Why evolution is not possible.

Great Debates
141

I’ve really been appreciating your ideas thus far, but let me politely suggest that until you work out the problems with special relativity, general relativity shouldn’t even be considered. In other words, your original proposition here is under attack; bad time to bring up new propositions.

It seems to me that attempting to account for species deviation through environmental concerns may have one possible thing going for it… I recently read about biologists encountering the same species in geographically isolated areas… can anyone here fill the obvious gaps for me on this one, if you’ve heard of it? The source mentioned that some biologists were damn suprised to see such a thing.

However, attempting to account for species diversity (as I mentioned and then so did another poster) through multiple basic ancestors has the distinct problem of explaining where the originals came from. Since it can be tested, however, I suggest you get cracking. Purchase a few hampsters and make them live in the refrigerator or something; drastically change their environment. In a good 30 years you will have copious amounts of data (and hampster turds) which would either support or deconstruct your hypothesis.

If, as at least one poster mentioned, this has already been tested then perhaps you’ve simply formed an opinion without all the facts available (or rather, without enough facts-- don’t need them all). Probably isn’t the first time in your life; by gosh and by golly it won’t be the last. It is a poor 'Doper who can’t admit when he’s (or she’s, ladies) wrong. And it is a 'Doper likely to be tossed into the den of wolves we call the pit. And that is never good.

HOWEVER, if you would like to continue to support your idea which contradicts, in many ways, popular science there are a couple paths you can take. Take some time away from posting to the board and read up on the subject to better form your arguments. When someone challenges your post and refers you to why they challenge your post, its sorta like they brought their big brother in to protect them from the bully (that’s you, challenging us). So, if you are resolved to not back down, you’ll need to get your big brother (your references) which can counteract our big brother.

Otherwise, you are really wasting everyone’s time here, including your own.

142

I would like to say that I appreciate all your questions and comments and hope that this debate can continue without any insults.

Ok, you guys asked me to look over www.talkorigins.org and I have, extensiveley. A lot of you guys refer to it to back up your statements.

Well, this time I have a site that I would like you to look over, which supports my theory. It is a creationist web site, but the guy who wrote the articles was a former professor of evolution, specifically zoology. He changed his theory to creationism, which is more in line with what I believe. So you should find that his articles have more substance than most creationists.

Here are the articles: http://www.amazingdiscoveries.org/evolution.html You should see a list of articles under the heading “Discoveries in evolution”, please take a look.

Please read them over at your leisure and feel free to comment. Don’t harp on about all the christian stuff he talks about, simply stick with his scientific articles.

143

The examples I already gave, and the references at the sites to which I linked, should be sufficient. If you want more I don’t have them to hand, it’ll take a couple of days.

144

As they explicitly say in the Welcome page:

“The Talk.Origins Archive is a collection of articles and essays that explore the creationism/evolution controversy from a mainstream scientific perspective. In other words, the authors of most of the articles in this archive accept the prevailing scientific view that the earth is ancient, that there was no global flood, and that evolution is responsible for the earth’s present biodiversity.”

Gee, I don’t see any such thing in the Creation/Evolution: Pro-Creationism or Anti-Evolution section.

How many links to pro-evolution web sites does your favorite website contain? The site from which you took your OP contains zero such links; not only are they biased, they don’t want you to think for yourself.

Hear Hear! I’m all for it. I wish you would show some indication that you have done so or will do so. So far, I haven’t seen any. The evidence thus far indicates that your “… lot of research on the topic and looking at different points of view…” consists of only looking at creationist sources. Your knowledge of the theory you are criticizing is certainly gleaned only from such sources.

145

His articles do have a bit of substance, and others more trained than I can talk about that. However, I didn’t see anything there that really counts as scientific.

The important difference between science and non-science is that scientific theories explicitly spell out what could prove them wrong. These take the form of predictions. For a list of falsifiable predictions from evolutionary biology, see this document. While this guy is explaining existing evidence, he doesn’t seem to be making any particular predictions. Therefore, his ideas are not falsifiable, and isn’t scientific.

Admittedly, my purview of the site was a little brief. If you feel I missed something important, feel free to point it out.

146

Be happy to.
. . . er, if there actually were any scientific articles to stick to.

But we’ve already established that you seem to have little understanding of science anyway.

147

Hiyruu,
Science is an interesting, and sometimes frustrating, field, because there’s no point when the community of science can say, “That’s it, we’re done. This theory perfectly explains everything.” The most a scientist can say is, “Well, right now, this theory seems to fit more facts than any other theory.”

In a lot of ways, what a scientist does in looking at the world isn’t very different than what a sculptor does with a block of marble if he’s making a statue of a man. The stone starts out completely unformed, and with every swing of the hammer against the chisel, the stone slowly grows to look more and more like a person, and less and less like an unformed block of marble. Science is the same way. In the beginning, the block of human knowledge is unformed. Then someone gathers observations and puts together a theory that will explain them. Then, as more observations come along, if some don’t fit, that theory gets modified, changed, or thrown out altogether for a new theory that fits more observations. This continues, with each theory explaining more and more facts.

It’s not enough to say “Evolution is wrong because it doesn’t explain X, Y, and Z.”, and leave it at that, because theories don’t deal with right and wrong. They deal with fitting observations into a framework. You have to say, “Evolution doesn’t explain X, Y, and Z, and my theory does, and it also explains all of those things that the current theory of evolution also explains.” If you can do that, and the theory really does explain all those things, then you will have made a major step in the development of biology. You will have knocked another piece of marble off the sculpture of the world as it really is.

So far, you seem to have presented a theory of your own. If I can sum it up (and I hope you’ll correct me if I miss anything), it’s “There exist certain species archetypes…species of animals that have always existed and, if exposed to certain environmental pressures, can manifest certain traits to become a new species.” Ok, but now there are a few questions you need to ask yourself. One is “What facts, if I were to find them, would support this theory, and what facts would oppose the theory?” You would also have to ask yourself, “Does this theory fit more facts, or fit them better than the current theory of evolution.” I invite you to do that, because, if you can show that it does, then we’ll all have learned something.

148

This was taken from the site you gave above. The last sentence is a pretty shoddy way to talk science. “Considering the improbability of winning the lottery, we know that the game is fixed.” Sorry, I don’t agree.

Also, I thought natural selection could very well operate on the genotype; why wouldn’t it?

149

How do you feel about his flood section after reading the flood FAQs and articles at talk.origins?

All the stuff I see in there has been adequately refuted already somewhere, much of it at talkorigins.org, and the refutations are easily found by one who’s investigating the subject.

A few comments:

“Evolutionists have to assume that the rate of cosmic bombardment of the atmosphere has always remained constant (resulting in the rate of carbon-14 formation) and that the rate of decay has remained constant.” Nope, not assumptions. Those have been checked many times in many different ways. A Radiometric Dating Resource List is a good place to start learning. Radiometric Dating: A Christian Perspective is a good primer.

His discusssion of the Flood and the age of the Earth and the geologic column ignores the vast majority of the evidence. See DMD Publishing Co. Home Page, and be sure to read the “About the Author” page.

His discussion of Natural Selection as a Creative Force is 95% argument by assertion. A key paragraph, “A look at the palaeontological record will reveal a far greater diversity of life in the past than in the present. Moreover, as environmental pressures increase, more and more species are becoming extinct. Natural selection appears to be doing a good job at eliminating life forms and if given a little bit more time, might complete the job in the not so distant future. Thus, if variation did not come about by natural selection, the question arises, where did it come from?” presents no evidence whatsoever for his assertions and his conclusion does not even follow from his assertions.

“A literature survey of mammalian distribution patterns carried out by L.J. Gibson (Geoscience Research Institute) shows that many mammalian species exhibit distribution patterns consistent with an ark distribution. … The distribution of mammals on earth is consistent with a north-south distribution in Africa, and a west-east distribution in Asia.”

Yup, and it’s also consistent with lots of other things. This is typical of much of his site; the “evidence” is mostly things that don’t contradict his theory, not things that support his theory; and he has to ignore most of the evidence to avoid things that contradict his theory. Note that Africa is basically oriented North-South, and Eurasia is basically oriented East-West. Also, moving from one habitat to another along an East-West axis is easier than along a Norht-South axis, because the climate changes less in the former case.

His discussion of the difficulties raised by the Australian mammals is just arm-waving. “Maybe this could have happened, maybe that could have happened”. Scientists don’t publish that sort of stuff; they look for evidence that indicates whether or not their hypothesised mechanisms happened.

150

Without knowing the specifics, it is, unfortunately, difficult to provide specifics. There is, as it happens, an entire branch of science dealing with the distrubution of organisms, called biogeography - essentially, the study of why organisms are where we find them. Populations such as the one you mentioned are known as disjunct populations, and though not exactly common, are not (obviously) unheard of.

151

Thanks for the term, DF. Some further thought on the matter reminded me that it had to do with slamander populations.

I’ll be searching on my own in the meantime.

152

Darwin’s Finch, is it the current idea that these disjunct populations were seperated by environmental changes and/or migratory actions as opposed to evolving independently?

It would seem that independent evolution as I understand it is a very weak proposition, and that geological records could provide some backbone to environmental segregation of a once geographically uniform population.

There is just too much to learn about, I swear. I was just reading a few more pages trying to get something about what I had read in regards to these salamander populations and I came across people who dedicate their careers to studing these little guys.

If I had a million years and twice as many books I’d still be begging for more at the end. Hail the SDMB!

153

<quote>My theory says that the built in genetic potential will respond to external conditions through genetic expression.

For example if you set a family of domesticated pigs into the wild they would respond in a few generations by developing tusks as a response to environmental change. The tusks are for survival.

Now those tusks did not require millions of years of evolution to develop, we are only talking a few generations here. The tusks were the result of ‘built in genetic potential’ responding to the situation.</quote>
I don’t believe it! A testable prediction from a creationist / IDer!

All you have to do now is put your pigs in the wild and prove your point. The world will be turned on its ear and you’ll have a well-deserved Nobel prize.

154

Definitely the former (environmental changes and/or migratory actions).

**

In most cases, it’s possible to track down the environmental change(s) which was(were) responsible for the separation by using geological clues. Independent evolution is one of those ideas which would be so fantastically improbable that, while it may have occurred, the much simpler explanation is that the two populations were orginally one, and became separated.

**

Gould devotes much of his time studying a specific snail. Darwin wrote volumes about orchids and worms. Often, such in-depth research leads to some fascinating revelations :slight_smile:

155

I don’t know about the rest of y’all, but reading Hiyruu’s OP and his subsequent replies makes me realize how much, much, MUCH farther we have to go in the battle against ignorance…

(Is Hiyruu General Mills? ;))

156

Could you explain this? Specifically, where is this diversity stored?

Consider this example (already mentioned in this thread): start with a culture of bacteria, and very briefly expose it to an antibiotic that is toxic to this bacteria. Select a single bacteria from the survivors, cultivate it into a new population. Repeat this process several times and you end up with bacteria that is resistant to the antibiotic.

Now after the first exposure to the antibiotic you selected a single bacteria (bacterium?). That means a single strand of DNA. As far as I can see that means no diversity - you’ve got one fixed sequence and that’s it. And in fact you do that over and over through the course of the experiment.

However at the end of the experiment you’ve got bacteria with an entirly different set of DNA than that first selected bacterium had. How did that happen? Standard evolutionary theory as I understand it states that there were random mutations, some of which resulted in the bacteria being better equiped to survive in the presence of the antibiotic, and that these mutations got passed along to subsequent generations. How does your theory account for it?

157

YO, HIRYUU! WHEN SOMEONE ASKS YOU FOR A CITE OR FOR DATA, REPEATING YOUR MANTRA OF “I BELIEVE” DOES NOT SUFFICE!

What’s so freaking hard about understanding that belief is not science?

Sheesh.

158

Well, now we know where you got the “I buried my dog” problem.

It’s Professor Walter J. Veith’s website. Read his biography.

I didn’t read any further than that.

Hiryuu, I have an experiment you can run, though it’s irresponsible: Go to an animal shelter and get a bunch of cats. Raise some of the cats indoors. (You’ll need a number of females but only one male. Trust me. :slight_smile: ) Let them breed all they want, but don’t let any of them outside EVER. Let the other cats fend for themselves outdoors. Let them breed all they want as well but don’t let any of them inside EVER. Continue for 60 years. That’s a lot of generations of cats and a lot of opportunities for the genotype to change, eh?

According to your theory, the indoor cats should eventually become a different species since they live in a different environment from the outdoor cats. But I’d bet every dollar I own and every dollar I’ll EVER own that after 60 years, all you’re going to have is a whole lot of cats.

(Please, don’t anyone do this experiment for real. I hope I don’t have to explain why.)

159

Hiyruu insists that he is not a Creationist-he just believes exactly what a Creationist believes and all of his cites are from Creationism websites. Why are any of you arguing with such a dishonest person? :frowning:

160

I don’t know, especially since he seems to be ignoring all evidence that we lay before him, and yet happily builds his case out of his own mind.

Hiyruu, you’re “buried animal” cases are useless. No scientists would ever worry about such a small amount of dirt in so small amount of time. When they deal with layers that are very thick and which covers very large amounts of time. And they don’t rely on one site, i.e. your pond. They need several sites all of which corraberate the evidence of the others. Then and only then will they work with that. And there is really no discrepencies for you to proove that it is untrue.

Your idea seems to state that there is no new information being created, that indeed everything necessary to make all animals was there in the beginning, somehow locked away in a specific set of animals. That means that genes can only be lost and never again brought about. So diversity should constantly be decreasing. But despite such large extinctions as our pre-history is full of we have always sprung up to have great amount of diversity again. So you are telling us that no new genes were ever created. They were always there from the beginning, simply unselected until they were required. But we can make new genes and so can nature. We can show that in the process of splitting a cell into 2 errors can be made, and are made.

Like, for instance, bacteria, which reproduce asexually. If I were to take 1 bacterium and place it in a growth solution until there are millions of them. According to your idea they should all have the exact same DNA. They may look different since they can select different genes, according to your idea, but they should all have the same genes. But that will not be the case. Errors in the replication process will mean that a few mutations will occur. The same is true of your mDNA and your Y chromosome. Neither of which enjoys sexual reproduction but is passed down as a unit from mother or father to child.

I honestly don’t see why you like your idea so much then evolution? What turns you off evolution? Is it the ape ancestors? It looks like your idea has it too. Is it change? Your idea has it too. Is it the vast history? I don’t know why you’d find that repulsive. Personally I find all of that neat. And it also always amazes me that people try and attack science when science has gotten some of the most dogmatic, stick-in-the-mud organizations to admit they were wrong and we were right. Yes the earth goes around the sun. Yes the sun is just a part of the milky way galaxy. And eventually it will be yes we evolved along with each and every other creature on this planet more then 3,500, 000,000 years ago. I say go outside and hug a tree, it’s one of your most distant cousins.