Does complexity require intelligent design?

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Not at all. But since there is an accumulation of many small changes over an extremely long period of time, wouldn't there be literally thousands of generations, each with many characteristics of the preceeding form and the "improvements" of the new?

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If there was environmental pressure for change, yes.If there was a period of relative stability in the environment, there would be no selection pressure, so we would not see much change.

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Also there wouldn't be just one of each type but whole population groups, thousands, or tens of thousands, or hundreds of thousands, increasing the probability of preservation by fossilization or tar pits, wouldn't there?

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I really don't understand what you mean here.Just how common do you think the conditions for fossilization are, particularly for certain groups of organisms?OTOH, take a look at this link on Trilobites. We have an excruciatingly long list of gradual changes in form over time; ofer 15,000 described species! Of course, marine animals are represented in disproportionately high numbers in the fossil record compared to land mammals. Can you think of why that would be the case? trilobite orders

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This should give us a relatively complete record, not the dozen or so {radically different in form}fossils with huge gaps that are supposed to be evidence of whale evolution.

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So, basically, you are saying that because we don't have all, or nearly all, knowledge, we are incapable of drawing any conclusions at all from any of our evidence.Here are some examples of the many, many, many transitionals in the fossil record: link1. There are many transitional fossils. The only way that the claim of their absence may be remotely justified, aside from ignoring the evidence completely, is to redefine "transitional" as referring to a fossil that is a direct ancestor of one organism and a direct descendant of another. However, direct lineages are not required; they could not be verified even if found. What a transitional fossil is, in keeping with what the theory of evolution predicts, is a fossil that shows a mosaic of features from an older and more recent organism.2. Transitional fossils may coexist with gaps. We do not expect to find finely detailed sequences of fossils lasting for millions of years. Nevertheless, we do find several fine gradations of fossils between species and genera, and we find many other sequences between higher taxa that are still very well filled out.1. The horns of titanotheres (extinct Cenozoic mammals) appear in progressively larger sizes, from nothing to prominence. Other head and neck features also evolved. These features are adaptations for head-on ramming analogous to sheep behavior (Stanley 1974).2. A gradual transitional fossil sequence connects the foraminifera Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa (Pearson et al. 1997). O. universa, the later fossil, features a spherical test surrounding a "Globigerinoides-like" shell, showing that a feature was added, not lost. The evidence is seen in all major tropical ocean basins. Several intermediate morphospecies connect the two species, as may be seen in the figure included in Lindsay (1997).3. The fossil record shows transitions between species of Phacops (a trilobite; Phacops rana is the Pennsylvania state fossil; Eldredge 1972; 1974; Strapple 1978).4. Planktonic forminifera (Malmgren et al. 1984). This is an example of punctuated gradualism. A ten-million-year foraminifera fossil record shows long periods of stasis and other periods of relatively rapid but still gradual morphologic change.5. Fossils of the diatom Rhizosolenia are very common (they are mined as diatomaceous earth), and they show a continuous record of almost two million years which includes a record of a speciation event (Miller 1999, 44-45).6. Lake Turkana mollusc species (Lewin 1981).7. Cenozoic marine ostracodes (Cronin 1985).8. The Eocene primate genus Cantius (Gingerich 1976, 1980, 1983).9. Scallops of the genus Chesapecten show gradual change in one "ear" of their hinge over about 13 million years. The ribs also change (Pojeta and Springer 2001; Ward and Blackwelder 1975).10. Gryphaea (coiled oysters) become larger and broader but thinner and flatter during the Early Jurassic (Hallam 1968).The following are fossil transitionals between families, orders, and classes:1. Human ancestry Australopithecus, though its leg and pelvis bones show it walked upright, had a bony ridge on the forearm, probably vestigial, indicative of knuckle walking (Richmond and Strait 2000).2.Dinosaur-bird transitions.3. Haasiophis terrasanctus is a primitive marine snake with well-developed hind limbs. Although other limbless snakes might be more ancestral, this fossil shows a relationship of snakes with limbed ancestors (Tchernov et al. 2000). Pachyrhachis is another snake with legs that is related to Haasiophis (Caldwell and Lee 1997).4. The jaws of mososaurs are also intermediate between snakes and lizards. Like the snake's stretchable jaws, they have highly flexible lower jaws, but unlike snakes, they do not have highly flexible upper jaws. Some other skull features of mososaurs are intermediate between snakes and primitive lizards (Caldwell and Lee 1997; Lee et al. 1999; Tchernov et al. 2000).5. Transitions between mesonychids and whales.6. Transitions between fish and tetrapods.7. Transitions from condylarths (a kind of land mammal) to fully aquatic modern manatees. In particular, Pezosiren portelli is clearly a sirenian, but its hind limbs and pelvis are unreduced (Domning 2001a, 2001b).The following are fossil transitionals between kingdoms and phyla:1. The Cambrian fossils Halkiera and Wiwaxia have features that connect them with each other and with the modern phyla of Mollusca, Brachiopoda, and Annelida. In particular, one species of halkieriid has brachiopod-like shells on the dorsal side at each end. This is seen also in an immature stage of the living brachiopod species Neocrania. It has setae identical in structure to polychaetes, a group of annelids. Wiwaxia and Halkiera have the same basic arrangement of hollow sclerites, an arrangement that is similar to the chaetae arrangement of polychaetes. The undersurface of Wiwaxia has a soft sole like a mollusk's foot, and its jaw looks like a mollusk's mouth. Aplacophorans, which are a group of primitive mollusks, have a soft body covered with spicules similar to the sclerites of Wiwaxia (Conway Morris 1998, 185-195).2. Cambrian and Precambrain fossils Anomalocaris and Opabinia are transitional between arthropods and lobopods.3. An ancestral echinoderm has been found that is intermediate between modern echinoderms and other deuterostomes (Shu et al. 2004).Links:
Hunt, Kathleen. 1994-1997. Transitional vertebrate fossils FAQ.Miller, Keith B. n.d. Taxonomy, transitional forms, and the fossil record.Patterson, Bob. 2002. Transitional fossil species and modes of speciation.Thompson, Tim. 1999. On creation science and transitional fossils.
References:1. Caldwell, M. W. and M. S. Y. Lee, 1997. A snake with legs from the marine Cretaceous of the Middle East. Nature 386: 705-709.
2. Conway Morris, Simon, 1998. The Crucible of Creation, Oxford University Press.
3. Cronin, T. M., 1985. Speciation and stasis in marine ostracoda: climatic modulation of evolution. Science 227: 60-63.
4. Domning, Daryl P., 2001a. The earliest known fully quadupedal sirenian. Nature 413: 625-627.
5. Domning, Daryl P., 2001b. New "intermediate form" ties seacows firmly to land. Reports of the National Center for Science Education 21(5-6): 38-42.
6. Eldredge, Niles, 1972. Systematics and evolution of Phacops rana (Green, 1832) and Phacops iowensis Delo, 1935 (Trilobita) from the Middle Devonian of North America. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 147(2): 45-114.
7. Eldredge, Niles, 1974. Stability, diversity, and speciation in Paleozoic epeiric seas. Journal of Paleontology 48(3): 540-548.
8. Gingerich, P. D., 1976. Paleontology and phylogeny: Patterns of evolution of the species level in early Tertiary mammals. American Journal of Science 276(1): 1-28.
9. Gingerich, P. D., 1980. Evolutionary patterns in early Cenozoic mammals. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 8: 407-424.
10. Gingerich, P. D., 1983. Evidence for evolution from the vertebrate fossil record. Journal of Geological Education 31: 140-144.
11. Hallam, A., 1968. Morphology, palaeoecology and evolution of the genus Gryphaea in the British Lias. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B 254: 91-128.
12. Lee, Michael S. Y., Gorden L. Bell Jr. and Michael W. Caldwell, 1999. The origin of snake feeding. Nature 400: 655-659.
13. Lewin, R., 1981. No gap here in the fossil record. Science 214: 645-646.
14. Lindsay, Don, 1997. A smooth fossil transition: Orbulina, a foram. A Smooth Fossil Transition: Orbulina
15. Malmgren, B. A., W. A. Berggren and G. P. Lohmann, 1984. Species formation through punctuated gradualism in planktonic foraminifera. Science 225: 317-319.
16. Miller, Kenneth R., 1999. Finding Darwin's God. New York: HarperCollins.
17. Pearson, P. N., N. J. Shackleton and M. A. Hall. 1997. Stable isotopic evidence for the sympatric divergence of Globigerinoides trilobus and Orbulina universa (planktonic foraminifera). Journal of the Geological Society, London 154: 295-302.
18. Richmond B. G. and D. S. Strait, 2000. Evidence that humans evolved from a knuckle-walking ancestor. Nature 404: 382-385. See also Collard, M. and L. C. Aiello, 2000. From forelimbs to two legs. Nature 404: 339-340.
19. Shu, D.-G. et al., 2004. Ancestral echinoderms from the Chengjiang deposits of China. Nature 430: 422-428.
20. Stanley, Steven M., 1974. Relative growth of the titanothere horn: A new approach to an old problem. Evolution 28: 447-457.
21. Strapple, R. R., 1978. Tracing three trilobites. Earth Science 31(4): 149-152.
22. Tchernov, E. et al., 2000. A fossil snake with limbs. Science 287: 2010-2012. See also Greene, H. W. and D. Cundall, 2000. Limbless tetrapods and snakes with legs. Science 287: 1939-1941.
23. Ward, L. W. and B. W. Blackwelder, 1975. Chesapecten, A new genus of Pectinidae (Mollusca: Bivalvia) from the Miocene and Pliocene of eastern North America. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 861.

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Are you referring to Archaeopteryx? Hasn't it definitely, especially with recent research, been found to be a bird?

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No.Birds don't have teeth. This message has been edited by schrafinator, 03-29-2005 03:34 PM

In my bumblings around, your message somehow stood out:1) It was at the end of the list.2) It was (non-admin mode IMO) a well done and informative.3) It was off-topic.Might the content of that message better belong elsewhere? Maybe even a new topic?Adminnemooseus

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Sure, I'll start a new un.

I can say there is not enough time because of the actual physical evidence, which shows that species are resistant to phenotype changes, self repairing to a large extent on the cellular level, and the infinitesmal positive changes which occur with mutations. The observed evidence shows that species are declining at an alarming rate, not increasing or improving.Genetic diversity within species is a result of combinatations of inherited characteristics. It doesn't take many generations of selective breeding to eliminate the characteristics that you don't want in a dog, for example. Varieties are a result of many factors, interbreeding and loss of genetic information primarily. 6 to 10 thousand years is a very long time. The only reason that the earth's age is proposed to be billions of years is that the ToE requires that as a minimum even under ideal conditions. Of course ToE also requires new genetic information be created where none exists. This doesn't happen in nature.Interestingly, soft tissues were recently discovered inside dinosaur bones! This seems to cast doubt on current dating methods, which say dinos have been extinct how many million years?This from my weekly free science e mail.
"The fossil record contains some spectacular examples of the fossilization
of soft tissues of animals and plants. Usually, and particularly in fossils
more than a few million years old, however, these are preserved as
impressions or by mineralization, for example, in petrified wood. (p. 1952;
see the news story by) now report the remarkable preservation of soft
cellular tissues in the interior of several T. rex and other dinosaur
bones. These include soft, pliable, and translucent blood vessels and
osteocytes associated with collagen in the bones."Science, vol. 307.Of course someone will come up with some explanation how this can occur even after millions of years and the evolutionary faithful will swallow it whole. Faith is a powerful thing indeed.

The hold ups are that 1, the negative mutations are not eliminated except in theory, and 2, the beneficial ones are so negligable in number and clinical effect that they are a non factor. Also, even in beneficial mutations, no additional genetic information appears. The current dna is just corrupted. How then, can we go from euglena to elephant?The current population of the earth is now over 6 billion. If the mutations are random they should be appearing rapidly now as each year is equivalent to 6 billion man/years of evolution. Why are there no babies being born with eagle vision or radiation resistant skin?Apparent beneficial mutations, such as immunity to HIV may come at an as yet unknown cost. Is the immunity due to a change in the vaginal secretions that also attack male spermatozoa? Wouldn't that spread through the population until there was a significant shortage of breeding males? What research has been done to determine the cause of the immunty?

Have you ever read the book "The Mythical Man Month"? It's lessons apply here. For example, no matter how many woman a pregnant at a given time, it still takes one woman nine months to have a baby. In other words nine woman couldn't have one baby in one month and neither can mutations spread faster through a population just because the population is larger. It can only spread in the following generations. Insects and microscopic life forms are used to look for clues about evolution, because they have many generations in a very short period of time.Now having a large population means you will have more mutations than a smaller group, but ironically mutations spread slower the larger the group is. And the less benifit a mutation has the slower is spreads.

My point was that each person {Hitler, Jeffry Dahmer} is free to determine his own morality. Who determines what are good standards or bad standards? If Hitler is the authority then mass murder is acceptable. If Dahmer is the authority then cannabilism is acceptable. Perhaps. If life is just an accident with no purpose other than to survive, why should I care about the welfare of anyone who doesn't positively affect my needs or desires? If I wanted to kill someone and I thought I could avoid getting caught, why not? Why would I be concerned with laws if I thought I could circumvent them? It's your morality, not laws, that detemine your behavior. As for harmony, we would all get along much better if no one disagreed with me. The actions of individuals indicate their own personal morality or perhaps their lack of sanity. The Bible teaches love and service to God and man. True, God did command some extreme punishments for those civilizations who practiced child sacrifice and witchcraft, also mentioning that attempting to contact the dead was repugnant to Him. Even then He gave them opportunities to repent before their destruction. So whose life had greater meaning? Hitler or mother Teresa? Was it just an excuse to get rid of people he didn't like or did Hitler really believe he was just speeding up the evolutionary process? I doubt this is the right forum to discuss this subject, but once you decide that embryos are not human, that it's legal to kill them right up to minutes before birth, then why stop there? Any individual exhibiting undesirable qualities or lower level function is a candidate for extermination. There is already a case in Texas where a living baby was killed because the doctors told the mother it wouldn't have sufficent quality of life. Killed, by lethal injection, not allowed to die. Who will be making decisions like this for you when you are in a coma? Shall we eliminate all persons with red hair? They usually don't have as good a quality of life as blondes. I read an interesting sci-fi novel where all children who tested above a certain intelligence level were euthanized. they caused too much trouble for society.

As I stated, there is no evidence, it was just an opinion that our society would be better off without the ToE. On the other hand, what positive effect on society has ToE had?

If we want to discuss moality and moral systems let's start yet another thread on it. Such speculations have NO place in this thread!

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It has enlightened by giving us the most accurate account thus far of the history of life. But separate of such abstract ideas, I'll point you to a thread I recently started on more direct benefits: Creationists benefit directly from the Theory of Evolution.You'll find examples there explaining how evolutionary theories have saved hundreds of millions of human lives by giving us a better understanding of human biology and its interaction with the environment. I would say that is a "positive effect".Of course, you apparently believe those hundreds of millions of (non) lives would be better off without the theory of evolution...

What genetic evidence confirms evolution? I read that Dna investigation indicated that the entire human race shared an ancestry of a very few individuals. That seems to support my theory more than yours.There are currently many brilliant scientists that believe in creation, or intelligent design. For instance, the background radiation which led to the big bang theory, coupled with the evidence that our universe is rapidly expanding, indicates one definite starting point of existence for the universe. It did not always exist. Something must have caused it to exist. There is not enough matter in the universe to support an oscillating universe theory.Almost all solids are denser than their liquid form. Water, which makes life, as we know it, possible, is not. Why does it act in this strange way? We are unable to create one living cell with all the technology available, yet incredibly complex forms of life exist on this planet and most are steadily declining. One conclusion might be that these life forms were planted here by a higher intelligence. If they were self generating, by some type of natural law, there should be more life forms appearing on a regular basis now.The intelligent creative force has always existed.

One of many would be the network of homologous errors we can use to establish phylogenic trees; diagrams of species heredity that match the independantly derived diagrams develped from fossil taxonomy to a degree that simply can't be explained by chance. Why? Because its a polar molecule. In fact all polar molecules act this way; water is not unique in this regard. (Didn't I cover this once before?) Water's polarity is also the reason its such an efficient solvent. That's your evidence? That, because intelligence cannot create life no matter how hard it tries, that life must be the product of intelligence? Does that really make sense to you? There are. Like all the old life forms, they appear as decendants of life forms that came before them.

Genetic bottlenecks as you describe often result from founder populations or near extinctions, and are a predicted part of evolution theory, not a refutation of it.Also, your jump to ID/creation theory because of the genetic bottleneck is unfounded - as an example, there have been genetic bottlenecks in other species that we have an immediate grasp of the nature of the bottleneck. One example is the Lions of Ngorongoro Crater, which have been the subject of intense genetic study and have been shown to have gone through an intense bottleneck - it seems you would immediately jump to the conclusion that this was the result of ID/God intervention. However, this would be a false conclusion, since we know that the bottleneck was the result of a near extinction event caused by insect-borne disease epidemic in 1962. Hopefully you believe that DNA-based paternity testing is valid. It works by comparing the DNA of a child and potential father to look for similarities that far exceed the threshold for coincidence. Similarly, though not practiced as often, such DNA testing can be used to determine relationships between siblings, between child and grandparent, between cousins, etc. In other words, looking at the DNA of two individuals we can determine whether they shared a parent or grandparent, that is, whether or not they share common ancestry.The same thing can be done with species, and has been done. Using the same strategy as is used to determine if a man parented a child, we can determine if, for example, chimps and humans share a common ancestor at the species level.However, this is not done with just two species at a time - representative species across the diversity of life, including such things as plants and bacteria, can be assembled into a giant family tree based on DNA (often called the "Tree of Life"). Mark24 put together a nice detailed post on the subject here.Okay. But the important question isn't whether or not they believe in creation or ID; it is whether or not they believe creation or ID is science.Since the creation/ID camp has produced no falsifiable scientific theories or research, I see no reason to consider it science. Back to the ole self-contradicting logic again - things can't always exist except for the thing that always existed. If you accept that something always existed, than there is no logical or evidenciary reason to assume that the eternal thing is intelligent and creative, when it could just be matter and natural law. Natural laws; therefore it is not "strange". Other substances also act this way - water is not unique in having the characteristics you describe. You keep making these irrational jumps in logic; as in here, where you essentially state:We cannot use intelligent design to create life, therefore life must have been planted here by an intelligence.Don't you see how silly that sounds?Besides, it doesn't matter if man can or cannot create life - there is no reason to rely on a supernatural creator when we can understand how life became diverse and complex by natural means. Your assertion is no different from saying "humans can't create a Sun, therefore God made it"; while you may believe that on faith, there is no logical reason to do so since we have some understanding of how stars come about and exist by natural means. First, new species do continue to form on a regular basis. Secondly, it is not a prediction of the Theory of Evolution that new species must continuously arise - in fact, the theory would predict the opposite in times of environmental stasis and a lack of novel niches to occupy. If you are referring to abiogenesis here, you are not countering the independent theory of evolution. Feel free to have faith in that if you like; however, there is absolutely no evidence for the force you describe. No more than the evidence that the theory of evolution has caused a moral decline in society - you admitted to the lack of evidence in the case of morality, can you admit to a lack of evidence in the case of an eternal undetectable creative designer?

I don't really mean to jump in on a nit-pick, but I don't follow how this particular statement refutes anything in the ToE? You are perhaps not aware of the factors/causes leading to this (quite correct) observation?