations, I see there are claims for beneficial mutations in mammals too, although I haven’t got round to looking those up.
Thanks especially to MEBuckner for total courtesy and some awesome prose.
There’s clearly still a lot to think about. I don’t know where I’ll end up concerning the development of complex organs e.g. human eye and knee. Anyway, for anyone who’s still reading, enjoy the joke on page 2 of this week’s Ironic Times.
Are you familiar with the concept of the Climax Forest? Punctuated equilibrium is analogous to that situation. (It is not identical, so the analogy may break down at some point.)
Basically, a forest may be disrupted, typically by fire, but possibly by windstorms or even clearing for lumber or for farms that are later abandoned, then when the disruption has passed the forest will begin to repopulate the area. Each stage of the reclamation takes a bit longer to succeed and holds on a bit longer than the stage that it succeeds. Eventually, the Climax forest becomes a self-sustaining entity that will survive in a steady state until an outside force removes it. In a similar way, a species that has found a niche in a steady environment will tend to remain stable with few evolutionary changes since its environment will tend to favor the existing species over adaptaions. Once the ecology has been disrupted, however, there is no longer the heavy presence of the stable ecology and mutations that provide better survival in the new environment are free to expand within the species. (This is particularly true when the population is separated from the larger population so that changes are not overwhelmed by interbreeding with the more “stable” population.)
If we examined the fossil remains of successive forests, we would find far more evidenceof the climax period which would extend for hundreds of years than we would find for the earlier colonizing periods that lasted only a few years, perhaps less than a decade. Our fossil record, then would given the appearance of long periods of no activity (equilibrium) followed by (punctuated by) brief periods of amazingly rapid changes even though the actual individual trees would have differed little more than their parents or children.
No, there is no time delay there – the pain receptors are simply continually telling the brain about the damage. Imagine if I blindfolded you and led you outside on a sunny day: you could immediately feel the sun on your skin, with no time delay. And then when I took the blindfold off, would you be seeing the sunlight or only the effect on your retina? The distinction isn’t one of any substance, really.
And if radiation raises temperature, in what way is a sense of raised temperature not effectively a sense of incident radiation?
But, see, you’re therefore defining the retina as “not regular skin” based on its sensitivity to different wavelengths. The whole point of the explanation for the eye is that the retina and “normal” skin started out as the same stuff.
In any case, this is all rather missing the big picture: do you now accept that over billions of years in the well-ordered fossil record, species continually died out to be replaced by other species which weren’t there before?, and that we have even observed new species appearing? If so, you’ve accepted the fact of evolution. Now, you can reject the well-tested theory of how that happens and instead have God literally tinkering with every DNA strand on Earth every day in order to explain the genetic mutations we see in every lifeform, but even then you still couldn’t say that evolution didn’t happen – agreed? You’ve approached this thread with honesty and courage so far, and I think this would be an important step.
In case anybody has just joined this discussion, this bit is about the first stage of an eye developing by random mutation. At least one theory says that ordinary skin feels radiant heat because it contains light-sensitive cells that detect infra-red, and these could mutate to detect what we call visible light. I’m not at all convinced.
I think you’re missing my point. My skin is exposed to UV radiation, but I am not aware of it at the time. Later (I may have gone indoors or covered up by then) I detect pain from the damage to the skin. The skin failed to detect the UV radiation. However, it does belatedly detect the effect of the radation.
In the case of UV, it only detects the effect of the radiation. It cannot detect the UV radiation directly. I believe the same happens with infra-red.
Yes, but as I tried to describe in my last post, this is not because the skin detects radiation. It detects temperature at the surface and at different depths inside the skin, and it detects movement. By using a combination of these temperature and motion sensors, and by experience, we can tell that it is radiant heat. We don’t need a radiation sensor in skin to figure that out, and as far as I know there is no radiation sensor there.
Only then I would be seeing the sunlight, i.e. detecting the radiation.
In the same way that noticing sunburn at night is not a sense of incident UV radiation in the daytime.
I don’t yet accept that assertion. That’s why I’m trying to explain my point more clearly.
Yes.
I’m looking to learn and open to a paradigm shift here, so I was hoping for something a lot more convincing from that page. It’s rather a struggle, as the lay reader has to learn a new word every six lines, some of which are not on dictionary.com! I already knew that hybrids occur naturally, e.g. the one between Japanese Knotweed and Russian Vine – if you know anything about weeds, join me in thanking God that this hybrid is not as strong as its parents! However, most hybrids are infertile, so I wouldn’t count them as new species. A lot of the other results are weak as well, e.g. assortative mating on the basis of variation within a species sounds as if it could be mainly behavioural. The writer claims that the experimental results amount to observed speciation, but this only follows if using his choice of definition for species, which is arguable. Anyway, let’s not start a new sub-thread on claims for observed speciation – I think it would be unrewarding.
OK, I accepted the first part above, so if you call the history of mass extinctions and new species arising “the fact of evolution”, then Yes, I accept it.
I’m not sure that “the fact of evolution” is a totally helpful phrase, as some people might think you have now tricked me into believing the hypothesis of life developing by purely random processes, as a fact of history.
I could ask you whether you believe that all matter in the Universe came from nothing, and point out that if so you have accepted the fact of Creation.
But you are – the moment I blocked the sun you could tell.
Just as looking at the sun leaves a ghost image on your retina which tells you of damage, too.
If there’s no radtiation sensor, how can you sense whether there’s radiation incident or not (which you can)?
ie. your retina is acting like skin, just for different wavelengths.
The analogy in this case is a burnt-in ghost image, like those suffered by incautious welders or solar eclipse chasers. In both cases, radiation was sensed during an extended period, that period being long enough to damage the sensors and cause them to emit signals after the stimuli is removed.
That’s OK – I’m just trying to explain why the distinction you’re drawing isn’t one of substance, really.
Do keep at it – I assure you it’s worth it.
But some aren’t, and they’re the ones which become new species.
Even if it is (and it isn’t in those specific cases), if that behaviour ultimately led to isolated populations who could no longer interbreed, that is still speciation.
Well done, and thank you. Like I said, you could reject the well-tested and observed mechanism of genetic mutation, but the only alternative is to have God literally fiddling with every DNA strand on Earth, every day even though natural mechanisms are well understood. But it’s your choice.
You have agreed that evolution happened. You merely disagree how, despite genetic mutation being a well-understood natural phenomenon. So a very brave and useful step would be for you to correct people you know who think that evolution didn’t happen. That would certainly be"fighting ignorance", don’t you think?
Well, Neville seems quite different than most creationists. He’s willing to listen, he’s willing to learn, he doesn’t assume that people who believe in evolution argue in bad faith.
So he seems to be the best candidate yet, for people who want that free toaster.
You know you get a free toaster for every creationist you convert, right?
Even if Neville never entirely rejects creationism, he’s still 5 times more reasonable than most creationists we get here. And it seems pretty likely that if we can answer his reasonable questons about evolution he’ll abandon his objections to evolution.
