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Author Topic:   "Best" evidence for evolution.
Tangle
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Posts: 9489
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Joined: 10-07-2011
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Message 196 of 830 (857010)
07-04-2019 6:08 PM
Reply to: Message 186 by Faith
07-04-2019 6:48 AM


Faith writes:
Yes that's right but overall it's too easy to rationalize away anything that doesn't fit when it's in the past where it can be reinterpreted instead of definitively identified as false.
Nonsense, the simple fact is that you can't find the evidence to falsify it, and if you could, science would already have done it.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London.I am Finland. Soy Barcelona
"Life, don't talk to me about life" - Marvin the Paranoid Android
"Science adjusts it's views based on what's observed.
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
- Tim Minchin, in his beat poem, Storm.

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Faith 
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Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 197 of 830 (869466)
12-30-2019 7:55 PM
Reply to: Message 108 by Sarah Bellum
06-28-2019 11:30 AM


Response to Message 107
This should be an answer to Message 107 rather than 108. This is an old thread so I've lost track of the sequence of the discussion but since we are again talking about evolution I'm bringing over the evolution-related posts from the thread about the Flood where I responded to your reference to this post above with this, Message 1511:
I can only respond briefly ... to your statement that we can observe evolution: we can only observe what is called microevolution, which is the changes that occur from generation to generation within a given species. We can NOT observe the kind of evolution described by the Theory of Evolution, species to species evolution that is. Because it does not occur. But microevolution yes, and we can discuss that on that thread where you posted the message you are referring to, if you like.
To which you responded in Message 1517:
Sarah Bellum writes:
Your statement that species-to-species evolution hasn't been observed is no more true than a statement that beta decay or radio waves haven't been observed, as I described in my original post EvC Forum: "Best" evidence for evolution.. Look at the links about such topics as Buffalo grass, Madeira island house mice, the "American goatsbeard" and Nereis acuminata, but that's for another thread.
We can continue this here since the other thread focuses on the Flood.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 108 by Sarah Bellum, posted 06-28-2019 11:30 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 198 of 830 (869467)
12-30-2019 8:43 PM
Reply to: Message 197 by Faith
12-30-2019 7:55 PM


Re: Response to Message 107
SB writes:
Your statement that species-to-species evolution hasn't been observed is no more true than a statement that beta decay or radio waves haven't been observed, as I described in my original post EvC Forum: "Best" evidence for evolution..
Let's get the order of things in perspective here: You had said that evolution has been observed, so I answered that only microevolution has been observed, which is the familiar changes from generation to generation that we see in all sexually reproducing species at least, but that we do not ever see species-to species evolution. In other words I was merely answering your claim that evolution is observed. No it is not.
Look at the links about such topics as Buffalo grass, Madeira island house mice, the "American goatsbeard" and Nereis acuminate///,
I may do that. In fact I may try to answer your post 107 even if I already answered most of it on this thread. But the idea that any of your examples show species to species evolution is...highly unlikely.

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 199 of 830 (869468)
12-30-2019 9:15 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Sarah Bellum
06-25-2019 10:06 AM


Ordinary selection of built in variation is not species to species evolution
So here are the topics from your Message 107 you suggested I look at for evidence of evolution:
There is more evidence for evolution in the simple fact that we see it happening all the time, all around us. It seems unlikely that God would use miracles to create new species in the distant past, but nowadays allow species to evolve naturally, not bothering with miracles anymore. For examples, we have:
Before I even get into the specifics it is clear you are talking about normal intraspecies microevolution, perhaps in some cases due to mutation but not necessarily. None of your examples illustrate the claims of the ToE that one species evolves from another. Of course there is the usual terminological problem, that the word "species" as in "new" species suggests changes beyond those built into the genome. This always makes discussion difficult. Since the variations are built in there are no miracles involved. The original Creation did of course involve miracles, since all the living things as well as human beings were created miraculously. But after their creation God "rested" and did no more creating at all. The variability we see in living things is part of their original design. There are often many separate genes for one trait for instance, many different genetic sources for, say, eye color. It is the way the DNA gets sorted in sexual recombination, by meiosis that determines which trait will occur in the offspring.
This is built in. But there is nothing in the genome that can produce a new species, it only produces variations on the species it belongs to.You get all sorts of interesting combinations of fur color from the mating of cats, unless they are purebreds in which case you'll get only the particular fur type and color the DNA has been selected for. In the wild you get homogeneous species because of their sexual isolation from others of the same species. You get polar bears producing only polar bears although they are genetically related to black bears and grizzlies. etc. That's what Natural Selection does in the wild, it acts the way domestic artificial selection works in breeding. It doesn't produce anything other than a variation on the given species and its reproductive isolation means that over time a particular set of traits will come to dominate the whole population. But I'm getting way ahead of the discussion here.
- A new species of Buffalo grass evolved that can tolerate soil contaminated with mine tailings.
(http://education.nationalgeographic.com/...opedia/speciation)
This is Natural Selection under duress which isn't always the way it works, but when there is a survival threat, which I suppose the mine tailings pose to the Buffalo grass, a type of that grass that can resist the effects of the mine tailings, that is a variation built into its genome will come to dominate in the population. Elementary my dear Watson. Nothing new needs to be added although in some cases there may have been a mutation that eliminated the sensitivity to the tailings. But a mutation is nothing more than an altered allele, a change in the existing genetic stuff, not anything that changes the existing stuff into something else. It's still the same gene, with a different sequence.
You don't give any information about the following examples so I guess I'll have to look them up:
The worm Nereis acuminata (JSTOR: Access Check...)
- Madeira island house mice https://nondiscovery.wordpress.com/...-by-intelligent-design
and ABC.net.au: Page not Found)
- A flower called the "American goatsbeard" (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...on-occur-observations)
Do a web search on "examples of observed speciation" to find more examples, if you like.
Oh but I'm familiar with this sort of stuff. It proves nothing at all about the ToE.
ABE: The one about the worm wants me to regillster and log in. The title is "Rapid Speciation." This is a discussion we can have if you want to spell out the information since bare links are against the rules and I can't get into some sites anyway, but until you do I'm not going to address it. Except to say that the term "speciation" is one of those tendentious terms used in the service of the ToE that I deny. That is I know the phenomena it describes occur, but it is not "speciation," it is only the development of a population of a species that can't reproduce with the parent population for whatever reason, perhaps in some cases because its genetic variability is depleted. In any case it is pure wishful thinking that treats these phenomena as possible platforms for further evolution. They are in fact the reverse: they have LESS genetic variability and therefore LESS ability to produce new variations for further microevolution than the parent population.
Again, if you want to get into this, please spell out your view of it. But for now I'm going on to another of your topics in message 107.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by Sarah Bellum, posted 06-25-2019 10:06 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 200 of 830 (869469)
12-30-2019 9:55 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Sarah Bellum
06-25-2019 10:06 AM


Message 107 continued: basic statements about evolution
Your first topic from Message 107:
The scientific evidence for evolution is a fascinating topic, from Darwin and others' researches in the 19th century to 20th and 21st century discoveries. Here's a brief summary:
What is evolution in the first place? When an animal such as a horse, whale, dog, chicken, shark or beetle is born (or hatched, as the case may be) it becomes a member of one more generation in a long sequence of generations reaching back into the far distant past. What did those ancestors of long-ago generations look like? How are the different living things you see around you related?
They are all products of the genome that belongs to their own species, a particular combination of the variations possible within that genome. If they are the product of a line of ancestors that experienced reproductive isolation of some portion of its genetic potentials then it will possess the traits of that isolated population. Other populations of the same species may continue with a different set of traits that didn't become dominant in the isolated population because of their different sets of gene frequencies. So you get a population of large brownish wildebeests with one type of antler, as opposed to another population with bluish hide, smaller stature and different form of antlers. Due to particular set of gene frequencies possessed by the whole population that is different from the set possessed by the other population. Still all the same genome, all the same species.
Take the example of the horse or whale or other mammal. The first fossil evidence of mammals is from the Triassic Period, when the reptiles still ruled. The early mammals were small (often described by paleontologists as "shrew-like" or "mouse-like" animals) and certainly far different from the horses, whales, elephants and other mammals we see today. So we have evolutionary change over many generations. The most important evidence for evolution is the simplest: go from point A, an ancestor, to point B, a creature living today of much different form than that ancestor.
Well, the Creationist doesn't accept the idea that fossils show stages of evolution. The "shrew-like" horse is only the kind of horse that happened to get buried in the rocks known as "Triassic." But all they are is a variation built into the horse genome, that lived before the Flood and apparently died out completely in the Flood, leaving other types of horses that survived it.
Sometimes there is a great difference in the fossil forms of an animal that we are familiar with now, which evolutionists interpret as an earlier form of it which evolved into the modern form later, but as a Creationist I see it as merely one of the many possibilities in the genome of that particular Kind or Species, and the oddest ones, the ones you call "earlier" simply did not survive. Although there are interesting situations in which some of those odd types DID survive but were not recognized until recently. Their names aren't coming to mind, but I'll remember them eventually, or you will. "Living fossils" right?
What do Creationists think happened to get from point A to point B? Millions and millions of miracles, over millions and millions of years, creating new forms of life in the precise order that matches the fossil record and the DNA evolutionary tree?
Well, I have some question just how "precise" the fit is but in any case I've given my creationist view of it above. There is no "getting" from a supposed point A to a supposed point B, there is only the fact that different variations on a species got buried together in their own sedimentary graves separate from other forms of the species.
Why weren't whales created at the same time as fish?
They were. They merely ended up in different sedimentary rocks.
Surely if they were created ex nihilo, it would be strange to create all those land mammals first, then create the forms with vestigial limbs, then finally the fully aquatic forms . . . exactly in the order of their evolution.
We'll have to get into this supposed "order" eventually, but for now the answer is I suppose this would be strange but that isn't what I think. I believe there was some microevolution before the Flood so that the species that survive may be different in some respects from the original creation Kinds from which they descended, and all the earlier forms had died out before the Flood so whatl we have is whatever happened to still be living at the time of the Flood. They may not be very different from the originals, though, considering the great longevity of living things up to that point.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by Sarah Bellum, posted 06-25-2019 10:06 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 209 by PaulK, posted 12-31-2019 10:00 AM Faith has replied
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 201 of 830 (869470)
12-30-2019 10:08 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Sarah Bellum
06-25-2019 10:06 AM


Message 107, topic No.3; distribution, adaptation
Then there is the distribution of life forms on Earth. Of course, one would expect polar bears and penguins in cold climates, camels and cacti in hot climates. But why do we find penguins only in Antarctica and other regions in the southern hemisphere, but not in the north? Why should there be no camels in the deserts of North America? Alfred Russell Wallace typically gets second billing to Darwin, because of the fame of Origin of Species, but he is justly famous in his own right. Among other things, he studied the geographic ranges that species inhabited.
The Creationist idea that different species were created especially for particular climates and environments was shown to be incorrect when Wallace observed that mountains and rivers marked the boundaries of the ranges of many species. He discovered that there were regions that were similar, but inhabited by very different animals.
I suppose there were some Creationist ideas along the lines you describe, but I don't know if they still have currency. My own view is that we don't know what the original created Kinds looked like but they contiained all the genetic possibilities for all the variations we see today and probably a lot more that died in the Flood or before it. What we see today is the geographic isolation of portions of, say, the bear genome so that the polar bears got reproductively isolated from the rest of the bears and formed their own separated population of their own particular variation. Especially if there were geographical barriers this isolation and development of particular variations of a species makes sense.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by Sarah Bellum, posted 06-25-2019 10:06 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 202 of 830 (869471)
12-30-2019 10:27 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Sarah Bellum
06-25-2019 10:06 AM


Message 107, topic No.4 "Leftovers?"
Then there are the "evolutionary leftovers" that indicate the living creatures we see around us weren't created totally new, but instead bear evidence of change from earlier forms.
But of course. Nothing that supports the ToE though, just the result of variations on a particular species genome being passed down the generations often in isolation from other portions. What we have today have "microevolved" down the centuries from whatever their original Kind looked like, or even from whatever version of the Kind was on the ark or in the case of marine creatures, survived in the Flood water.
The "panda's thumb" is a popular example. Notice that these are NOT imperfections (the argument with Creationists - if any - who believe that all of the created life forms are without blemish is a different argument) but traces of ancestry remaining in the body of the organism. The most glaring example, of course, is the eyes of blind cave fish. Why would they have been "created" by God with vestigial eyes?
They weren't, all these examples you are giving have microevolved from the originals. I never read The Panda's Thumb so I don't know what point you are making about it. the original Created Kinds WOULD have been "without blemish" for whatever that's worth, but their built-in capacity to vary down the generations would have produced all sorts of new variations, and since they are under the Fall just as we are, they also inherit death and disease just as we do, and I regard mutations as an instrument of the Fall, which would produce "blemishes" although I'm not sure what you consider to be a blemish. The blind cave fish obviously microevolved their blindness, perhaps through a mutation, and presumably it was selected as more adaptive under the circumstances than sight would have been . The mechanisms of evolution such as Selection do operate, they just don't produce new species from other species., all selection does is promote new populations of a particular genome either for its adaptive ability or purely accidentally, from geographic isolation for instance.
There are many other examples: the laryngeal nerve, the appendix, whale hip bones and vestigial leg bones, goose bumps and human body hair, kiwi bird vestigial wings, vestigial crab tails, vestigial koala caruncles, etc.
There may be different causes for these different phenomena, but the loss of a function leaving the appendix or other vestigial organ would be the result of the Fall perhaps through a mutation. All living things lost longevity over the generations, lost functions etc. But it isn't clear what the cause of all the things on your list might be, though they certainly don't contribute anything to the ToE in any case.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by Sarah Bellum, posted 06-25-2019 10:06 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 203 of 830 (869472)
12-30-2019 10:53 PM
Reply to: Message 107 by Sarah Bellum
06-25-2019 10:06 AM


Message 107, topic No. 5: DNA evidence, pseudogenes
then we have evidence from DNA. Chromosome #2 in humans is the most famous example: fused from two chromosomes that are separate in chimpanzee DNA, showing a common ancestor of humans and chimps.
Or it merely reflects the similarity AND difference in DNA due to the similarity and difference in chimp and human body structure.
There are other more subtle DNA traces showing common ancestry. Some of our genetic material is "pseudo-genes," genes that no longer code for a protein because of a mutation, and so are "inactive" bits of the DNA code.
Thank you. That is also how I view pseudogenes or "junk DNA."
Consider DNA as instructions for assembling complex machines, because that's what DNA is: instructions for the chemical reactions of a developing organism. If two similar machines have similar instruction manuals, then they might have just got nearly the same wording because the machines have similar functions.
Yes.
But suppose the instruction manuals have the same typographical or grammar errors? Then we would expect the manuals to come from a common source.
It's not an unreasonable idea, but it's also possible that the machines are simply prone to the same kinds of error because of something in their structure.
In the analogy, this would represent a common ancestor in the case of living creatures. A concrete example is the gene for synthesizing vitamin C. We need to consume vitamin C because our gene is inactive. Mapping such genes shows the common descent of humans and other primates, but demonstrates that other mammals (the guinea pig is one example) are further away on the evolutionary tree.
OR, again, it's just something about the similarity of the body structure and its genetic underlay that makes it susceptible to particular kinds of disease processes or deterioration in particular parts of the genome. The chimp and human body structure is similar enough for that comparison, but we aren't that similar to other mammalian body structures.
The same pseudogene is present in humans and primates, but the guinea pig has a different pseudogene. "Intelligent Design" might argue for similarities in the active DNA code between humans and chimps, and dissimilarities between human and guinea pigs, but the inactive part of the DNA indicates the branching of the evolutionary tree.
Well, no. First of all these things are not part of the original Creation but reflect the disease processes brought about by the Fall. And yes they most likely DO show the effects of similarity versus differences in the body structures. This doesn't necessarily "indicate the branching of the evolutionary tree" but simply the differential effects of the Fall on different creatures.
Short break and back soon,, but I thank you for such a lengthy opportunity to distract myself from ...life.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 204 of 830 (869474)
12-31-2019 12:02 AM
Reply to: Message 107 by Sarah Bellum
06-25-2019 10:06 AM


Message 107, topic 6: Retroviruses
More DNA evidence is provided by endogenous retroviruses. The following is quoted from Human Evolution: Endogenous Retroviruses prove that humans and chimps share a common ancestor.
Endogenous retroviruses are the remnant DNA of a past viral infection. Retroviruses (like the AIDS virus or HTLV1, which causes a form of leukemia) make a copy of their own viral DNA and insert it into their host's DNA. This is how they take over the cellular machinery of a cell and use it to manufacture new copies of the virus.
Sometimes, the cell that gets infected by such a virus is an immature egg cell in the ovary of a female animal. Such cells can be stored in a state of suspended animation or dormancy for as much as 50 years before they complete meiosis and become mature egg cells ready to be fertilized. Because they are dormant, gene expression is suppressed and the infection cannot take over the cell and kill it. If that egg later matures and is fertilized, the newborn organism will have that endogenous retrovirus in every one of its cells, and so will all of its descendants.
Every viral infection is unique. The complete genome of an animal is so huge, and the insertion point of a virus’s DNA is so random that it is statistically impossible for any two individuals to have the same exact endogenous retrovirus in the same exact spot on the genome unless they both inherited it from a common ancestor who had the original infection. And the infection of a germ cell is so rare that ERVs make up only somewhere between 1% and 8% of the entire human genome.
If two humans have the same identical ERV, it is proof that they are descended from a common ancestor. And if two different species have the identical ERV, it is proof that they too are descended from a common ancestor. In humans, there are about 30,000 different ERVS embedded in each person's DNA. Except for those later duplicated by a duplication mutation, all of them record unique infections of a single ancestral individual. Now here is where it gets really interesting.
There are at least seven different known instances of shared ERVs between chimps and humans... i.e. ERVs which are the identical viral DNA inserted into the identical spot of the genome. 100% of all chimps and 100% of all humans have these same ERVs. This is only possible if 100% of all chimps and all humans are descended from the single individual that had these original infections.
They are proof that humans and chimps share a common ancestor.
In a 2000 paper published in the journal Gene researchers identified ERVS shared by different primates and used them to assemble a family tree of monkeys apes and humans.
Reference: Lebedev, Y. B., Belonovitch, O. S., Zybrova, N. V, Khil, P. P., Kurdyukov, S. G., Vinogradova, T. V., Hunsmann, G., and Sverdlov, E. D. (2000) "Differences in HERV-K LTR insertions in orthologous loci of humans and great apes." Gene 247: 265-277.
I haven't studied retroviruses enough to have a clear response to this except to say that of course any disease process reflects the Fall, and my guess would be again that it is the structural similarities between humans and apes that probably explains the similarity in the retrovirus pattern. Once it is clear that evolution is not the explanation, as it is to me, then this is the most likely way to explain such things.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by Sarah Bellum, posted 06-25-2019 10:06 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

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Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 205 of 830 (869475)
12-31-2019 12:40 AM
Reply to: Message 107 by Sarah Bellum
06-25-2019 10:06 AM


Message 107, topic 7: other stuff
Even at the level of single-celled life, there is interesting DNA evidence. Cellular structures such as mitochondria or chloroplasts have their own DNA, distinct from the DNA found in the cell nucleus. This is evidence for the evolution of the first single-celled life, cells with no nucleus or organelles, into more complex forms. Chloroplast DNA, for example, is evidence of a photosynthetic cyanobacterium that was engulfed by an early eukaryotic cell to form a larger symbiotic organism that could photosynthesize.
Once you accept the ToE you fit everything else into it. But if you don't accept it, if like me you believe life is explained by the Biblical Creation, then you have a different model/paradigm for how all these things came about. In this case I don't have a theory at the moment.
Then, of course, there are other interesting facts about the genetic material of living organisms, such as the chromosome count. If life were designed from some Divine blueprint, we would expect the more complex organisms to have more DNA and therefore more chromosomes. And Man, of course, at the top of the heap, according to Genesis, and made in God's image, should have the most: toolmaking skills, memory, brain, long life, the immortal soul, and, of course, a body larger and more complex than almost all of the millions of other organisms on the planet. For some organisms, this pattern does indeed hold. Myrmecia pilosula, an ant species, has only one pair of chromosomes and the individual workers, being haploid, have only one chromosome (not even a pair!) each. Small creature, small amount of genetic information. But when we look at even smaller creatures, we find, to our surprise, examples like Amoeba proteus, a microbe with more than 500 chromosomes! And so it goes. Humans have 23 chromosome pairs, one less than chimpanzees (see the example of chromosome #2 above) and a lot less than Ophioglossum reticulatum, whose 630 chromosome pairs make this lowly fern the reigning champion.
One thing that's interesting about this is that it shows to be false the interpretation of the "fossil record" as reflecting increasing complexity. But my main response to this is that we don't know what chromosome count the original Kinds possessed and there's nothing very persuasive about what "we would expect" to be the case, so I'd drop that one if I were you.
Even for structures of living organisms that don't fossilize well, such as the heart or the eye, we can see the pathways of evolutionary change in the organisms that live today. This is not to say we, with our complex four-chambered heart, are evolved from some modern species of amphibian or fish alive today, of course. Living species are all leaves on the evolutionary tree, with the branches down below showing where different forms of life diverged. But modern forms of reptile, amphibian, fish and others can show us the path evolution took along those branches.
The mammalian four chamber heart is slightly different from the reptilian three-and-a-half chamber heart, which is different from the amphibian three chamber heart, which is different from the lungfish heart, which is different from the agnathan two chamber heart, which is different from the paired contractile aorta of the amphioxis, which is different from the single contractile aorta of the hemichordates. Then there is the earthworm who does not use an actual heart; it has one or more small muscular areas capable of contracting and pushing the blood and then reabsorbing it as it filters back.
This idea that there is a clear "pathway" of evolution from one type of organ to another has got to be a major delusion. These differences are not built into any genome, say the reptilian genome, so that the mammalian genome could have a different kind of heart by evolution from the reptilian, which means that evolution would have to proceed by trial and error, and just try to wrap your mind around that for a few minutes and it will drive you screaming bonkers. There is no way you could ever get a four chambered heart with its own peculiarities by evolution from a three-chambered heart, merely by trial and error. Unless you can point to something in the genome that makes this possible and I know you can't. I tried to think this through for the necessary changes that would have to happen to evolve the mammalian ear from the reptilian. You have to depend on mutations to come up with the right sequence in the right order and that is simply impossible. I'll try to elaborate this more later if you want to contest it.
Finally, consider the timeline of life on Earth. The simplest living things, the primitive unicellular organisms of billions of years ago, took the longest to develop! Why would that be? If a supernatural force were involved, why would it take so many hundreds of millions of years to develop the earliest single-celled life forms, while far more complex organisms, like Archaeopteryx, Australopithecus, Rhynia gwynne-vaughanii, Miohippus, Ichthyostega, Hylonomus, or cynodonts were "created" in the blink (on the geological time scale) of an eye?
Um, I believe you are confusing paradigms here. Creationism doesn't have any "timeline" in mind whatever. Creation was a one-time event, all the living things created as described in Genesis, one after another and that was the end of it.
Seen as a natural process, however, the timeline of change is easy to understand: it takes a long time for nonliving chemicals to develop into living organisms, and it takes a long time for single-celled organisms to make the great leap to combine into multicellular life, if there is no supernatural intervention prodding them along.
Do try to get the basic Creationist view of these things. There was ONE supernatural/miraculous Creation of all Kinds, and no further creation or "prodding" or any such thing. Life was created and then it did its own thing, affected by the Fall which was the other major influence.
Is the Origin of Species miraculous?
No, it's a wonderful piece of work, fun to read as I recall, but no it's not miraculous, it's simply false.
In the sense that the birth of a child is miraculous, yes. Complex and marvelous, it is true, but also natural, following natural principles of the universe.
And so does all life follow natural principles in the Creationist frame of rreference, following their original Creation.
"Speak to the earth and it shall teach thee."
Indeed, but it will not teach anything that contradicts the book that tells us to speak to the earth and be taught by it. {And as a matter of fact if you read the next verse in the book of Job you will see that what the Earth, and the fishes too, would teach thee is that it was all wrought by the hand of the LORD.}
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 107 by Sarah Bellum, posted 06-25-2019 10:06 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 217 by Meddle, posted 01-01-2020 11:10 AM Faith has replied
 Message 218 by AnswersInGenitals, posted 01-01-2020 5:02 PM Faith has replied
 Message 276 by Sarah Bellum, posted 01-08-2020 9:42 PM Faith has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 206 of 830 (869476)
12-31-2019 3:46 AM


Reviewed the OP and
it looks like everything I've written is off topic and it's too late now. It just looked like the usual debate thread. Oh well.

Replies to this message:
 Message 207 by RAZD, posted 12-31-2019 8:31 AM Faith has not replied
 Message 208 by Sarah Bellum, posted 12-31-2019 9:37 AM Faith has replied

  
RAZD
Member (Idle past 1405 days)
Posts: 20714
From: the other end of the sidewalk
Joined: 03-14-2004


(1)
Message 207 of 830 (869480)
12-31-2019 8:31 AM
Reply to: Message 206 by Faith
12-31-2019 3:46 AM


Re: Reviewed the OP and
it looks like everything I've written is off topic and it's too late now. It just looked like the usual debate thread. Oh well.
That's okay Faith. Nothing provides better evidence of the validity of evolution that watching a creationist try to prove otherwise.
The best evidence for evolution is the spacial-temporal matrix showing the connectivity in time and space of the evolutionary lineages. Motive, means, and opportunity. Fossils are "arranged" ("sorted") by geological age and by proximity to near relatives.
Enjoy
Edited by RAZD, : .

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This message is a reply to:
 Message 206 by Faith, posted 12-31-2019 3:46 AM Faith has not replied

  
Sarah Bellum
Member (Idle past 596 days)
Posts: 826
Joined: 05-04-2019


Message 208 of 830 (869481)
12-31-2019 9:37 AM
Reply to: Message 206 by Faith
12-31-2019 3:46 AM


Re: Reviewed the OP and
Is it really off topic? Shouldn't the presentation of the best evidence be accompanied by a discussion of that evidence?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 206 by Faith, posted 12-31-2019 3:46 AM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 210 by Faith, posted 12-31-2019 1:40 PM Sarah Bellum has replied

  
PaulK
Member
Posts: 17822
Joined: 01-10-2003
Member Rating: 2.2


(1)
Message 209 of 830 (869483)
12-31-2019 10:00 AM
Reply to: Message 200 by Faith
12-30-2019 9:55 PM


Re: Message 107 continued: basic statements about evolution
quote:
The "shrew-like" horse is only the kind of horse that happened to get buried in the rocks known as "Triassic." But all they are is a variation built into the horse genome, that lived before the Flood and apparently died out completely in the Flood, leaving other types of horses that survived it
This is a typical Faith misunderstanding. There are no horses in the Triassic, only very early mammals.
And indeed this brings us to some very good evidence for evolution.
Those early mammals like Morganucodon display clear transitional features, most notably in the bones related to the jaw and ear.
Others, however, define "mammals", as a group, by the possession of a special, secondarily evolved jaw joint between the dentary and the squamosal bones, which has replaced the primitive one between the articular and quadrate bones in all modern mammalian groups. Under this definition, Morganucodon would be a mammal. Nevertheless, its lower jaw retains some of the bones found in its non-mammalian ancestors in a very reduced form rather than being composed solely of the dentary. Furthermore, the primitive reptile-like jaw joint between the articular and quadrate bones, which in modern mammals has moved into the middle ear and become part of the ear ossicles as malleus and incus, is still to be found in Morganucodon.
The evolution of the mammalian jaw was one of the great puzzles in evolution. However, the intermediate forms were found and the problem was solved by the fossil evidence. Evidence that would be completely unexpected if mammals were not related to reptiles.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 200 by Faith, posted 12-30-2019 9:55 PM Faith has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 211 by Faith, posted 12-31-2019 1:50 PM PaulK has replied

  
Faith 
Suspended Member (Idle past 1445 days)
Posts: 35298
From: Nevada, USA
Joined: 10-06-2001


Message 210 of 830 (869498)
12-31-2019 1:40 PM
Reply to: Message 208 by Sarah Bellum
12-31-2019 9:37 AM


Re: Reviewed the OP and
If you go to the OP you'll see a post in large red letters by Admin Percy about how the thread is only for the purpose of presenting the best evidence for the ToE.
HOWEVER, since it's an old thread and there was a long gap in time involved, by now it may be fair to treat it as a regular debate thread. I suppose that's for one of the admins to say and I don't feel like tracking them down for the purpose. Maybe we should just assume it's so.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 208 by Sarah Bellum, posted 12-31-2019 9:37 AM Sarah Bellum has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 212 by Sarah Bellum, posted 12-31-2019 2:02 PM Faith has not replied

  
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