But still corn. We haven't turned it into a different lifeform.
Yes, that's how it works. Only creationists expect something different; eg, the often cited "dogs giving birth to kittens". That's not how evolution works, since that's not how life works. Why creationists expect such crazy things is something we cannot understand because they refuse to explain what they are talking about.
In order to learn why such creationist utterances as "but it's still corn!" only serves to display one's ignorance, please read this Wikipedia article on monophyly, AKA "nested clades."
An ancestral species is in a clade, which is what creationists are trying to describe as a "kind". All species that descend from that species are still in that same clade, even when they form clades of their own. Cousin species who form their own clades are in different clades than their cousins, but they are still in the same clade as their common ancestral species.
Every species, including us, are not only members of our own clades, but also of the clades of every ancestor; eg, both of us are in the clades for human, primate, mammal, amniota, tetrapod, chordate (vertebrates), animal. Every species that may some day evolve from humans will form their own clade but will still be in the same clades that we are in. And when you cry out, "But they're still humans!", biologists will point at you and laugh.
I'm very busy at the moment, but I'll get back to this topic later.
In the meantime, my most concise definition of evolution would be: Evolution is the result of Life doing what Life naturally does. Though that's probably too concise for you.
Not so much to rant and rail against, but something against which to debate.
Why?
Why do you think that evolution is something that you must debate against?
Do you think that it somehow conflicts with something that you support? If so, then what? And, again, why? And in what manner?
But at the foundation of these questions is the big one: What do you think evolution is?
You are obviously a creationist. I've been involved with discussing creationism online since about 1986, so for about four decades.
In all that time, no creationist has ever answered the question of what he thinks evolution is. All creationist claims and arguments and statements "about evolution" must be based on what they think evolution is, but everything they say about "evolution" makes absolutely no sense at all. Obviously, their "evolution" is something completely different from what evolution actually is. It would help us greatly in helping creationists to understand what evolution is so that they could actually address and criticize evolution instead of wasting all their time attacking a stupid strawman (ie, their "evolution") that has nothing to do with evolution.
And yet one thing that they will never do is to tell us what they are talking about. Indeed, the one question that terrifies creationists the most is, "What are you talking about?"
Corollary questions are:
How do you think speciation works? They seem to think that it's the abrupt massive change of one individual, described by one creationist as "a snake lays an egg and a bird hatches out of it" (seriously, though he was using that as his "definition" of punctuated equilibrim). And that kind of bizarre idea leads to arguments like "Where did that new species find a mate?", or that the new species (eg, the first chicken) would have to have also "evolved" all its major body systems instantaneously.
Creationists come up with the most insane and insanely stupid ideas. And they refuse to tell us where they're getting that nonsense from.
Just what the hell is an "evolutionist"? You just used that word yourself in the OP. What are you talking about?
I need to leave for class now. Gotta hustle! (that's the first class)
Fairly well, especially in that it distinguishes between theory, fact, and law. Too many scientific illiterates, such as creationists, make the mistake of thinking that theories grow up to become laws, whereas theories and laws are very different things which serve different purposes.
It would have been nice if it had included hypotheses and the role of hypotheses in constructing, testing, and verifying theories (eg, from our understanding of something (AKA the theory) we predict the outcome of an event (a hypothesis) and by testing that hypothesis we can either verify the theory or detect potential problems with the theory).
Out of curiosity, what was the source that you copied that from?
And why did you not include the footnotes that you cited?
The other question is whether you understand what you copied. Or if you had even bothered to read it (eg, you obviously reject evolution yet you included "Some theories, like evolution, heliocentric theory, and germ theory of disease, are so well-established that they are unlikely to fundamentally change2." -- I still wonder what Footnote 2 says).
Examples of copying without comprehension abound among creationists, most typically when a creationist copies another creationist claim including that other claim's bibliography without ever having looked up any of those sources cited. IOW, those plagiarizing creationists not only falsely claim that they had written that argument themselves, but even worse falsely claim the scientific sources in the bibliography as their own sources.
That last can be the source of great embarrassment for the creationist. My page, MOON DUST, reports on my research into the claim by Dr. Henry Morris (ICR) regarding the layer of meteoric dust on the moon's surface -- he claimed a layer more than 200 feet thick if the moon were old, whereas correcting for the claim's extraneous factors due to misquoting the source and abusing the laws of mathematics predicts a layer about a third of an inch thick. His claimed source was a "1976" NASA document ("well into the space age"), but his actual source was another creationist, Harold Slusher (who obviously had another unidentified creationist as his source). When I pulled that "cited" NASA document off the university shelf, just looking at the front cover refuted Morris' claim: it was papers presented at a symposium in 1965 (printed in 1967, but I had to go to the copyright page for that information. In addition, both Morris and Slusher misidentified the document as being "Volume II" (two) in a series whereas the document's cover identifies it as being "Volume 11" (eleven), which tells me that Slusher got that "information" in hand-written form from a third creationist.
If, at any point the that entire chain, either Morris or Slusher had done the most basic scholastic due diligence of going to the cited source to verify how it's quoted, then that "well into the space age" falsehood would have been caught immediately and nipped in the bud. But that kind of scholarship and scholastic integrity is sadly missing in creationism.
Another case was a former member of this forum, Crazynutsx, a young British gamer who joined 18-May-2011 and last posted 13-Jun-2011. Except for maybe a few of his eleven (11) posts, half were to advertise a creation/evolution forum he had created elsewhere and the other half to discuss it (mainly addressing problems we were having accessing it).
Needless to say, the poor kid was in way over his head so he plagiarized virtually everything he posted, which I repeatedly took him to task over on his forum. Towards the end before he abandoned his forum (which eventually got hijacked by Japanese hackers who used it to discuss golf and to advertise merchandise and dentists), he took to deleting posts (and lying about it) as discussed starting in Message 50.
The classic case that I'm building up to is a discussion in which Crazynutsx was pushing the old creationist "leap seconds" claim (ie, claiming a too large rate for the slowing of the earth's rotation because the originator, probably Walter Brown, misunderstood what leap seconds are (c. 1978) -- my web page on it is Earth's Rotation is Slowing). As usual, he kept plagiarizing sources and I kept beating him up over it in my unsuccessful attempts to make him honest. I seem to recall I challenged him to explain leap seconds (after he refused to listen to my explanations; at the time I had been working with leap seconds professionally for about 20 years). In response, he plagiarized yet again with something he was sure would shut me up, but I recognized what he had posted: it was from the 1982 article which definitively refuted his claim, As the World Turns: Can Creationists Keep Time? by William M. Thwaites and Frank T. Awbrey, Creation/Evolution, Issue IX, Summer 1982, pp.18-22. He was trying to use the definitive refutation of his claim to support it!
It was after that that a lot of my posts started disappearing and then he abandoned his site.
What you should take away from this is that when you plagiarize something, you need to be extra sure of what it says.
Because the religious stupidity in the face of overwhelming reality is quite boring. You are recycling old creationist arguments that were destroyed decades ago.
Now explain PRATTs ("Points Refuted AThousand Times") to him.
I am extremely busy with several things, but what you have posted and keep posting contains so many egregious errors and false notions that I must respond, albeit sporadically given my limited time.
Of course you will ignore my responses since you are a creationist (and sadly a rather typical one, though at first I did hold out some hope you would be different) and ignoring information in order to maintain a saintly state of willful ignorance has proven to be a fundamental article of faith for creationists. But others will also read my responses ("visitors", AKA "lurkers", used to be reported in the "online now" entry at the top of the page), so they can benefit even though you will refuse to allow yourself to.
Confident Engineers and Scientists are generally eager to explain their hypotheses and address questions, if only to show their knowledge and reinforce their ideas. The good ones can break it down to terms their audience can understand, rather than launching into arcane technospeak.
Your basic mistake here is to decry "jargon", which you call "arcane technospeak". Your display of ignorance about professional discourse tells me that you have never worked in any kind of a profession. Given that your arrival here bears so many of the markings of the typical Christian school/Sunday School assignment of joining a forum in order to harass "evolutionists" (a typical creationist dog whistle that creationists have always refused to ever define (again, in my nearly FORTY YEARS experience with creationists) and which was the first thing to give you away). That combined with your obvious lack of professional experience tells me that you are probably still in high school ... or maybe in some Christian college.
Yes, professionals (not just engineers or scientists) are indeed generally eager to discuss their professional work, not with the general public but rather with their peers, with others in the same profession or in related ones.
Every single profession has its own specialized terminology and language with which professionals are able to communicate with each other efficiently, rapidly, and accurately. That "jargon" is based on common training, common professional knowledge, and common work experience, things that those outside that profession would not share with the professionals. Without any such "jargon", professionals would simply not be able to communicate effectively with other professionals.
Those outside those professions will complain about the use of jargon, as you have just done, but frankly those professionals do not care that you cannot understand their clearly understandable (to them) professional discourse. They are much more concerned with doing their work.
For myself, I have worked in carpentry, construction, as a digital electronics technician, engineer (AKA "intelligent designer"), served in the US Air Force and then the Navy Reserve, so I have learned the "jargon" of those fields (indeed, we can spot stolen valor almost immediately). In addition, I have studied several other fields such that I have knowledge of their jargon. Indeed, in almost every college or military course, the first lecture consists almost entirely of defining the terminology that the course will use.
So if you are so ignorant of jargon and its vital importance, then you must not have had any professional training or experience yet.
Now, what part of that do you not understand?
Explaining the technical aspects of one's field to non-professionals is a educational task with requires special skills that most professionals do not possess (nor care to) and preparation work that few have time for even if they had any such inclination.
Now, there's nothing to stop professionals with no educational training/preparation from trying to explain their work to non-professionals, it is rarely successful and often does not end well.
For example, the last two decades of my software engineering career I worked on a product line which disciplined a cheap oscillator (AKA "CAO" for "cheap-ass oscillator") in order to make it highly precise. The motivation is that such highly precise frequency and timing outputs are needed for communication networks (such as the ones connecting cell towers thus making our cell phones possible), but making a precise oscillator is too expensive. Now how would I explain to someone at a party what I did for a living? Just explaining the leap seconds part would go over most people's heads (refer to Message 99 for the creationist claim related to leap seconds). In one case (nurse brought in by the company for flu shots), even just the word "oscillator" flew high over her head, let alone what possible use one could have for an oscillator. That is how confused most scientists would leave non-scientists they tried to explain their work to.
So for a professional to explain his work to non-professionals, he must dumb it down for them. A lot is lost (and unintentionally added) in that translation. For example, a scientist is well aware of the degree of certainty of a particular conclusion as well as all the provisions, etc, that went into that, but he cannot include (or at least properly convey) all those things so that's all lost in its "dumbing down" such that a tentative though very highly likely conclusion ends up being construed as an absolute pronouncement.
And isn't that what you creationists always complain about? Eg, from your Message 107:
These days the Great Deceit of many scientific theories lies in their presentation to the public as implied fact, and in allowing the misconception of factuality to stand.
That's because you're only familiar with the dumbed-down version which has to leave out all the provisos. But when scientists do include and explain all those provisos, then it turns into an essay or book that you complain about in the OP, Message 1:
... explanations of evolution that require an essay or a book
You don't want the actual facts but rather want it dumbed down, but when we do dumb it down for you then you complain about that. So we try to explain it to you, filling in that missing information and you complain yet again that it's turning into an essay or book! Whiskey Tango Foxtrot-Oscar?
Damned if we do and damned if we don't. What the f*** do you want? Make up your mind!
When you're over the target you'll take a lot of flak.
No, you're grossly and dangerously off course and we're trying to warn you. But we have to get your attention first.
From Planes, Trains, and Automobiles, on a divided interstate highway from across the median to their right a car traveling in the same direction is trying to get their attention:
quote:
"You're going the wrong way! You're going to get someone killed!"
What the hell are you trying to pull here? It looks like a damned bait-and-switch, a dishonest trick!A FUCKING LIE!
You have been trying to deceive us into thinking that you're asking about evolution, which is what we have been directing our answers to, all while you are instead talking about a stupid bullshit creationist strawman invention which has next to nothing to do with evolution!
IOW, you've been lying to us! In the more than four decades (40 years) that I've been studying "creation science" and the nearly 40 years that I've been conversing with creationists, the single most prominent distinguishing characteristic of creationists has been their gross and unrepentant dishonesty, including outright and outrageous deliberate lying. All boasting of serving their "God of Truth Personified" with nothing but lies and deception.
And here you are revealing yourself to be just yet another dishonest creationist piece of shit.
They say that a pessimist must be the happiest person possible: 99% of the time he has the satisfaction of being right and 1% of the time he is pleasantly surprised. With every creationist I encounter, I hope against hope to be pleasantly surprised, but it never happens as each and every creationist always lives down to the worst expectations ... and beyond (eg, from a humor file of purported Royal Navy officer fitness reports: "He quickly hit rock-bottom, and immediately commenced to dig").
I had such hopes for you at first. There is a lot that we need to discuss with creationists, but either none of them are capable (mainly because they know nothing about, well, anything, not even their own position nor even why they oppose evolution ... er, what they think evolution to be, assuming that they ever engage in the act of thinking) or they are actively engaged in their campaign of deception, or both. What we need are creationists who are willing and able to present and discuss their position, but sadly none seem to exist. I think the term for such an extremely rare critter is "unicorn", so maybe we need to enlist the aid of the Scots, the only humans capable of taking a unicorn into captivity (the Scottish national animal is the unicorn bound in chains -- check out the Royal Coat of Arms of the United Kingdom: the lion represents England while the bound unicorn represents Scotland ... Alba gu brath!.
Christianity (which you apparently claim to adhere to despite your allegiance to lies) is supposed to promise redemption, but I very much doubt that you will seek it. Instead, you will continue to promote the growth and spread of atheism:
Conrad Hyers:"It may be true that scientism and evolutionism (not science and evolution) are among the causes of atheism and materialism. It is at least equally true that biblical literalism, from its earlier flat-earth and geocentric forms to its recent young-earth and flood-geology forms, is one of the major causes of atheism and materialism. Many scientists and intellectuals have simply taken the literalists at their word and rejected biblical materials as being superseded or contradicted by modern science. Without having in hand a clear and persuasive alternative, they have concluded that it is nobler to be damned by the literalists than to dismiss the best testimony of research and reason. Intellectual honesty and integrity demand it."
The damage you do in your service to the growth and spread of atheism is that you force believers into atheism (hampered by your lies to them about atheism) rather than just letting them outgrow theism at their own pace. It's never a good idea to force someone into such a decision regardless of how beneficial.
... critical in that [the idea of a last common ancestor] is the prerequisite for refuting Biblical Creation.
What the actual f*** are you talking about? (yes, it's that single most terrifying question for creationists that I told you about in Message 67)
Whoever is trying to "refute Biblical Creation"? Nobody that I know of! And most certainly not science, which couldn't care less about the Bible since the Bible, religion, and speculation about the supernatural have no place in science -- only because there is no way in which science can work with the supernatural.
From what I've seen, the only ones attempting to refute Divine Creation are the creationists themselves, who maintain that if the Creation is as it actually is, then that disproves God. But then, as with everything else creationists talk about, maybe "Biblical Creation" itself attempts to refute Divine Creation assuming that you define it that way (of which I have no doubt).
Let's face it: until you come clean and reveal just what the f*** you are talking about, nobody can possibly have any f***ing idea what the f*** you are talking about.
Here's the plain truth:
If the physical universe was created by a supernatural Creator, then the characteristics of that physical universe would be what that Creator had created.
That Creator would have also created all the physical processes.
If part of that act of Creation was accomplished through physical processes, then that would not contradict the Creator because of item #2.
Science is the study of the physical universe. Science can only discover what exists in the physical universe.
Humans are able to sense, detect, observe, measure, test, etc natural phenomena. Therefore, we humans can deal objectively with the natural.
The supernatural is beyond and outside of human ability to sense, detect, observe, or test. Therefore, we humans cannot deal objectively with the supernatural.
Science does not include supernatural for the simple reason that it cannot deal with it nor work with it in any manner whatsoever. This is not a position that the supernatural does not exist, but rather that it has no place in science.
So just what is the problem that you have with that?
Another plain truth that I will address in another reply (I got off duty around 2300h and it's past midnight now) is what I told you in my Message 51: Evolution is the result of Life doing what Life naturally does.
The very slightly expanded version in the meantime before I go through that more exhaustedly would be to point out it's the same as the others have been saying about allele frequencies et alia, but in my case I go through a clear way to derive those definitions.
Evolution is the net cumulative result of populations of organisms doing what they naturally do: procreate (producing multiple imperfect copies of themselves), then those offspring must survive to procreate themselves (hence the ones better able to survive have their inherited traits more represented in the next generation), etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.
Just think through it this time!
Evolution and life are intimately and integrally intertwined. Regard any population of organisms and you will see that each generation produces offspring that are very nearly like the parents, yet each one is slightly different. Some survive long enough to reproduce and come do not; those who survive get to procreate. THAT IS EVOLUTION IN ACTION!
Biological evolution depends on replication, so it could not have played any role in the earliest stages of abiogenesis. Until replication has been established, evolution could not ever even happen. BTW, this eliminates evolution from being a part of the origin of life.
Once replication was established, then life started evolving. Nothing else could be possible. Copies are made (offspring) which are imperfect, some survive (why some and not others?) to also make copies which are imperfect, rinse and repeat ad infinitum. That's the basis for evolution, pure and simple.
Evolution is integral to life. You cannot separate them. Try to separate them; you cannot! The only way to have life without evolution is for every single generation to be exactly identical to their parents, each and every generation forever. That is clearly not how it works.
BTW, I am a retired engineer (AKA "intelligent designer" in that I did design work (some engineers only maintain, etc)). My first and foremost everyday question about practically everything is: "How does it work?" In my exploded upstairs toilet tank cleanup that I'm currently in the middle of, the adjuster was using a laser range-finder instead of the steel tape I'm familiar with (plus it Blue-Toothed to her pad, which I immediately caught) and my immediate thought was to try to figure out how it worked (eg, 1 light-nanosecond = 1 foot, some of these measurements were in inches, too fast for digital processing so ¿analog?). A former dance-cruise cabin mate turned out to be an election denier who presented a questionable scenario ("they just took a stack of ballots and ran them through the machines multiple times") despite the fact that the multiple recounts (three in Mariposa County, AZ, as I seem to recall) would have required the exact same malfeasance in the exact-same manner each and every time in order to reproduce the exact-same "wrong" counts. But my own personal question for any election denier conspiracy will always remain my same engineer's question: Just exactly how was that supposed to have happened?
How does one life form evolve into another? What is the mechanism?
First, just what exactly what do you mean by "one life form evolve into another"? Are you trying to sneak in "a dog giving birth to kittens" again?
As for the mechanism, there is no external "mechanism" for evolution!
As I just described, that "mechanism" is implicit in the very fundamentals of how life works. It's not so much a matter of "prove how evolution is involved" as "prove how evolution could possibly not be involved."
As for whether it has been observed, all the time!
As for being reproduced in the laboratory, all the time!
If you want to claim otherwise, THEN YOU NEED TO DEFINE JUST WHAT THE F*** YOU MEAN BY EVOLUTION!
Challenge accepted?
Note that Scientific Fact has a pretty high Certainty bar: Zero Error, 100% Probability, 100% Confidence.
Complete and utter bullshit!
There is no such thing as "Zero Error, 100% Probability, 100% Confidence." Never has been, never will be.
For the BA Applied Math degree I earned while biding my time waiting out my active duty enlistment (my money degree was my BS Computer Science), I took two semesters of Numerical Analysis. Just about all we ever did was to calculate the upper bound on the error of every single numerical method we examined.
Yeah, it's getting very late and I have a workshop to attend tomorrow ... er, later today. So we need to cut to the chase:
You are fucking lying to us. You are fucking lying out of your ass. Everything you say is a fucking lie. Your entire religion is a fucking lie.
The Macroevolution link you provided, unintelligible to most laymen, discusses common materials found across lifeforms, which is as much or more of an argument for a Creator. Much as a refrigerator or bicycle manufacturer would re-use favorable design features across various products.
Well, to begin with, you're a fucking lying creationist who will lie about anything and everything, so how could anyone possibly believe anything you assert?
Also, I am personally a retired intelligent designer. What the fuck are you? What kind of expertise are you personally able to bring to bear?
My emphasis added:
Besides, at issue is the key dynamic of evolution, the linchpin, the one that is foisted ubiquitously on the public, which asserts that one higher lifeform (mammal, reptile) can eventually procreate to a completely different higher life form.
In another of your stupid posts that I will respond to with the story of Dr Mary Schweizer, a young earth creationist who entered into studying paleontology for the expressed and explicit purpose of examining the evidence in order to disprove evolution, except now she accepts evolution because of the evidence (also, she's really pissed off at the stupid lying creationists who misrepresent her work).
The point is that in order to understand the massive evidence of evolution, you need to actually study that evidence. But in order to do so, you need to put in the actual work of studying that evidence. Which requires the dedication to put in that actual work.
Note that Scientific Fact has a pretty high Certainty bar: Zero Error, 100% Probability, 100% Confidence.
And what is the certainty for your creationism? Or for your religion?
ZERO %
Your entire religion is completely made up.
And most of your creationism is a deliberate fabrication. Deliberately crafted lies.
So cut the crap already and at least try to conduct yourself with some small amount of honesty. And, yes, I do realize that honesty and truthfulness go against your religion.
As an aside, I have always thought coin tosses were an error prone way of demonstrating probabilities. A person flipping the coin cannot help but apply different forces to the coin with each flip, and it seems to me that would really widen the error bars on predictions.
Also, most coins are not perfectly balanced, as with US coins whose heads side has more metal than the tails side. This would bias the flip slightly to prefer one side over the other, so that it's not a pure 50/50 probability. Ever so slight, but in a large number of tosses that bias should show up.
Also, there's a third possible event, namely the coin ending up on its edge -- that was even used in a film where the coin landed on the floor and rolled up against the wall. Extremely unlikely, but still possible. After all, adding those two green numbers to the other 36 numbers on a roulette wheel biases the otherwise pure odds in favor of the house. That's how the casino makes money ... unless it's owned by Trump.
And yet ICANT worships a human clone, though he has the gender completely wrong.
Biologists are well aware of parthenogenesis (AKA "Virgin Birth") and have studied it thoroughly, I'm sure. There are species in which a female can produce offspring without benefit of a male -- that was even a plot device in Jurassic Park when the dinosaurs started reproducing on their own (they blamed the frog DNA used in reconstructing their genomes). While it has been observed in several animals, including a few vertebrates such as some fish, amphibians, reptiles, and birds, it has not been observed to occur in mammals in the wild, though it has been induced artificially in mice.
One of the things about parthenogenesis is that the offspring it produces are genetically identical to the mother. In the case of the XY/XX sex determination mechanism, that would mean that they would all be female. Which means that "Jesus" would have to have been a woman, hence the more accurate exclamation: "Jessica H. Christ!".
But Message 247 - even if it were entirely true - only suggests laymen deferring to expert opinion - and to a consensus of expert opinion at that. The majority of participants here - myself included - are laymen. Only one participant in this thread claims to be a scientist.
Which is a key point about the absurdity of K.Rose's stated "purpose" for being here; eg in his Message 26:
I have seen a great deal of supporting data for this Evolution process, all of it pictures and explanations, and none of it the type of hard, repeatable data demanded by the Scientific Method.
IOW, the same BS that the creationist trolls keep trying to pull: make decidedly non-trivial demands of non-experts with little or no direct access to the entire literature all within a paragraph or two at the most. Like that uppity gentile who demanded that Pharisee Rabbi Hillel recite the entirety of the Torah (first five books of the OT) while the gentile stood on one foot (IOW, within a couple minutes). Instead, Hillel told him "Do not to others that is displeasing to yourself. That is the whole of the Law; the rest is just explanation." In 20 BCE, BTW.
If he were to actually want to see that evidence, then he would have followed our advice and go to the nearest university with actual science departments (as opposed to Christian colleges who push creationism) and ask the actual experts for that evidence. Because sadly in order to get your hands dirty with that evidence you need to be a post-graduate student in those sciences.
One example has already been mentioned several times, Dr. Mary Schweitzer, PhD Biology. As a dedicated and highly motivated young-earth creationist, she entered into her doctorate program for the purpose of gathering data to be used to disprove evolution (a sign of her dedication to creationism was that she was willing to pursue a PhD for it, something which mainly tests the insane amounts of work you can put in). Instead, she now accepts evolution because of all the massive amounts of data indicating and supporting evolution. She is still a strongly believing Christian, just no longer a YEC (with whom she's very upset for their constant lies about her and her work). And I have no doubt that creationists denounce her as "just another atheistic evolutionist."
I have also posted this YouTube video of Aron Ra's interview with her so one can get her story directly from her herself:
Another example of a now doctoral candidate (up to this point she had been doing other post-grad studies in primatology) Erika "Gutsick Gibbon", a well-known presence on YouTube (in the video below, she tells of going in for her comprehensive oral exams that will last for 4 8-hour days and at first all the professors wanted to talk about was her videos as she, the condemned, just wanted to get the whole thing over with). Erika was raised a young-earth creationist with their nonsense being her entire "science education" until she transferred to a public high school. She has described the experience of opening an actual biology textbook for the first time and realizing that her Christian school had been lying to her all those years.
In many of her videos, she'll go through the evidence that she works with all the time as a post-grad student. She'll even pull skulls down from the shelf behind her and point out the diagnostic differences between hominem species. One recent example is from a call-in show where she goes on a tear about the evidence for common descent and how what we find can only be explained by evolution and not by "common design" -- and indeed the only way that the "common design" people can even begin to explain the evidence is by using evolution themselves. Here's that video:
Watch her in action from about the 20:00 time mark to 26:00-- she really gets into how organisms fall into nested hierarchies starting at 22:00.
The thing is that she works with the evidence intensely all the time, plus as a post-grad student she has direct access to the research and she is very experienced with doing the research and understanding what she's reading (elsewhere in the video she talks about preparing for her comprehensive oral exams just for being able to get into the doctorate program by reading a long list of scientific papers and evaluating them in order to defend what she wrote in her oral comps -- an insane amount of work (again, testimony to the level of dedication to YEC that Mary Schweitzer had to have had that she was willing and motivated to go through such an ordeal).
Another case I've presented was Merle, arguably the only honest creationist I have encountered in all my nearly 40 years of experience with creationists. Back in the day on CompuServe, he was the only creationist who would make an honest attempt to answer questions and to back up his claims. He only lasted about a year before he ended up arguing against the other creationists. His description of his epiphany was in the university library where an article he was referred to by an "evolutionist" itself referred to an article in a paleontology journal. That led him to the room filled with scientific journals all with detailed descriptions of the fossil evidence. Like all creationists, he had been told constantly that there isn't any evidence and here he found himself in a large room filled with just a portion of that evidence.
None of us here have that kind of expertise or research experience, let alone access to those research materials. You could find those people at the universities, but not so much on forums such as this one. If one really wants to learn about the evidence, especially detailed knowledge of the evidence, then one should go to where those people are: at the university, not here.
Yet they keep avoiding the university and coming here instead. That is very telling of K.Rose and his fellow creationists (especially the trolls) and what they are actually after. They don't want to actually see the evidence, but rather they want to reinforce the creationist lie that that abundant evidence does not exist. They want to continue fooling themselves, which requires that they keep themselves ignorant.
K.Rose complains about being called "ignorant", but what we keep pointing out him is that he is something far worse: he is willfully ignorant. Everybody is ignorant about most things, but are mostly willing to learn. Ignorance can be cured, but willful ignorance cannot, at least not without an attitude adjustment. Creationists' faith apparently depends directly on maintaining their lies, so they must do everything they can to avoid the truth, hence their severe cases of willful ignorance.
So why don't we see all that detailed evidence being presented starting in first grade? For many reasons, a few of which would be:
Lack of the students' background knowledge. Lessons need to be age and grade appropriate. That includes simplifying (AKA "dumbing down" as I described in Message 151 to which K.Rose only made a transparent mock "reply") and summarizing, kind of like only presenting formulae for geometric shapes and not including the complete derivation of those formuae (even the mathematical basis for counting numbers has to wait until college and number theory which most people never study anyway even though some can count).
Lack of teachers' knowledge. In schools and especially in small schools, teachers can be assigned to teach classes in subjects they have no background in simply for lack of funding and resources. In a small school district, a PE teacher whose degrees are all in PE could be assigned to teach high school biology -- true story where PE teacher and YEC John Peloza on Catalina Island became their biology teacher, then transferred to Capistrano School District to teach biology but he drew a reprimand for proselytizing to students so he filed a frivolous lawsuit against the district (I heard him speak at the time to a local creationist group and practically everything that came out of his mouth was straight ICR BS). As parodied on The Simpsons, those teachers with no expertise have to depend on the teacher's edition of the textbook. And on their own misunderstanding of the subject matter. They're simply not trained on this stuff.
The textbooks are a story in themselves. Mostly, K-12 science textbooks are not written by scientists, but rather by professional textbook writers. As a result, a lot of those non-scientists' misconceptions about science work their way into those textbooks, mistakes and misconceptions that non-science-trained teachers who drew the short straw and depending on those error-ridden textbooks present to the next generation of science semi-literates. Those kids have to wait until college to actually start learning, though many will not get there and end up being duped by creationists and other grifters. I have heard of a trend to get more scientists and university professors to write those textbooks. Indeed, it was biologists who developed the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) textbooks in 1960 as part of the big post-Sputnik push to "close the science gap" (refer to Dr. Strangelove for copious references to "closing the gap" with the Soviets). Being actual biologists instead of textbook hacks, they included the cornerstone of biology, which is evolution, even though the teaching of evolution had basically been removed from public schools since the 1920's. The Little Rock School District mandated using the BSCS text despite it forcing teachers to violate Arkansas' draconian "monkey law". Teacher Susan Epperson had to sue and when Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) went before the US Supreme Court they struck down the "monkey laws", which led to the resurgence of the anti-evolution movement and the birth of "creation science".
Creationists lobby and pressure the schools and textbook publishers to keep evolution from being taught. Few schools or school boards have the spine to hold up against that pressure. Ironically, if creationists wanted to prepare their children to fight evolution, then they would want them to learn all as much about evolution as they possibly could (as in Sun Tzu's "know your enemy!"). Instead, they want to keep their children as ignorant and isolated from the truth as possible.
The way to solve the problems with science education is by improving it and correcting the errors.
Instead, the creationist "solution" is to destroy science education.
Oh, Jessica H. Christ! Are you really that slow? Do you still think that all sedimentary rock is accreted meteoric dust? To you still think that a hybrid (eg, a mule) is a new "kind"?
Again, the way that parthenogenesis (AKA "Virgin Birth") works is that the female produces offspring all on her own without benefit of a male. Those offspring are genetic copies of the mother, effectively clones.
Part and parcel of that producing exact genetic copies of the mother is that they all get the same sex determiners as the mother, which will means that they will ALL be the same sex as the mother: FEMALE. That is of course disregarding post-conception sex changes such as can be caused due to incubation temperature in some fish and crocodilians, but then mammals are not as subject to that.
Therefore, were "Jesus" the product of parthenogenesis, then "he" would very necessarily have been female.
Do I need to use crayons to draw that picture for you?
Follow that link. It starts out investigating that middle initial and then goes into Christograms, a form of religious art. You might find it interesting.
Through all of this argle-bargle I have come to understand that my contention with TOE is in the Macroevolution that is fed to countless middle-schoolers and the general public in digestible chunks, as discussed in my entries immediately previous.
Wow! You're all over the place. First you show up close to talking about biological evolution (which is an integral part of what life does), but in that process you believed that there is some single Science Authority which arbitrarily defines everything and mandates a "Science Dogma" that everybody must believe and teach. No, that is not even close to being remotely near the neighborhood. Science does not work that way nor ever could work like that. Rather, that is how churches and religions work. You are projecting.
Then you try to foist off on us the idea that evolution is a "worldview". Again a clear miss (instead of just simply firing wildly downrange, you turned around and targeted the parking lot). Biological evolution (which is what we are talking about, so what the hell are you talking about?) is not even close to being a "worldview", any more than chemistry, orbital mechanics, ballistics, or Ohm's Law are "worldviews". Again, you are projecting.
Then you identified your bizarre "evolution" as being EvolutionISM, which creationists routinely neglect to define and also refuse to define when called on it. The best we can gather over the decades from creationist hand-waving is that it's supposed to be some kind of pseudo-religious philosophical worldview (Ooh! There's that word again!) which is fundamentalist atheistic. And you [plural] falsely claim that your made-up -ISM boogyman is the same thing as evolution. Again, absolutely wrong!
Corollary to your EvolutionISM is that equally loaded and intentionally undefined word which you led off with in your OP (Message 1): evolutionist. The best we can figure from what creationists have let slip is that an "evolutionist" is simply someone who accepts evolution, but then you [pl] overload that term with many highly pejorative qualities including atheism and anti-Christian intent. One of the ironic parts of that is that most of the people who accept evolution (ie, actual evolution not your nonsensical boogyman) are theists with many of them being Christians, yet you would call them all "evolutionists" and characterize them as "atheists."
Now you have settled on rephrasing your opposition to "evolution" (in quotes since we still do not know what you are talking about, but then neither do you, do you?) thus:
... my contention with TOE is in the Macroevolution that is fed to countless middle-schoolers and the general public in digestible chunks, ...
And again, you are contradicting yourself.
As Mr. Jack describes in his Message 386 and as you yourself complained about in your OP (Message 1), the whole highly accurate version of science with nothing left out is too much for the children and the general public, so for them to at least start to understand science must be summarized and simplified and, well, dumbed down for them to be able to start to comprehend.
So we have real science as it's practiced and studied by highly educated people. The evidence that you keep demanding us to present exists at the post-graduate level and is extremely voluminous (no single book can contain it, rather it fills libraries) and requires a helluva lot of time and effort to work through and with, but it's more than enough to have turned a young-earth creationist (YEC) intent on learning the evidence in order to refute evolution instead change to accepting evolution because of the immense evidence. That's Dr. Mary Schweitzer, PhD Biology, whom I've written about before and most recently in my Message 308. While still a believing and practicing Christian, she is no longer a YEC and indeed is very upset with creationists for constantly lying about her research.
So to make science more accessible we have popular science which provides the "digestible chunks" that you complain about. That is the effort which dos the summarizing, simplifying, even dumbing down of science to make it more accessible to the general public. Indeed, from that article:
Wikipedia:Common threads
Some usual features of popular science productions include:
Entertainment value or personal relevance to the audience
Emphasis on uniqueness and radicalness
Exploring ideas overlooked by specialists or falling outside of established disciplines
Generalized, simplified science concepts
Presented for an audience with little or no science background, hence explaining general concepts more thoroughly
Synthesis of new ideas that cross multiple fields and offer new applications in other academic specialties
Use of metaphors and analogies to explain difficult or abstract scientific concepts
Criticism
The purpose of scientific literature is to inform and persuade peers regarding the validity of observations and conclusions and the forensic efficacy of methods. Popular science attempts to inform and convince scientific outsiders (sometimes along with scientists in other fields) of the significance of data and conclusions and to celebrate the results. Statements in the scientific literature are often qualified and tentative, emphasizing that new observations and results are consistent with and similar to established knowledge wherein qualified scientists are assumed to recognize the relevance. By contrast, popular science often emphasizes uniqueness and generality and may have a tone of factual authority absent from the scientific literature. Comparisons between original scientific reports, derivative science journalism, and popular science typically reveals at least some level of distortion and oversimplification.
So you come in demanding exacting scientific knowledge, but in a simplified "dumbed down" form (explicitly rejecting "explanations of evolution that require an essay or a book", but then you reject that and here even condemn it.
Make up your mind! Though it is obvious to us that regardless of what we may present to you, you will still reject it, most often without even looking at it. We have a lot of experience with creationists and you are obviously no different.
But there is something of a problem to how evolution (and much of the rest of science) is taught in K-12. And I discuss it in that same Message 308, so do please read that.
Oh, OK! Since you won't bother to go to Message 308, I'll have to bring that part to you here:
So why don't we see all that detailed evidence being presented starting in first grade? For many reasons, a few of which would be:
Lack of the students' background knowledge. Lessons need to be age and grade appropriate. That includes simplifying (AKA "dumbing down" as I described in Message 151 to which K.Rose only made a transparent mock "reply") and summarizing, kind of like only presenting formulae for geometric shapes and not including the complete derivation of those formuae (even the mathematical basis for counting numbers has to wait until college and number theory which most people never study anyway even though some can count).
Lack of teachers' knowledge. In schools and especially in small schools, teachers can be assigned to teach classes in subjects they have no background in simply for lack of funding and resources. In a small school district, a PE teacher whose degrees are all in PE could be assigned to teach high school biology -- true story where PE teacher and YEC John Peloza on Catalina Island became their biology teacher, then transferred to Capistrano School District to teach biology but he drew a reprimand for proselytizing to students so he filed a frivolous lawsuit against the district (I heard him speak at the time to a local creationist group and practically everything that came out of his mouth was straight ICR BS). As parodied on The Simpsons, those teachers with no expertise have to depend on the teacher's edition of the textbook. And on their own misunderstanding of the subject matter. They're simply not trained on this stuff.
The textbooks are a story in themselves. Mostly, K-12 science textbooks are not written by scientists, but rather by professional textbook writers. As a result, a lot of those non-scientists' misconceptions about science work their way into those textbooks, mistakes and misconceptions that non-science-trained teachers who drew the short straw and depending on those error-ridden textbooks present to the next generation of science semi-literates. Those kids have to wait until college to actually start learning, though many will not get there and end up being duped by creationists and other grifters. I have heard of a trend to get more scientists and university professors to write those textbooks. Indeed, it was biologists who developed the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study (BSCS) textbooks in 1960 as part of the big post-Sputnik push to "close the science gap" (refer to Dr. Strangelove for copious references to "closing the gap" with the Soviets). Being actual biologists instead of textbook hacks, they included the cornerstone of biology, which is evolution, even though the teaching of evolution had basically been removed from public schools since the 1920's. The Little Rock School District mandated using the BSCS text despite it forcing teachers to violate Arkansas' draconian "monkey law". Teacher Susan Epperson had to sue and when Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) went before the US Supreme Court they struck down the "monkey laws", which led to the resurgence of the anti-evolution movement and the birth of "creation science".
Creationists lobby and pressure the schools and textbook publishers to keep evolution from being taught. Few schools or school boards have the spine to hold up against that pressure. Ironically, if creationists wanted to prepare their children to fight evolution, then they would want them to learn all as much about evolution as they possibly could (as in Sun Tzu's "know your enemy!"). Instead, they want to keep their children as ignorant and isolated from the truth as possible.
The way to solve the problems with science education is by improving it and correcting the errors.
Instead, the creationist "solution" is to destroy science education.
No, thanks!
So while the smart solution to the problems with science education would be to improve it, your "solution" is to destroy it. Why?
If anything, if you wanted the next generation to continue your fight against evolution, then you would want them to learn everything they possibly could about evolution. If "evolution" is your enemy, then by keeping yourself and your followers ignorant of that enemy can only result in defeat:
quote:Sun Tzu, Scroll III (Offensive Strategy):
Therefore I say: "Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.
When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.
If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril."
(Sun Tzu The Art of War, translation by Samuel B. Griffith, Oxford University Press, 1963)
Letting your children learn everything they can about evolution, including what it actually is, will ensure that they will know the actual problems with evolution (every theory has problems) and be able to concentrate their efforts there (eg, in WWI trench warfare, they kept attacking the other side's strongpoints to no avail, instead of finding the weak spot and concentrating their attack there, something that the Germans realized too late; think Keil und Kessel ("Wedge and Bucket") ).
Also, knowing what evolution actually is will allow them to concentrate their efforts against their actual proclaimed enemy instead of wasting those efforts on the non-existent strawmen that you are wasting your own time on.
Plus it will keep them from losing their faith when they discover that you had been lying to them all their lives. We have already seen far too much of that, made all the sadder since it is completely unnecessary.
The Bible is not subject to science, science is subject to the Bible.
No, not even close. Where did you get that nonsense from?
Science is subject to Reality, which is to say "to the physical universe." Science studies what is observable or otherwise detectable and measurable, and hence testable.
It can be argued that, according to belief in Divine Creation, then science is the study of that Creation. Indeed, many scientists have been motivated with a desire to learn about the Creation and even about the Creator (only to discover, as Haldane did, the Creator's inordinate fondness for beetles).
Evolution would be part of that Creation. Hence, there is no inherent conflict between science and/or evolution and Creation -- if you think that there is a conflict, then you must explain why you would think such a thing. Of course, since your false creationist theology conflicts with reality, it also conflicts with the Creation. And indeed, much of creationism tries to refute the Creation since they seem to believe that the Creation disproves the Creator. Why you would insist on believing that, we cannot understand.
So science is not subject to the Bible. The two have nothing to do with each other, except on those rare occasions that the Bible says something correct about reality (but so many of those get lost in believers' interpretations).
Nor is the Bible subject to science, except when believers make false claims about reality ostensibly based on the Bible. To quote from Philosopher of Science Larry Laudan whom Dr. Duane Gish of the ICR loved to quote-mine (quote is from a part that Gish chose to ignore):
“Science at the Bar—Causes for Concern”:
In the wake of the decision in the Arkansas Creationism trial (McLean v Arkansas), ...
At various key points in the Opinion, Creationism is charged with being untestable, dogmatic (and thus non-tentative), and unfalsifiable. All three charges are of dubious merit. For instance, to make the interlinked claims that Creationism is neither falsifiable nor testable is to assert that Creationism makes no empirical assertions whatever. That is surely false. Creationists make a wide range of testable assertions about empirical matters of fact.
Thus, as Judge Overton himself grants (apparently without seeing its implications), the creationists say that the earth is of very recent origin (say 6,000 to 20,000 years old); they argue that most of the geological features of the earth's surface are diluvial in character (i.e., products of the postulated Noachian deluge); they are committed to a large number of factual historical claims with which the Old Testament is replete; they assert the limited variability of species. They are committed to the view that, since animals and man were created at the same time, the human fossil record must be paleontologically co-extensive with the record of lower animals. It is fair to say that no one has shown how to reconcile such claims with the available evidence—evidence which speaks persuasively to a long earth history, among other things.
In brief, these claims are testable, they have been tested, and they have failed those tests.
And from a later article (More on Creationism by Larry Laudan, Science, Technology and Human Values 8, no. 42 (1983):36-38 (my emphasis added)):
quote:
...the soundness of creation-science can and must be separated from all questions about the dogmatism of creationists. Once we make that rudimentary separation, we discover both (a) that creation-science is testable and falsifiable, and (b) that creation-science has been tested and falsified -- insofar as any theory can be said to be falsified. But, as I pointed out in the earlier essay, that damning indictment cannot be drawn so long as we confuse Creationism and creationists to such an extent that we take the creationists' mental intransigence to entail the immunity of creationist theory from empirical confrontation.
Once this discussion settles down we can bring in the age of the earth.
Oh goody! Though as Percy points out, you should propose a new topic for that one.
Though, you're not very experienced at this, are you? I can tell because you actually volunteered to get into an age-of-the-earth discussion. An experienced creationist won't do that, at least outside the safety bubble of a predominantly creationist environment. Outside of such a safe environment, especially in the presence of knowledgeable opponents, the experienced creationist will do absolutely everything he can to avoid discussing age-of-the-earth claims.
The reason for that reluctance is that a creationist quickly learns through bitter experience that those claims are the worst and the weakest and the most easily refuted ones that he has in his arsenal.
But, hey, propose that new topic anyway! It'll be fun!
Yeah, you really are a typical creationist, full of stupidly false ideas. Plus, no matter how hard we try to explain simple reality to you (such as the difference in science between "fact", "theory", and "hypothesis", even "proof", you continue to refuse to learn anything. You go whining and bitching and moaning to Percy that we're calling you "ignorant". Well, everybody's ignorant about many things, so ignorance is no sin. We can always reduce our ignorance by learning.
However, there are those, such as yourself, who refuse to learn. They will even refuse to even begin to consider starting to learn, such as yourself and sadly far too many other creationists. We refer to that as WILLFUL IGNORANCE, which is indeed a grievous sin. An abomination even.
I'm certain that you are so self-unaware that you cannot even begin to imagine how difficult and frustrating it can be to try to have a discussion with someone who is not only willfully ignorant, but is also belligerent about it (eg, creationists who always have to turn a discussion into a conflict that they must win at all costs no matter what it takes). Fuck that shit, but with creationists it's always the only game in town.
In the American judicial system the threshold for proof is "beyond reasonable doubt".
Yeah, but so what? Court procedure has nothing whatsoever to do with science. What the hell are you talking about? (BTW, there's that question again that terrifies creationists)
There was an episode of NOVA circa 1991 which featured lawyer Phillip Johnson, one of founders of "intelligent design", and his book, Darwin on Trial . I'm sure you're familiar with both since you just used his argument (though I have learned the hard way that most creationists know even less about their own creationism than they do about reality, especially in that they will only learn a creationist claim but without knowing which creationist it came from (though admittedly claims flow so freely amongst creationists like urban legends, which makes it that much more difficult to track them down in order to identify Creationist Zero for any particular claim) ).
Watching that NOVA episode, the moment that Johnson tried to use courtroom rules of evidence as the model for doing science, I scream silently inside my head (and my inside-head ears are still ringing) "What an IDIOT!Science is not analogous to a courtroom procedure, but rather to a POLICE INVESTIGATION!" What is wrong with you people?
In a police investigation, you observe the scene for clues -- in German, Tatort literally means "place of the deed" from "Tat" and "Ort"; it's also the name of a long-running series of German police shows since 1970. From those clues you form hypotheses which you then test As you confirm or refine or rejects hypotheses, you build up a body of evidence which includes not only raw data but also how that ties in with the confirmed hypotheses. Or at least the most favorable hypotheses at this point of the investigation, since all investigations are tentative (oh, there's that word again!) until finalized (and even then, the point at which you finalize an investigation is almost always arbitrary).
It is only after the investigation has been finalized that it goes to the Grand Jury in order for them to decide whether an indictment is warranted. And it is only after indictment that a trial can be set in which the courtroom rules of evidence can even begin to apply.
Now imagine what would happen if the police were required to apply the courtroom rules of evidence to every single police investigation from the very beginning of that investigation. Utter chaos. No police investigation could ever possibly get started, let alone completed ("finalized", yes, because that is determined arbitrarily). You couldn't even begin to consider checking out a clue or any lead until you already have absolute proof beyond reasonable doubt that the clue will lead you to convictable evidence. Stupid, stupid, stupid!
It is only after all the leg-work and chasing down false leads, etc, that an investigation can lead to developing the evidence for a triable case. Yes, the goal of preserving the evidence for eventual trial is an important consideration for the investigators, but to requiring that same level of "beyond reasonable doubt" to be applied at every single level of the investigation from the very beginning can only doom each and every investigation to failure.
Why would you ever think that that would be a good idea? Or even a necessary one? What is wrong with you?
Scientific proof is something else entirely.
Science does not deal in proofs, so what the hell are you talking about?
All you accomplish with BS like that is to demonstrate your own ignorance, which in your case is that unforgiveable sin, willful ignorance.
How did land creatures turn into whales, how did apelike creatures evolve into humans, etc.
Already explained so many times over. Get off your lazy ass and look it up!
And be sure to avoid creationist sources. They will only lie to you.
BTW on YouTube, for whales Aron Ra has some good material. And for hominids, Erika "Gutsick Gibbon" is the queen of that topic. She'll even pull out skulls and pelvises to show you everything she's talking about, including pointing directly at the pertinent details.
All creationists can do is flap their gums and wave their hands and deflect all direct questions. Scientists will explain everything to you and show you the evidence, even comparing specimens in order to point out in intricate detail the differences. Creationists only want to confuse and deceive, whereas scientists want to teach.
Consider these questions: ... I realize you've probably heard these all before.
Yeah, we've heard them all before (though #4 is new to me, but given your [plural] proven history of stupid bullshit lies, I'm sure it's no different from the rest). We even have a term for that: PRATT ("Point Refuted AThousand Times). I've also seen it referred to as something like "slaying the already slain thousands of times over"
What was/were the initial lifeform(s), i.e., what organism(s) are at the root of the evolutionary tree?
Who knows? And who cares?
When I was a Cub Scout, we had a field trip to a house in Anaheim (I have tried in vain to find it again on Google Earth, but new owners must have remodeled or rebuilt) where they had built an astronomical observatory dome on top of their house, with a refractor telescope. Neat stuff, that, but not practical for serious work in the midst of so much light pollution (especially with Disneyland right across the freeway, as I recall its location). In the Q&A session, I asked the obvious question, the same one that you just asked: "Which planet was discovered first?" Well, that answer lies in prehistory, so nobody knows; the Seven Planets (including the Sun and Moon and excluding the earth in that geocentric cosmology) were all known and had been observed long before history came along.
What actually matters is that the overall pattern that we see, even in the taxonomy laid out by the CREATIONIST Carl Linnaeus (apologies: he was not a creationist in the modern anti-reality sense of the word), is that of common groupings leading all the way back to some common point of origin. Neither creationism nor "intelligent design" and its "common design" nonsense can explain such a pattern; only an evolutionary approach of common descent can do that.
Way back in Message 51, I referred you to the Wikipedia article, monophyly, AKA "nested clades." Did you ever read it? Of course not, since your god of lies requires that you must never ever learn anything, but rather must forever remain steadfastly and religiously willfully ignorant. Satan (AKA "Lord of Lies") must be very pleased with you.
Universal common ancestry is a logical consequence (AKA "conclusion") of evolutionary thought, not a necessary premise as you choose to misrepresent it. We see everything pointing in that direction, to a kind of singular point of origin, but we don't have the details for that. But still, not knowing the possible details (or even existence) of such an original "point of ultimate origin" does not negate the overall pattern that we very clearly see.
How did the eyeball evolve? How did all of the eyeball sub-components develop concurrently through random mutation to eventually create such a profoundly useful feature? Without these sub-components working in tandem the eyeball would be entirely useless and would be naturally de-selected.
This stupid bullshit again?
OK, I have to ask you to please present your own scenario for the evolution of the eyeball. Because that particular scenario is what you're rejecting, even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with how the eyeball actually evolved.
OK, since you will never answer my question, I will present the only creationist scenario that I have come across (all of the rest will just say "it's impossible to have evolved" without explaining why); paraphrasing from memory:
Creationist Nonsense about the Eye:The eyeball is made out of several different components; eg, retina, lens, pupil, optic nerve. If you were to take a razor blade to an eye and separate each of those components, the eye would no longer work. Obviously, each component is useless by itself, but they are all needed to be fully formed to come together for a functioning eyeball. The scenario is that each component had to have evolved separately in order to finally come together with the others at the very end to create a functioning eyeball. That means that in every single step of that separate evolution of a component it was completely useless and hence could not have been selected for. All of that makes the evolution of the eyeball impossible.
Seriously, they actually described slicing up an eye with a razor; I did not make that up! And that kind of creationist argument comes up again in the next item with its format of "many components needing to evolve separately only to come together miraculously to form a functioning system." It's not the components themselves that are evolving, but rather the system itself.
The bottom line is that the various components evolved together and in concert rather than separately (which makes no sense at all). Start with photosensitivity, which exists even before a nervous system. Add a nervous system and a connection to that photosensitive tissue. An indentation around that photosensitive tissue and directionality can be sensed. A lens, pupil, or cornea can be added along the way. And each and every stage not only exists in nature, but is also functional contrary to the creationists' ignorant and baseless claims.
Richard Dawkins explained it well in The Blind Watchmaker, but then he was mainly only repeating what Darwin had written on the question. Creationists love to quote-mine Darwin about the eye, but they always ignore the subsequent four pages (actual mileage will vary by edition) which describes the existence of each intermediate stage in nature where they do provide each species with functional sight (though of very different quality, but just being able to detect the presence of light provides an advantage over being unable).
YouTube has several videos of Dawkins lectures covering this question. I will not waste the bandwidth trying to explain it to you, since you will only reject everything anyway.
In the cardiovascular system which developed first - The organs that required oxygen, the blood that carried the oxygen, the lungs trat oxygenated the blood, or the heart that pumped the blood?
What the hell are you talking about? Like with the evolution of the eye, are you again trying to claim "each component had to have evolved separately"? Really?
Again, look at the different circulatory systems in existence and observe that they all work, even the ones that are open circulatory systems.
First, the most basic animals (eg, unicellular) use oxygen even without having anything remotely resembling organs. Since animals with organs evolved from such basic animals, the need for oxygen in animal tissue would have been established long, long ago. Why would you think that this would be any kind of a problem?
Blood is body fluid. In the earliest and most basic animals, basically it's sea water. As animals needed to encapsulate those fluids, they specialized. Why would you think that this would be any kind of a problem?
Lungs not needed at first; they only came along much later. Even fish gills (not lungs, in case you didn't know that yet) came later.
Clearly and as demonstrated with extant species, at first the animal would have drawn oxygen et alia directly from the water that it's in contact with. Even frogs will draw oxygen from the water through their skin despite also having lungs.
In addition, we have many examples of oxygen diffusing into body fluids through spiracles (or stomata such as leaves use through which to "breathe"); holes on the outside which can connect to tubes extending into the body. Ever notice how hard it is to drown an ant? This is why. And once the oxygen comes in through the tube, it diffuses thoughout the body fluids. Of course, the larger the critter gets, the less effectively it can get oxygen, so that places a size limit (eg, giant ants as in Them! would have died from suffocation).
Then larger critters such as spiders (book lungs) developed more efficient means to take in oxygen, but those are later developments.
Next we would see some way to improve the diffusion of oxygen through the body. Body movement would have come first, followed by some kind of "pump".
At first, these would have been open circulatory systems in which the body fluids just get circulating. There are many examples of such systems, especially in arthropods.
Extend the output of that pump and you would have the start of an aorta, which would improve the efficiency of getting fluid out into the body cavity. Extend the input of that pump and you would have the start of a vena cava that would improve getting remote fluid into the pump/heart. The reason why these extensions would be improvements would be that they would eliminate body fluid eddies that would lead to regions of stagnation; IOW, they would improve the circulation of all the body fluids.
From there, the arterial and venal tubes would branch and distribute themselves, followed by developing some kind of capillary networks. Again, this would have developed long, long ago.
So basically, every possible intermediate stage is represented in many species of Animalia. Again, the question is what kind of problem is any of this supposed to pose for evolution?
Any number of unique features, like the chameleon's tongue, whose development through gradual mutation defies comprehension?
I don't know what your claim about the chameleon's tongue is supposed to be, but I have no doubt that that claim is just as stupid as the rest and also fails to present any kind of actual problem.
Though I do have one question: what is Latin for the informal fallacy, argument from stupidity? Just because you are unable to understand something does not disprove it; it just means that you do not understand. In your case, that would be willful stupidity being used to maintain the willful ignorance that you have made your faith completely dependent on.
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