Two questions for creationists...

Great Debates
201

Several. But that question is quite irrelevant, Katerina, as has already been established.

One does not have to be a working research scientist to know, understand, and appreciate science–nor to be aware of current scientific thought, nor to keep up with literature.

The idea of “micro-good, macro-bad” is a result of partisans desperate to prove some part of evolution wrong. It is a false distinction used by the dishonest and ignorant.

I urge you to visit http://www.talkorigins.org for further information. Specifically, the following articles might be of especial use:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/macroevolution.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

-andros-

202

Okay, but as I said, they’ll want to know your source. This paper on talkorigins also says there was a “Mitochondrial Eve,” though it says the one in question is “the most-recent common ancestor of all humans alive on Earth today with respect to matrilineal descent.” He then explains why all those qualifiers are necessary. If, for example, there is some kind of epidemic or other disaster that kills every person but one woman, she would be the “Mitochondrial Eve” for every descendent she has.

Does he have it wrong too?

203

So far as I know, yes, they got it wrong. The “Mitochondrial Eve” is, technically, the DNA of a single person, but that single person wasn’t the ancestor of everyone. Instead, that’s the person, of the population of last common ancestors, whose DNA got established in the descendants at the expense of everyone else.

It’s like the grandparent paradox: you have two parents, four grandparents, and so on, so every person must have millions of great-great-great grandparents, and the population of the Earth in 1500AD must have been incalculably enormous. In reality, everyone shares a certain number of ancestors; we’re all members of a family which turns out to be fairly closely inbred, in the grand scheme of things. OTOH, your genome doesn’t have enough room for all of their DNA; some genes just got lost from genetic drift. Given the way genetic drift works, one ancestor’s gene (or genes, in the case of mitochondrial DNA and Y chromosomes) will come to dominate all the descendants.

(One example I heard used was the fact that lots of people in a particular village in England claim to be descended from Alexander the Great, but if you do the math, half of Alexander the great’s DNA is lost with each generation. If you calculate the percentage of his DNA which would survive to the present day, then it supposedly turns out to be a homeopathic amount, less than one gene. Then again, the descendants do have DNA, and they had to get it from somebody- it just happens that the chance any of your DNA came from any one particular famous ancestor is small.)

Now, I may be wrong, but let’s just say that I think it’s crazy to think that the “Mitochondrial Eve” was a single person from whom everyone else sprang, in the sense ghoti wants to believe. If nothing else, you have to face the fact that given a typical phylogenetic analysis, you’d have no way of telling whether there was one ancestor, or several ancestors of whom the DNA of only one survived to the present day. Plus, founder effects probably make these one-ancestor scenarios impossible, but I don’t know how that applies in practice for cases where you have many females and one male, or vice versa.

The real proof of the pudding is in the paper. If you can give me a cite, then I’ll read it if I get a chance. If talk.origins disagrees with me, I’d better check my sources! (Plus, IzzyR has pointed out that I might have screwed up my genetic drift explanation, so I’m being more cautious when I might normally rely on my memory and common sense.)

-Ben

204

Are you saying you didn’t read this article: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/mitoeve.html

205

on Pope John Paul II.

Aside from all the subtle Catholic bashing and hysterical claims of the One World Order, Morris did correctly note that the RCC has been pretty accepting of the scientific evidence for Darwinian Evolution for a long time.

Of course, Morris has viewpoint that he must protect, so he also bends the truth when necessary. Claiming that Theodosius Dobzhansky might have twisted his science under the spell of the philosopher de Chardin is, to my mind, perilously close to libel. His claims that Karol Wojtyla was “comfortable” as a (Communist) state-approved priest is also both nasty and false.

He did make me laugh with his claim that JP II is “Liberal.”

Morris seems to be a nine-and-half-commandment Christian. (You can only bear little white falsehoods against your neighbor.)

206

Are these statements and quotes referenced by Dr. Don Patton (I found them in a link from the Henry Morris website) anything worth exploring regarding Q2 of the OP?

Is this bunk?

DH

207

Thank you for the links, JonF!

208

Here’s the link to my earlier reference:

Dr. Patton

I’m sorry, I’m used to being able to edit my posts on other boards.

DH

209

I just wanted to comment on this. I think people who think this are looking at it from the wrong angle. Shouldn’t this be looked at as humans have adapted qite well to the way the Earth is, and not that the earth is perfect for us humans? If the Earth had been different, then either nothing would be here, or a different species would be in control that had adapted to the way the earth is. If dino’s hadn’t been wiped out, would we still be here? I personally don’t think so. People (or maybe I should say Creationists) assume it’s a foregone conclusion humans would be here. But if you had changed one variable in the past, we wouldn’t be, and some other creature would be here debating creation and evolution and wouldn’t know what a human was. :slight_smile:

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Modian *
**

One (smart-assed Creationist, not me, of course) could easily assert that this has indeed happened and humans are the creatures about which you speak. The “you” that changed the variables is God. The “lizard creatures” or whatever else that should have evolved into a more intelligent lifeform, didn’t because of the variations.

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Andros, et. al.

I am a professor in the humanities. But I have lived with immunologists and organic chemists, and I have sat on a rather large number of university administrative boards and participated in external reviews of science programs, and I took care of applications for one third of the graduate departments of a major research university for an academic year, including physics, chemistry, botany, math, sociology.

My experience in with practicing scholars is to know that scientists bicker along with the rest of us, and a unqualified statement such as ‘scientists say that…’ is suspect.

I am interested in hearing about your science background, however. You seem to like it. Perhaps not here nor now.

On the issue of macroevolution and etc. Only drawing conclusions from what I have read here.

I’ll check out the site you mentioned.

Kat

212

Another poster asked what Mrs. grimpixie was referring to.

Apparently, in 1985, astronomer Fred Hoyle and coauthor Chandra Wickramasinghe claimed in the British Journal of Photography that the best-known Archeopteryx fossil was a forgery. More specifically, they claimed that the feathers were added to an otherwise legitimate fossil by grinding up rock into a paste, applying it to the fossil and pressing feather impressions into it.

The British Museum, owners of the fossil, investigated and noted the following reasons that the fossil is not a forgery:

  1. There was no trace of any such “paste.”
  2. The fossil was discovered in the middle of a piece of split slate. The two halves of the slate slab fit together perfectly, which wouldn’t happen if extra material had been added to one half.
  3. Scanning electron microscopy showed that hairline cracks on one half of the slate continued on the other half, when such cracks would have been covered by the “paste” had it been applied.

In addition, three more Archeopteryx fossils discovered since the 1950s also show feather impressions, although not as distinctly as the British Museum’s specimen.

[Source for Information: Hoaxes by Gordon Stein and Marie J. MacNee (Detroit: Visible Ink, 1995)]

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But unfortunately the crationists (generally, not specifically Mrs GP) stopped following the progress of the archaeopterex examination before the final conclusion as to it’s authenticity was reached, sad to say that this is rather typical of bad science generally (that’s why we have a million people believing that there’s a carved face on Mars; the newer evidence (without photographic glitches) washed over them without effect).

214

Allow me to correct that to read:

…archaeopteryx examination before the more recent and reliable evidence as to it’s authenticity…

215

You’re right, the statements should be qualified. When most of us say “Scientists say that…”, what we mean is “The majority of mainstream scientists say…”. Since most of us know that that’s what we mean, we tend to forget that others don’t.

Of course, other posters might disagree. :wink:

216

Yup. It’s called “quote mining”, quoting out of context to make it appear that emininent scientists really support the claims of creationists or don’t really believe in evolution. Especially suspect ellipses (…) which show that material has been removed, and do not assume that a creationist quotes even the stated words accurately; often that’s not so.

Note that it’s also common for creationsists to copy mined quotes from other creationists without attributing the intermediate source (as Patton apparently did); they often don’t even know they’re quote mining.

I’ll answer these in a fairly long post, but I encourage you to develop the habit of checking and answering your questions yourself … it’s usually not difficult.

Darwin was a great scientist, partly because he anticipated many possible objections to his theory and addressed them before anyone had a chance to raise them. His style was to present these issues as rhetorical questions and then answer them. Unfortunately, this style lends itself to quote mining; you just quote the rhetorical question and ignore the immediately-following answer.

The full text of “Origin of Species” is on-line in many places, including here. We find that those ellipses in the quote indicate four chapters of deleted words (the first part comes from chapter 6 and the second part from chapter 10). The citation should make it clear that those quotes come from widely separated pages. However, most of the intermediate material is not germane … but the material immediately following each quoted portion is germane and makes Darwin’s ideas clear.

I leave it as an exercise for the student to read what comes immedately after those quotes to see that the objections are rhetorical and the answers are there.

I’m not familiar with this one. From reading others of his works, I can definitely say that quote does not fairly represent Eldredge’s views. I suspect those ellipses … there’s a good chance that “this part of Darwin’s predictions” in the second portion does not refer to the prediction in the first portion, but rather to another prediction that has been excised. Eldredge is one of the major proponents of “punctuated equilibrium” (PE); he often makes fairly grandiose statements and refers to failures of earlier versions of the TOE to adequately explain certain fine details of the fossil record.

Another possibility is to realize that we will never fill in all the gaps in the fossil record; that could be what Eldredge is referring to. Of course, this does not mean that the fossil record is not quite sufficient to provide excellent evidence (but far from the only evidence) for the TOE.

Revealing a common creationist misconception, left over from pre-Darwinian theorizing. “Progressive” and “upward” are inappropriate words; the TOE predicts neither, they are not required, and they are meaningless in this context. The TOE predicts change when conditions change or more advantageous variants arise.

I’ll quote from But Is It Deception? – “What Is Creation Science?”, Page 4 (note that the original version of the quote comes from “What is Creation Science” by Morris; see But Is It Deception?):

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A completely rigorous examination would have to admit that the statement “scientists say” or even the more qualified statement “the majority of scientist say” are both examples of argument from authority. What really matters is what the evidence discovered by those scientists says.

If you argue that scientists say evolution happens, and are countered by the assertion that the Bible says it doesn’t, both sides have presented equally fallacious arguments. Both rely on authority of the source, although neither recognizes the authority of the other’s source. But the observable facts of the matter are not fallacious. To many people, the Bible doesn’t say any such thing, and it is not authoritative to anyone unless accepted on faith. There is an overwhelming body of evidence that supports the contention made by many scientists that evolution does happen.

We live in a world that grows increasingly complex, and millions of very intelligent people are spending thousands of hours every year learning about it. You can’t keep up. But you can try, and the trying will teach you a lot about how to tell whom to believe. A person, who starts out to prove something, generally will prove it. That seldom convinces anyone who didn’t already agree. But if you start out trying to learn something, you have a chance of actually learning something. In the midst of all that you can also keep your heart open to the possibility that things which cannot be proven, or examined, or tested might well still be. You don’t have to reject Darwin to love Jesus. But don’t waste time trying to prove anything about God to anyone.

Tris

“It should be possible to explain the laws of physics to a barmaid.” ~ Albert Einstein ~
“Man, you should see the place Einstein used to go drink.” ~ Triskadecamus ~

218

Have you seen the most recent photos and 3D models made from the MOLA laser altimeter measurements?

Highest-Resolution View of “Face on Mars”

I can’t seem to find a link to the MOLA images, but one is reproduced in the latest (Sep/Oct 2001) issue of Skeptical Inquirer.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled debate, already in progress.

219

One other thing worth saying …

Those quotes aren’t evidence about evolution, so they have no relationship to Q2 of the OP. They appear to be an appeal to authority and/or an attempt to raise doubts. But they’re not evidence.

220

You know, I have to point out that http://www.talkorigins.org has 29, count them, 29 evidences for macroevolution, in just a single file on their archive, not counting all their other essays.

But if you ask the creationists for one single bit of evidence for creationism?
-Ben