The Light Time Problem

Yea, that’s a big word for a etimol … entymol … bug guy.

Not in the least. Haven't you thought any of this through either? Do you ever even think?I'm a retired software engineer, BTW, so I tend to think like an engineer. How things work, you know. Also, how preexisting components get incorporated in a new design. BTW, having been a professional designer, "intelligent design" claims look like nothing but empty hand-waving.So, the claim that a common designer of the vast diversity of species would just use the same parts in all homologous species is not only sheer lunacy, but also yet another deliberate lie BECAUSE THAT"S NOT HOW IT WORKS.Homologous structures in different species are not identical to each other, are not interchangeable parts. Duh? Every single time a homologous structure gets reused in a "different design", it has to be modified, often drastically.So then, we keep seeing the same basic structure which has been modified, often drastically so. Hands (eg, human, chimp, gorilla, monkey, lemur), paws, wings, flippers, fins, etc, have the same pattern of parts, but they are greatly modified for their different purposes. Those are not identical sets of parts, but rather modified structures. In most cases of comparing between species, each corresponding bone is present, but they are different even to the point of one species' corresponding bone having lost its original function (eg, in the bird's carpometacarpus in which those same bones fuse together to form a rigid wing-tip -- same bones, only they then fuse together (ie, vestigial remains in which the bones of the hand no longer serve their original purpose).Now, why would any actual intelligent designer do it that way? A mark of intelligent design by an engineer is the complete replacement of a component which serves the same system-level function of what it's replacing, though internally it could perform that function in a completely different manner.For example, we owned the higher-end model of a Plymouth mini-van which was mostly the same as the other mini-vans in its line except that it had an entirely different engine (a Mitsubishi engine, for that matter). The original model had an American-made engine, but it was completely replaced.Another example of intelligent design is interval wipers. Now we use electronics to control the wipers, but originally they used a vacuum line from the engine, after which all new improvements to interval wipers continued to use the vacuum line until it became so complex and unreliable that they just completely replaced it with electronics and a motor. In intelligent designer can make wide-sweeping changes like that.Why go through all the work and difficulties of using the original design's components by drastically modifying them. And why propagate errors made in the original design throughout all future designs derived from it regardless of how many problems retaining that error causes. For example, the recurrent laryngeal nerve which goes from the brain to the larnyx, but it takes the scenic tour around the aorta which is located just above the heart. It was a direct shot in fish as it went past the heart, but then changes in later tetrapods lengthened the neck and moved the heart further down, causing that nerve, still tangled up with the heart, to have to lengthen; from that Wikipedia article linked to above:

quote

---

Evidence of evolution

​

The extreme detour of the recurrent laryngeal nerves, about 4.6 metres (15 ft) in the case of giraffes, is cited as evidence of evolution, as opposed to intelligent design. The nerve's route would have been direct in the fish-like ancestors of modern tetrapods, traveling from the brain, past the heart, to the gills (as it does in modern fish). Over the course of evolution, as the neck extended and the heart became lower in the body, the laryngeal nerve was caught on the wrong side of the heart. Natural selection gradually lengthened the nerve by tiny increments to accommodate, resulting in the circuitous route now observed.

---

An intelligent designer would have corrected that mistake in later models, but evolution cannot. Evolution is stuck with working with what's already there. No massive component replacements are possible.Indeed, the way that evolution works is that it modifies already existing structures to either better serve its purpose or to serve a different purpose. So while it would be a waste of time and work for an intelligent designer to have to modify an existing structure, that's the only process for evolution to use.Therefore, homologous structures are indeed more indictive of common descent than they are of a common designer, since that is exactly how evolution needs to work while there is no reason for an intelligent designer would constrained to doing it in the same hard way that evolution does. Indeed, an intelligent designer who refuses to completely redesign components but insists on just continuing to modify an original design (which in turn makes the new design increasingly complex and difficult to maintain -- I encountered that problem many times in my career) is a poor engineer. An intelligent designer has a choice -- and a smart one would make that choice -- while evolution has no other choice.Homologous structures are very strong evidence of common descent and evolution.You really should try to learn something about evolution. You really need to learn science, especially the basics. You don't even know what a law is!First, you mischaracterize evolution as being "random". To determine exactly where and how you are getting evolution as abysmally wrong as you do, we need to know what you think evolution is and how it works. But you are too terrified to tell us, so that makes it much harder for us to help you. You need to help us to help you.Evolution does not involve changes "by change", but rather those changes evolve. You make the gross error of defining evolutionary processes by one and only one step in the process while ignoring the rest -- that would be like describing making an omelet as nothing more than whisking the eggs while you completely ignore cooking that mixture in a pan.Evolutionary processes are multi-step and include reproduction, mutations/crossovers, and selection. Here is a description of the basic structure of a genetic algorithm, which is in turn based on evolutionary processes (AKA "how evolution works"):

quote

---

Step One: Generate the initial population of individuals randomly. (First generation)

​

Step Two: Repeat the following generational steps until termination:

1. Evaluate the fitness of each individual in the population (time limit, sufficient fitness achieved, etc.)
2. Select the fittest individuals for reproduction. (Parents)
3. Breed new individuals by making copies of the parents and introducing random changes through crossover and mutation operations, thus giving birth to offspring.
4. Replace the least-fit individuals of the population with new individuals.

---

Evolutionary processes are not random even though there is some randomness in one of the steps -- ie, mutations and crossovers are random, but the selection step is most definitely not random.How can that produce order? How's about taking a random mixture of rocks off all different sizes and sorting them into separate piles by size?

quote

---

1. Set up grates, sieves if you would, with different size holes. Make those to be on shake tables to facilitate the sorting. Arrange those grates in increasing size.
2. Pass the rock mixture over the grates. The smaller rocks will fall through while the larger rocks cannot.
3. You end up with a pile of rocks sorted by size under each table. Sorted by a blind process.

---

In evolution, the sieve function is natural selection in which the individuals who are better able to survive to become parents will have their traits better represented in the next generation's gene pool.This is really basic stuff. Did you really learn nothing at all in your biology class? How very sad. You really should try real science some time. It is so much fun and far more interesting than the mental masturbation you engage in instead. Plus, unlike the prejudice against physical masturbation, your mental masturbation really does rot your brain.

Is this where humanity went wrong? Is this where life itself went wrong? We should never have left the stones?I feel a new cult arising from the soul of humanity. All our problems lifted. For the question of life, the universe and everything we have the true meaning of the answer '42'.Reject organic! Return to rock!Spread the good word.

What are you talking about? No one who accepts evolution thinks of it in this way, and even less likely describes it this way. Why did you say this? Is this your God complex talking again where you believe if you say it is must be so? You and truth have only a casual relationship. None of us remember this, since it never happened. It was creationists who brought up vestigial organs as proof against evolution, arguing that if evolution were true they wouldn't be there since they had no purpose. And you seem to know this because you go on to say: If evolution isn't true, why are you arguing that anything is evolving, even if it's to evolve away? None of the organs you named serve no purpose. They have different roles or less important roles, but not no roles at all. They were variations that were selected for because they contributed to greater reproductive success. My guess is we're all, including yourself, completely ignorant of design purposes, since there's no evidence for them. What we do know a great deal about is selective pressures, which is what you're really referring to. Who was it that was ranting and raving? Let's see some of this ranting and raving prose?While the wings of flightless birds and the pelvic bones of whales no longer serve much of their original purpose, they do have some useful functions. People who actually know things are eager to share them. People who play coy like this are usually hiding their ignorance. This is a strange thing to say. Tons of transitional fossils have been identified, and every organism, living and dead, is transitional anyway. The larger issue is Haeckel's "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." It was largely abandoned by scientists by the 1950's, about 70 years ago. That it managed to live on in textbooks for a while is unfortunate. Why do you say this? It is mutations that are blind and random. Selection is not blind and random at all because it is specific to the environment. Selection produces differential reproductive success where organisms with favorable mutations for the current environment are more likely to survive to produce offspring which in turn makes favorable mutations more and more common, thereby bringing about genetic change (changing allele frequency in a population). Without getting into a discussion of the differences between hypotheses, theories and laws, the evidence tells us that gradual genetic change over time produced by mutations and affected by selection causes species change. This is the theory of evolution. Nothing you've said since you've been here contains any science. A number of your posts are mostly religion. For some reason it's important to you that evolution be wrong in order to protect your religious beliefs.--Percy

This sounds like apocryphal bullshit to me. Religious schools and universities are the only ones I see warping minds. This sounds like apocryphal bullshit to me. No professors are trying to convince anyone that evolution accounts for the origin of life. This is apocryphal bullshit. You are demonstrating that you are the weak willed one, conned into believing this crap. This is apocryphal Fox bullshit. Oooh, scary Tampax machines. Tampax is probably more effective as birth control than condoms. Shove one of those up your dick and you won't want sex for quite a while... This is more apocryphal Fox bullshit and just plain stupid. This is silly, childish, apocryphal bullshit. You have no idea what research is or you would have shown us something besides apocryphal bullshit. We know that no enlightenment will be supplied by you other than a clear view of your character and intellect and education failure.Everything you have posted here at EvC can be summed in two words: Apocryphal Bullshit.

Let me correct that for you: There we go.

You are quite the liar. I hope for your sake that your Christian theology is a crock, because if it's not then you're definitely not going to the good place.The fact of the matter is that the words "Biblical" and "kind" appear in only one of your messages in this thread. Care to guess which message? Let me save you the trouble. It's this message right here, the one where you're claiming you already defined "Biblical kind."But maybe you're thinking of Message 136 where you appeared to liken "kind" to "species". I asked you if that was the case in my reply in Message 142, but as is often the case, you didn't answer.So why don't you stop lying and making it up as you go along while ignoring everything everyone says in response. You're not fooling anyone, and you're giving Christianity a bad name. God's not going to say, "Well, sure, he lied constantly, but at least it was while arguing against evolution, so I guess he's good to go. Beam him up!"And now you're on to Noah's flood? That's geology, not biology. It's bad enough that you drifted into biology in a cosmology thread, but it seems you can't stick to a single topic. Please take flood discussion to the Geology and the Great Flood forum.You're still ignoring most of my messages, so what follows is a distillation of an earlier summary I provided of stuff you're ignoring.The two posts main posts you're ignoring are Message 191 and Message 203. Though you claim to have read them, like most things you say that is untrue. Had you actually read either one of them you would know that unlike what you claimed they made no attempt to present evidence of evolution. Mostly they didn't address evolution at all, just pointed out your errors. Let us review the highlights, first from Message 191:

1. You've been ignoring that people have been telling you that speciation takes a long time on human timescales for any species but those with very short generation times.
   ​
2. You've been ignoring all requests to define "kind" but insist on using the word anyway.
   ​
3. You incorrectly claimed that a cat evolving into a dog would be an example of evolution. It isn't, plus it would take many human lifetimes for a new species to evolve from cats (and it wouldn't be a dog).
   ​
4. Your claims about polystrate fossils (not polystrata fossils) have been shown wrong and instead of responding you just keep repeating your erroneous claims.
   ​
5. You claimed Mount St. Helen's deposited many layers of strata. But it's a fairly typical volcano that did what many very active volcanos do, deposit a great deal of lava and ash, not "numerous levels of strata."
   ​
6. You claimed the strata of the geologic column are ordered by weight and grain size. This couldn't be further from the truth. Layers of shale, slate, limestone, sandstone and pelagic layers of varying density and grain size alternate throughout the geological column.
   ​
7. You claimed most fossils are found in heaps, so I pointed out that that's not true. Only some fossils are found in heaps. Most are not. And what makes you think that a global flood would deposit fossils in heaps? That's something rapidly flowing water might do, not a global flood above the highest mountains.
   ​
8. You said, "Trust me." I pointed out that in the months you've been here you've fostered a strong air of distrust because you either misrepresent what people say or ignore it entirely while continually repeating errors about which you're often corrected.

Moving on to Message 203:

1. You have yet to describe evolution accurately. You can't disprove what you don't understand.
   ​
2. You keep confusing evolution with the origin of life.
   ​
3. You confused not knowing everything with not knowing anything.
   ​
4. You asked how we could know what happened millions and billions of years ago. I replied that it depends upon what evidence survived from that long ago. Where there is evidence of past events, no matter from how long ago, we have a chance of being able to figure out what happened.

And a couple more random things:You keep throwing around terms like "assumptions" and "not real science" without providing a shred of evidence. If you're participating in this discussion scientifically you would have some evidence. Merely bad mouthing something isn't a form of scientific argument.And you make many unsupported claims as if you're under some God delusion where you believe you need only declare something so in order for it to be so.--Percy

As we already know all too well, basically creationists have no clue what they are talking about. They just throw "fancy" words out as part of their hand-waving SOP.We've seen them equate "kind" to species or genus or family, each of which leads to problems for them. We even had one creationist who equated "kind" to the phylum level (eg, Chordata, vertebrates), which was wildly off the mark. Though I seem to recall that when we explained to him what a phylum is then he backed away from that. Oh dear, was that Dredge?There was also another creationist who was with us only a short while. He was wed to "biblical kinds", but in his case he was trying to correlate that with what the Bible itself said those "kinds" are; eg, "creeping kinds". Good luck with that, but at least he was actually trying to remain true to the Bible. Certainly most will agree that Christians should not lie. Unfortunately that sentiment is not universal.A couple decades or so ago I met a fundamentalist Christian online who opposed "creation science". Carl Drews' site, Christianity and Evolution is at Theistic Evolution - Faith and Science are Compatible -- plus he explicitly names his position as being theistic evolution. In his personal story he explains why he had to leave a fundamentalist church which he loved for its good works, but he could not abide the pastors basically advocating "lying for the Lord" (follow the link to read his entire story):

quote

---

About a month after that I heard that the church was to begin a class on evolution and creationism, featuring a videotape series by a creationist organization. The pastors enthusiastically endorsed the class during worship announcements. It was obvious that evolution would be attacked and scoffed at. I confronted the senior pastor and asked him how he could do this in the spirit of what we had discussed. He urged me to take the class.

​

So I did. I checked out the references that the video speakers cited, and looked up their claims in the public library and on the World Wide Web. I quickly discovered the same pattern that I had found in the pamphlet years before [DWise1: that was the original Big Daddy? Chick Pubs tract; he describes that experience earlier].

​

Certain portions of the presentation mocked and derided evolutionists. The speakers' scholarship was sloppy, with numerous misquotations and incorrect or obsolete statements about evolutionary theory. Their science was weak and not very convincing. It was deeply discouraging to sit in class week after week and hear the two speakers make statements of science that I knew to be wrong. It was upsetting to hear them cite a mainstream or evolutionist reference so confidently, and then to find when I checked the reference that they had distorted the meaning of the original source. I cannot and will not tolerate false statements and distortions, no matter what is the point being made, no matter what is the greater truth that is supposed to be served.

​

The ninth commandment makes no distinction between bearing false witness about Biblical and non-Biblical materials. It's extremely important to tell the truth about science, too.

​

I prepared a sheet of notes about what I had found that was wrong in each class, and made this available at the beginning of each next class. Only about a third of the other students even looked at my findings. During our short discussions there were some attempts to explain away the errors that I had found. These attempts were not researched very well, and usually I could point out that some creationist example like Paluxy River had been discredited years ago.

​

I wrote three detailed letters to the pastors during the long 12 weeks of the video class. They responded to my objections by saying that the speakers do a good job of preaching against evolution, and that the incorrect statements about science don't matter very much in that big picture. They contended without details that the errors I had cited were subjective. They refused to announce that some of the information presented was misleading or not accurate, and they also refused to exhort people to check out and verify the claims that were made. They urged me to continue the class.

​

I hated going to church on Sunday mornings. When the class was finally over I had a final talk with the senior pastor to make sure that I understood his position correctly, and to verify that no corrective action concerning the class was in the works. There was none; in fact, there were plans to show one of the videos to the children's group.

​

We left that church. We left [u]not[/u] because they conducted a video series attacking evolution, nor even because that series supported those attacks using incorrect information. We left because the church refused to announce that the class had flaws, declined to investigate the errors that were properly reported, and refused to urge people to get independent witness. The problem was not differing views. The problem was that they bore false witness. They lied.

---

I interpreted that sentence, "They responded to my objections by saying that the speakers do a good job of preaching against evolution, and that the incorrect statements about science don't matter very much in that big picture.", as his pastors condoning lying so long as it "served the Lord".And my understanding of Christian doctrine is that the only Christian deity served by lies is Satan.BTW, Carl Drews was an engineer. Years later I saw him in an industry journal where he was working on a model to explain the Parting of the Red Sea. Indeed, a new species to evolve from cats would still be cats.But I think part of creationists' confusion is that they assume that existing species (or "kinds" depending on how they're waving their hands at that moment) are the only ones that will ever exist. That is clearly wrong, since the new species that current species will evolve into do not exist yet.So basically they're trying to foist their own false and faulty assumptions onto science (eg, a fixed set of "basic created kinds" that have all existed from the beginning and to which no new kinds will be added later). For that matter, their "model" for the evolution of a new species is for a completely different individual of that new species suddenly appearing in a single generation (and "having to wait another million years for a mate to also evolve in that same manner"); as I've seen creationists' false idea about speciation described: "A snake laid an egg and a bird hatched from it."One prime example of a "new kind" coming into existence is the "basic bird kind". What actually happened was that a particular branch of therapod dinosaurs, coelosaurs, gave rise to birds. Hence not only did a new "basic kind" come into existence, but it is still part of its parent dinosaurian kind.That entire idea must make creationists' brains melt, so they apparently try to maintain that the "basic bird kind" already existed long before it finally came into existence.No wonder creationists refuse to ever explain what they think! They cannot even keep any of it straight! About six years ago in Message 315 of the topic, Glenn Morton's Evidence Examined, I posted a link to a very informative page by the late Glenn R. Morton (said page is in the Way Back Machine web archive): Young-Earth Arguments: A Second Look.That page covers a number of topics:

• Are Radioactive Dates Wrong? Woodmorappe quotemined through the scientific literature for bad dates. Morton points out that not only do they still track the right date, but a bad date is more likely to be too young instead of too old. Plus the dates aren't off enough to support a 6000-year-old-earth.
• Varves. Creationist alternative explanations for varves do not match the varves we actually find.
• Pollen in the varves.
• Carbon 14 and Varves.
• Buried River Channel.
• THE SHRINKING SUN. Includes good graph of a wide range of measurements made, such that a creationist arguing for the "shrinking sun" would have to cherry-pick most of them out of existence. If anything, the sun is slowly increasing in size. I carry the graph on my phone.
• Supernova 1987A proves the speed of light has been constant for 170,000 years.
• 10 years of Root Growth from 7,000 feet down. So that buried layer not only had life growing on it in the past, but they had been living there for at least 10 years.

For that second one, Morton posted two photos of "varving" side-by-side. On the right are standard seasonal varves, nice and tightly differentiated. On the left are varve-like structures produced rapidly through turpidity currents, exactly like what happened at Mount St. Helen's. Even non-geologists can clearly see the difference. The issue is not about him describing evolution accurately. Rather, he needs to tell us what he thinks evolution is. IOW, what does he think he's fighting against, because without that knowledge we have no way of deciphering his claims.And, yes, the only way he would ever have any chance of disproving evolution would require him to understand what evolution actually is. Which he doesn't. Instead, all he can do is to waste his time and energy and generate high levels of disgust at his silly religion (not to be confused with actual Christianity). Yes, that's what creationists do: always present a moving target (by constantly changing the subject) while hiding behind a smokescreen of confusion.However, there's also that unresolved matter of just what they think that evolution is. We know that evolution is just part of biology, like gravity and momentum are parts of physics, but creationists seem to think that evolution is some kind of grand over-arching worldview (just remember eWolf's blathering about "the evolution worldview" which he absolutely refused to describe to us, typical creationist).So while we know better, creationists are taught that evolution extends far beyond biology into geology, cosmology, abiogenesis, etc. While we rightfully see him as moving away from any discussion of evolution, he apparently thinks that it's all evolution.But of course he refuses to reveal anything concerning what he thinks evolution is.Typical creationist!fails because many species can form hybrids with others, resulting in a sort of "miscegenation between kinds" that the Bible should definitely speak out against. Besides, their "microevolution" smokescreen requires interfertility within a "kind", which causes them even more problems.Some equate it with the genus level

Since your message was to Tanypteryx I planned to just read it and move on, but the stupid is just too much to pass up. What you mean to say is that they're not providing the same miseducation that you apparently received. Students are being taught what the evidence indicates, that evolution accounts for the diversity of life we see on Earth today and throughout its history in the form of fossils. Students are not being taught that evolution explains the origin of life, as you've been informed uncountable times. Sex change procedures are a medical issue unrelated to evolution. You mean tampon machines - Tampax is a brand name. This is true. Wherever there's a significant male trans population it might make sense to place tampon machines in men's rooms. Well, yes, of course, trans males (women who identify as men) of childbearing age can get pregnant. Their unwillingness to answer the question doesn't wink the trans community out of existence. Like you now? Your own view of the world is chock full of denial of many simple and obvious facts, ones that you're clearly ill equipped to address.--Percy

The basic fact that determines truth, reality, factuality must be that the explanation contains the point where "God did it".Any statement, explanation, theory or law that does not contain the definitive point "then God did it" must be wrong.

Yeah, you pretty much have to use your imagination because there doesn't appear to be any confirmation anywhere on the internet.Just out of curiosity, how long do you think the "stench of death" lingers on bones? No. That is not what they say at all:

quote

---

Data from the fossils collected at Hilda indicate that death and final burial were caused by separate flooding events. For example, many of the ceratopsian carcasses at Hilda were trampled, broken and scavenged by other dinosaurs before final burial. source

---

So the dinosaurs were killed by one flood, the flood receded and then the carcasses were eaten by scavengers and then the bones were buried by another flood. And you think they would still smell? That's a lie.
Scientists Find Soft Tissue in 75-Million-Year-Old Dinosaur Bones
Ancient tissue found in 195 million-year-old dinosaur rib You quoted the phrase "monster storm" but you didn't cite any reference. Here's what I found:

quote

---

The dinosaurs may have, apparently been part of a mass die-off resulting from a monster storm, comparable to today's hurricanes, which struck what was then a coastal area. source

---

"Common sense" would suggest that there is evidence for many "geographically isolated" floods - your own quote - but NO evidence for a global flood.

Lies are not evidence or an argument. If this were true you would post a source.

You want source and proof? Here it is.

jar's link is to the Onyate Man "find", a complete human fossil (though significantly missing one foot) caught in the midst of being swallowed by a T. Rex (or some such similar dinosaur).The moment that Kent Hovind heard about Onyate Man (follow ) he used it in one of his "seminar" presentations.In Alcalde, NM, when they erected a statue of conquistador Juan de Oñate, somebody cut off his foot. His claim to infamy was ruthlessly putting down an Indian revolt and reportedly ordering that every man over the age of 25 have one foot cut off:

quote

---

Today, Oñate remains a controversial figure in New Mexican history: in 1998, the right foot was cut off a statue of the conquistador that stands in Alcalde, New Mexico, in protest of the massacre, and significant controversy arose when a large equestrian statue of Oñate was erected in El Paso, Texas, in 2006. On June 15, 2020, the statue of Oñate in Alcalde, New Mexico was temporarily removed by Rio Arriba County workers at the direction of officials. Civic institutions will make the final decision on the statue's future.

---

Never forget.

Edited by dwise1, : more on Oñate

Edited by dwise1, : fleshed out my quick response

Excuse me for asking, but has this got anything to do with the light-time problem?