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Author Topic:   Rebuttal To Creationists - "Since We Can't Directly Observe Evolution..."
FossilDiscovery
Junior Member (Idle past 492 days)
Posts: 3
Joined: 05-12-2022


Message 1 of 2926 (894380)
05-12-2022 10:45 PM


Debunking Creationism #2 - Since We Can't Directly Observe Evolution, It Never Happened (Rebuttal)
This video aims to open up discussion and to dispell myths.
Add to the discussion of how much we can observe microevolution versus macroevolution.
Which one is better evidence for evolution? Or are they both? Do you agree or disagree with the video?

Replies to this message:
 Message 3 by jar, posted 05-14-2022 9:02 AM FossilDiscovery has not replied
 Message 4 by Tanypteryx, posted 05-14-2022 11:04 AM FossilDiscovery has not replied
 Message 5 by AZPaul3, posted 05-14-2022 12:29 PM FossilDiscovery has not replied
 Message 6 by Tanypteryx, posted 05-15-2022 11:14 AM FossilDiscovery has not replied
 Message 11 by mike the wiz, posted 05-24-2022 1:00 PM FossilDiscovery has not replied
 Message 15 by Kleinman, posted 09-17-2022 12:08 PM FossilDiscovery has not replied

  
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Message 2 of 2926 (894382)
05-14-2022 7:43 AM


Thread Copied from Proposed New Topics Forum

  
jar
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Posts: 34026
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(2)
Message 3 of 2926 (894383)
05-14-2022 9:02 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by FossilDiscovery
05-12-2022 10:45 PM


I didn't bother to watch the video but if you think it is relevant please give a summarization.
BUT the whole creationist premise you mention is so patently and obviously false I can't imagine needing a video.
The reality is that change leaves evidence which has been observed while no evidence of any god or creator (particularly an Intelligent Creator) has ever been produced.

My Website: My Website

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Tanypteryx
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Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


(2)
Message 4 of 2926 (894384)
05-14-2022 11:04 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by FossilDiscovery
05-12-2022 10:45 PM


Add to the discussion of how much we can observe microevolution versus macroevolution.

Which one is better evidence for evolution? Or are they both?
Macroevolution is not a separate process, it is just lots of microevolution.
A book has a bunch of pages and chapters, but the chapters are not separate from the pages. If there were no chapters it would still be the same book.
Do you agree or disagree with the video?
Do you really think a 2 minute video is an effective rebuttal to creationists?

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python

One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie

If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy

The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq


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AZPaul3
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Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
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(2)
Message 5 of 2926 (894385)
05-14-2022 12:29 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by FossilDiscovery
05-12-2022 10:45 PM


Which one is better evidence for evolution? Or are they both? Do you agree or disagree with the video?
Micro or macro doesn't matter. Evolution is change whether great or small.
If your video says that they are different processes then your video lies.
The only difference in micro/macro is the time period involved. If you look at changes in phenotype and genotype over 100 generations you will see small changes. The same population over 10,000 generations will see the accumulation of these small differences to the point where the population is called a different species.
If your video says anything different then it is wrong.

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

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Tanypteryx
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Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
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(1)
Message 6 of 2926 (894403)
05-15-2022 11:14 AM
Reply to: Message 1 by FossilDiscovery
05-12-2022 10:45 PM


This video aims to open up discussion and to dispell myths.
Hey FossilDiscovery, so when does the discussion start?

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python

One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie

If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy

The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq


This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by FossilDiscovery, posted 05-12-2022 10:45 PM FossilDiscovery has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 7 by nwr, posted 05-15-2022 12:27 PM Tanypteryx has replied

  
nwr
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Posts: 6408
From: Geneva, Illinois
Joined: 08-08-2005
Member Rating: 5.1


Message 7 of 2926 (894406)
05-15-2022 12:27 PM
Reply to: Message 6 by Tanypteryx
05-15-2022 11:14 AM


Hey FossilDiscovery, so when does the discussion start?
I have been assuming that he is a hit and run poster.

Fundamentalism - the anti-American, anti-Christian branch of American Christianity

This message is a reply to:
 Message 6 by Tanypteryx, posted 05-15-2022 11:14 AM Tanypteryx has replied

Replies to this message:
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Tanypteryx
Member
Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


Message 8 of 2926 (894407)
05-15-2022 12:35 PM
Reply to: Message 7 by nwr
05-15-2022 12:27 PM


I have been assuming that he is a hit and run poster.
Yeah, me too.

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python

One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie

If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy

The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq


This message is a reply to:
 Message 7 by nwr, posted 05-15-2022 12:27 PM nwr has seen this message but not replied

  
AZPaul3
Member
Posts: 8513
From: Phoenix
Joined: 11-06-2006
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 9 of 2926 (894421)
05-15-2022 5:57 PM


Patience
It's only been a day since this was promoted.
I'm optimistic.
This thread could be more correcting misimpressions than fighting monsters.

Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

Replies to this message:
 Message 10 by dwise1, posted 05-15-2022 8:43 PM AZPaul3 has not replied

  
dwise1
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Posts: 5930
Joined: 05-02-2006
Member Rating: 5.8


Message 10 of 2926 (894422)
05-15-2022 8:43 PM
Reply to: Message 9 by AZPaul3
05-15-2022 5:57 PM


Re: Patience
It's only been a day since this was promoted.
I'm sure that I've seen him show up a couple times in the "online now" line. Maybe he's waiting for the kind of response he was hoping for.
While we're at it, has anyone ever heard it pronounced "evayution" before this video? Has me wondering about its point of origin.
And then I started wondering whether he has a more direct connection with the video, as in whether he had created it. Its "bug" (a TV network "watermark" in the corner of the screen) is of a salamander, which also figures into his email address.
None of what means anything. Just being curious.
This thread could be more correcting misimpressions than fighting monsters.
Probably not how you meant that, but, yeah.
Anybody who actually knows anything about evolution, including FossilDiscovery, knows that "macroevolution" is just "microevolution" over many more generations -- ie, that they're the same thing on different time scales. Almost all the replies so far have been to that effect, but it's not FossilDiscovery we need to be explaining that to but rather to creationists, which I take to be the purpose of the video.
The problem is that creationists won't get the message. They have been taught and hence are convinced that "macroevolution" is something completely different from "microevolution", even to the point that it "must operate completely differently". Hence, whenever we try to explain the truth to them, they will reject our explanations outright because "our explanation does not address macroevolution, but only microevolution which are two different things!" Their own indoctrination and misinformation and disinformation about evolution keep them blinded from the facts and the truth.
We have recently witnessed that with candle2's dis-definition of evolution as being "a cat evolving into a dog" blinding him to our many far more accurate explanations, which he basically refuses to even look at because "if they don't address how a cat would evolve into a dog then they aren't talking about evolution".
I saw this in action outside of this forum with Erika "Gutsick Gibbon's" video, Chatting with YEC Rebekah about Radiometric Dating, in which she dialogues with a YEC, Rebekah -- while Erika does most of the talking, explaining radiometric dating to Rebekah who politely listens, the overall tone is very congenial and not confrontational.
The scene that brings this up is where the subject of how fossils are dated came up (I seem to recall Rebekah asking that) and Erika provides a very good explanation: fossils are not radio-dated directly (since that would require them to have been melted completely whereupon they would no longer be fossils), but rather from the stratigraphic layer they are found in (which itself is dated through other means). Here is my explanation to candle2 in Message 36 when he tried to invoke the standard "fossils dated through circular reasoning" lie:
DWise1 writes:
candle2 writes:
Also, fossils are dated by the strata that they
are found in, and the strata is dated by the
fossils they contain.
Yes, and? But the way you say that means that you are insinuating circular reasoning. Same dishonest creationist lie, hasn't changed a bit.
Radiometric dating on rock is how long ago it solidified from being molten.
Radiometric dating cannot be performed on sedimentary rock since it is ground down and recycled older rock, so radiometric dating would just get the age of bit of old rock tested. However, we can tell which layers are older than others by the order in which they are stacked. We can also establish dates for layers from igneous intrusions which bracket them in. Therefore we can determine the age of a particular layer.
Fossils cannot dated directly (excluding organic specimens). For one thing, if you melt the fossil in order to "start its clock", then you have destroyed that fossil -- if it's a fossil, it hasn't been melted, so no radiometrically dating a fossil. Fossils result from burial and so are most commonly found in sedimentary rock, but we can arrive at a date for the layer it's found in as described above (extremely important that you don't just pull a fossil out of the ground and carry it to a museum).
So how do we identify a layer here to be part of that other layer way over there?
In geology it's done by with identifying characteristics which have been determined empirically, which includes index fossils. However, many of those index fossils are microscopic, eg diatom shells which evolve over time. Fossils such as the ones that we are interested in (eg, dinos) are not used a index fossils. Thus the fossils identifying the stratum (from which we know its age) are not the same as the fossils that get their age from which stratum they're in. There is no circular reasoning here.
In Erika's video, after she explained fossil dating to Rebekah, whose countenance revealed some confusion, Rebekah repeated the same question, to which Erika gave a summary of her explanation which Rebekah seemed to accept regardless of whether she was not convinced.
The thing was that Rebekah's YEC indoctrination had taught her to expect to be able to perform radiometric dating directly on the fossil itself, so when the truth was explained to her, she couldn't understand it for what it was. And the same holds true for a plethora of cases where the YEC's indoctrination prevents them from learning the truth.
So, how can we correct creationists' lies? I started out in the 1980's thinking that all I had to do was to show them that their claims are wrong and why. So I know from bitter personal experience that that does not work. Also helps to explain why I've run out of patience with them and their evil ways.

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mike the wiz
Member
Posts: 4752
From: u.k
Joined: 05-24-2003


Message 11 of 2926 (894624)
05-24-2022 1:00 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by FossilDiscovery
05-12-2022 10:45 PM


Fossildiscovery writes:
This video aims to open up discussion and to dispell myths.

Add to the discussion of how much we can observe microevolution versus macroevolution.
And?
I don't remember arguing as a creationist that it's important that we can't observe macro evolution now, unless I am speaking in terms of the fact that there is no reason we shouldn't see it at "inbetween" stages in extant forms like we should in the fossil record in extinct forms.
Evolution theory's theoretics would mean that we couldn't observe something that allegedly evolved THEN, right NOW. So we couldn't observe a bat evolving because it's an alleged past event.
But I do think logical reasoning PROVES that there are certain predictions based on the past observations whereby there would be no reason for those "inbetweens" to NOT be evolving now.
If convergence is something that happens all the time as evolutionists argue, why aren't there inbetweens for arms, legs, organs, eyes, wings or fins presently "on their way" to becoming things that allegedly gained those things by evolution in the past?
So this is a conspicuous absence of macro evolution. Not only if I look in the fossil record will I find no direct evidence of bat evolution or the evolution of the insect wing I will also not find any true intermediates in the living record either. Rationally speaking that gives me all the facts I need to not entertain macro evolution because of the axiom, "the greater a claim is the greater the evidence must be."
So then comparing some adapting bacteria to the size of Darwin's claims hardly fits that axiom does it? Unless you think in order to prove you are superman all you need to do is show you own a superman costume. LOL
Conclusion; put simply, the insignificant changes evolutionist argue for macro evolution being supported by micro, not matter how much they PLAY UP the examples, just don't show any evidence of macro-scale change.

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by FossilDiscovery, posted 05-12-2022 10:45 PM FossilDiscovery has not replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 12 by Percy, posted 05-24-2022 1:28 PM mike the wiz has not replied
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Percy
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Posts: 22392
From: New Hampshire
Joined: 12-23-2000
Member Rating: 5.3


Message 12 of 2926 (894626)
05-24-2022 1:28 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by mike the wiz
05-24-2022 1:00 PM


The primary evidence for macroevolution is that the deeper you go in the fossil record the more different from modern forms. How big the differences between one stage and the next depends upon how detailed the fossil record for any particular line of descent at that stage of evolutionary history.
--Percy

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Tangle
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Posts: 9489
From: UK
Joined: 10-07-2011
Member Rating: 4.9


(2)
Message 13 of 2926 (894628)
05-24-2022 2:01 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by mike the wiz
05-24-2022 1:00 PM


MtW writes:
Evolution theory's theoretics would mean that we couldn't observe something that allegedly evolved THEN, right NOW.
Just like we can't see the coronation of Queen Elizabeth I right now but still know that it happened by examining the records of the time?
Funny how we can't see the past happening today.
So we couldn't observe a bat evolving because it's an alleged past event [...]If convergence is something that happens all the time as evolutionists argue, why aren't there inbetweens for arms, legs, organs, eyes, wings or fins presently "on their way" to becoming things that allegedly gained those things by evolution in the past?
How do you think we could identify something that is on the way to becoming something else? Whatever an organism has today will be a functioning organ fit for a particular purpose today. What it might become in a million years, we will only know in a million years.
However, we can look into the past across those millions of years and see the changes happening in the fossil record. I'd give you a few examples if I thought you'd actually be interested.

Je suis Charlie. Je suis Ahmed. Je suis Juif. Je suis Parisien. I am Mancunian. I am Brum. I am London. Olen Suomi Soy Barcelona. I am Ukraine.

"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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Tanypteryx
Member
Posts: 4344
From: Oregon, USA
Joined: 08-27-2006
Member Rating: 5.9


(3)
Message 14 of 2926 (894633)
05-24-2022 3:23 PM
Reply to: Message 11 by mike the wiz
05-24-2022 1:00 PM


mtw writes:
unless I am speaking in terms of the fact that there is no reason we shouldn't see it at "inbetween" stages in extant forms like we should in the fossil record in extinct forms.
In the fossil record we do see "in between" stages.
How would you be able to tell if a feature is at an "in between" stage in a living species?
Logically it seems obvious to me, that every single feature of every living species can be considered to be transitional between all the stages that have already happened and all the stages that will occur in the future.
mtw writes:
Evolution theory's theoretics would mean that we couldn't observe something that allegedly evolved THEN, right NOW. So we couldn't observe a bat evolving because it's an alleged past event.
"Evolution theory's theoretics" is unspecific, so not much help in understanding what you're talking about.
We can observe evidence left by past events and organisms in the fossil record, but a more powerful tool is emerging with whole genome sequencing and mapping.
mtw writes:
If convergence is something that happens all the time as evolutionists argue, why aren't there inbetweens for arms, legs, organs, eyes, wings or fins presently "on their way" to becoming things that allegedly gained those things by evolution in the past?
I'm not clear what you mean by convergence, can you give an example?
Once again, it seems logically obvious that that every single feature of every living species can be considered to be transitional between all the stages that have already happened and all the stages that will occur in the future.
Are you really expecting someone to predict, for example: what future forms will evolve from each of the thousands of different types of mouthparts of insects, or front legs of insects or hind legs of insects, or the forewings of insects that already evolved in the past?
mtw writes:
So this is a conspicuous absence of macro evolution. Not only if I look in the fossil record will I find no direct evidence of bat evolution or the evolution of the insect wing I will also not find any true intermediates in the living record either
Well, yeah, but you haven't actually looked at any of the fossil record have you?
Earlier I mentioned whole genome sequencing and mapping. It turns out that there is an absolute treasure trove of fossil information in the genomes of all modern living species. We are now comparing genomes of individuals within species, genomes of related species with the genomes of more distantly related species using machine learning techniques that are fantastic for showing us patterns in large data sets like whole genomes.
Genomics taken together with the geological record and fossils, paleo-biogeography, modern taxonomy and systematics we are mapping the evolutionary history of the life on this planet.
mtw writes:
Rationally speaking that gives me all the facts I need to not entertain macro evolution because of the axiom, "the greater a claim is the greater the evidence must be."
Well Wizkid, you're going to have an increasingly difficult time rationalizing away the the stream of data being generated by genomics. This is way better than "macro evolution."
mtw writes:
Conclusion; put simply, the insignificant changes evolutionist argue for macro evolution being supported by micro, not matter how much they PLAY UP the examples, just don't show any evidence of macro-scale change.
Actual conclusion; put precisely, macroevolution is just lots of microevolution and your denial of evidence does not make it disappear.
No matter how much you PLAY UP your denials, you never cite any actual specific data or present any evidence. We have museums and libraries around the world full of our supporting evidence and you fail to specifically (or successfully) refute any of it.

Edited by Tanypteryx, .


Stop Tzar Vladimir the Condemned!

What if Eleanor Roosevelt had wings? -- Monty Python

One important characteristic of a theory is that is has survived repeated attempts to falsify it. Contrary to your understanding, all available evidence confirms it. --Subbie

If evolution is shown to be false, it will be at the hands of things that are true, not made up. --percy

The reason that we have the scientific method is because common sense isn't reliable. -- Taq


This message is a reply to:
 Message 11 by mike the wiz, posted 05-24-2022 1:00 PM mike the wiz has not replied

  
Kleinman
Member (Idle past 335 days)
Posts: 2142
From: United States
Joined: 10-06-2016


Message 15 of 2926 (897987)
09-17-2022 12:08 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by FossilDiscovery
05-12-2022 10:45 PM


Video not available
I tried to watch the video but it is no longer available. The responses to this though appear to be made by people that don't understand either the physics or math of biological evolution.

This message is a reply to:
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Replies to this message:
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