Hah!  Well, I'm back to where I was before.  This is why in legal documents and debates that they define their terms before they start.  Each side is arguing over a completely different definition of evolution, so this debate will continue indefinitely.  I think I will just opt out, and leave you all to it.  Have fun.

That essay is irrelevant because it speaks about species changing into other species. According to Darwin that doesn't happen. Disproving it doesn't refute evolution.

You need an essay describing why one species cannot become two species, without ever crossing a "species border". Because that's how evolution works.

You don't understand evolution (this is obvious, otherwise you wouldn't talk about probability and changes from one species into another) so it's easy to see where you are coming from. Perhaps biology is too difficult.

Let's use linguistics instead.

English and German are two distinct languages are are not to a useful degree mutually intelligible. Yet they have both emerged from a common ancestor language (about 1500 to 2000 years ago).

Individual languages are the species in the world of linguistics.

And even though English and German are distinct languages there was no point ever in time where one language became another (each generation of speakers understood the language of the previous generation to be the same as theirs).

And there is no limit to changes within languages that would prevent one language from becoming two over time if the population of speakers becomes two distinct populations without much contact.

Do you understand why one language can become two or more languages without one language ever becoming another language?

If so, apply it to animals and plants.

You will see now how there is no point in time at which one species becomes another just as there is no point in time at which one language becomes another.

Now, let's look at probabilities.

German and English (the Germanic words in English) follow regular sound changes. (An English /d/ usually corresponds to a German /t/ and so on.) It would be ridiculously improbable that all speakers of some Germanic language would suddenly decide to change all /d/ into /t/ and follow all the other sound changes. But yet it clearly happened.

Angels? Not so fast. What happened was that speakers in one population started pronouncing specific phonemes in specific cases differently (because it appeared easier to them and because other people did it, the change reinforces itself). If this population becomes dominant (perhaps the other tribes died or adapted to the more powerful tribe), the sound change manifests itself and over a few generations, everyone in a given population pronounces the particular consonant differently.

And while the probability of German changing into English is very low indeed, the probability of people changing individual sounds is much higher, and the probability of some consensus being established by people speaking a language which sound changes to keep is also very high. And over time those probabilities add up and beat the odds we came up with in our original faulty (because it didn't take time into account) calculation.

If German did change into English over night, the linguistics theory of common descent from a proto-Germanic language would be proven wrong, because the theory relies on the assumption that that doesn't happen. Similarly Darwin's theory relies on the assumption that one species does not change into another over night (or at all).

Sometimes, people start writing words down. If we find an old inscription, we have a "fossil" of a "missing link". (For example very old English looks very German.) And sometimes we encounter living fossils. If you look at the spelling of "night", you find a "gh" part that stood for an original /x/ sound (like "ch" in "Loch Ness", actually it's not /x/ but a similar sound based on /g/ as in "good"). And in German the corresponding word "Nacht" actually still features an /x/ sound in its pronunciation.

(Incidentally, a lack of inscriptions does not "prove" that the people in question didn't have a language. It just means they didn't write much or that we simply didn't find anything.)

I recommend you read Richard Dawkins' books. He explains these things very well.

But as I know my Creationists you will probably just ignore everything I have said and come back with another ridiculous claim about evolution being about "species changing into other species" and "probability". Some people don't learn.

Yes, I said that before.

And I admit that you have successfully disproved the parody of Darwinism you seem to have picked up somewhere.

But the real theory of evolution is rather different than the one the Creationist Web sites talk about.

This is utter stupidity, a completely contrived & false assumption based on no evidence whatsoever.  It's truly entertaining watching creationists contort themselves into Gordian knots while failing miserably to come up with something, anything, that might be bought as logical.

Daiwa posts #309

The point is ttrue science and history reveals an abundance of physical evidence for Special Creation......such as the existence of the coded information in our DNA and the fossil record itself. Both indicate specificity and order in design and the laws of nature.

On the other hand, while there's been plenty of theories, no one has given empirical scientific evidence of naturalistic evolution of all life from a common ancestor. That's why the rationale for it has been constantly changing with one theory after another.

Neither DNA encoding nor the fossil record constitute evidence of Special Creation.  A bald-faced claim that they do just doesn't cut it.

What, exactly, do 'specificity' and 'order' have to do with proof of Special Creation?  'Proving' creationism apparently involves arguing that what we actually see (observations) are 'impossible' and therefore could not have occurred 'naturally.'  Sorry, but proving something is 'impossible' is, well... impossible.  Nature could care less whether you can get your mind around it.

What has empirical science shown about DNA and its inherent barriers?

One.....that each species  (for me, I go by the word "kind" in Genesis) has its own specific DNA code structure and complementary protein molecules. Each has an inherent specification (for me that's God given), that ensures the basic "kind" remains unique.

Yes, man has been able to create adaptations or mutations, but in those cases genetic information is lost, not gained and so a truly, higher, new species does not arise. The genetic system offers resistance (genetic barriers) to these changes, always with a tendency to revert back to its basic type. This is why the possibility of all life including human beings emerging from a common progenitor is definitely ruled out as biologically impossible....and although I haven't read IQ's posts, I'm thinking he has been telling of the immense numerical odds against it.

Sorry, the missing links are still missing and that is a major problem for Evolutionary scientists. Even Darwin candidly recognized the gravest objection to his own theory.

If MacroEvolution (one "kind" evolving into a completely different "kind") occurred down through the millions of years, an ample number of transitional creatures should by now have been found in the fossil record. We should have unearthed whole chains of them in a series between one major "kind" and another, but they are not there.....Sorry about that.

The fossils that have been found are identical to creatures alive today.  

Well, I've done what I can.  With your definition of evolution, I have no idea what it has to do with creationism at all.  You seem to be comparing apples to oranges.

 We've certainly discovered that "evolution" is a confusing term and that's because Evolution is a lie embedded in truth.

Identification of the word "evolution" came with Darwin's theory that all life forms are the result of a long process of development unfolding in time by natural selection and survival of the fittest. Excluding God from Creation, others took Darwin's theory and created a dogma for the emerging new world religion, Atheism.  That's why we discuss both terms......micro and macro evolution.

Creationism supports "microevolution" (that is, change within "kind") which is God choosing to work through secondary causes...the laws of nature (which He created) governing the way all living matter performs.  Can God intervene anytime in the operation of the universe?...Absolutely, He did when Christ raised the dead Lazurus back to life and when He brought the Flood of Noah.

Come to think of it, I did see a T. rex just the other day.  Shit, what was I thinking?  Creationism must be the one & only truth.

Sorry, but an idea or proposition must be intelligible before reason can be applied to it (to paraphrase T. Jefferson).

Congrats, you finally get it.  Evolution has nothing to do with creationism, to repeat myself ad nauseum.  Creationism is a completely bogus concept dreamed up in response to widespread acceptance of the theory of evolution, out of the misguided & misplaced fear that its general acceptance would somehow undermine Christian beliefs about the origins of life, to which the theory does not speak.  The theory of evolution did not develop for the purpose of disproving the Bible or any religious belief, which is what many creationists seem to think.

Hmmmm......let me think......believe Dawkins or God?

Do we trust the trustworthy Creator Who cannot decieve or be deceived...Who was present at the Creation events, Who ensured that a partial account of Creation was revealed to the writer, and Who was present on Calvary paying the dreadful ransom for fallen man......OR do we believe a modern fallible human being who wasn't there at Creation and who can easily reach incorrect and biased conclusions about past events?  

What utter nonsense.

Sorry, but the Bible was written by such fallible & fallen men.  That argument eats itself.

Daiwa posts:

Goodness....dinosaurs still exist.

Can we agree that MicroEvolution is a process or development  unfolding in time?

Experience shows that process can go in both directions, right?

Paleontologically speaking, let's consider reptiles....which are nothing but little dinosaurs wouldn't you agree?

Dinosausr, the once great huge reptiles evolution resulted.....they still live with us today, without major change, only as tiny lizards, crocodiles, alligators, etc.

All the books of the Holy Bible have God, the Holy Spirit as their Principal Author....although He Himself did not write them. The Holy Spirit inspired the human authors to write down what He wanted them to write and He guided them to the extent that they wrote faithfully what they had been taught. This working together of Almighty God and man in the writing of the books of the Bible is called inspiration. Everything that's written is inspired of God...that why we call the Bible the "Word of God"...and from that we know it's true. Absolute truth....what a wonderful gift from God to us.

That is your belief, lula, one you are welcome to hold.  It is not a scientific argument.  There is no proof that God guided them and that the English language words we see in our Bible are the literal ones God intended us to see - there can be no such proof, hence the entire notion of faith.

See this is why I can't not read what you write on this Lula, sometimes it's just too funny. Obviously dinosaurs didn't evolve into lizards or there would be transitional fossils. That would also be clear evidence of speciation right?  Wait weren't crocodiles and alligators prehistoric, no that can't be right fossils lie.

I agree the Bible was written by fallible human writers.

Lula posts:

As to the inspiration of the Holy Bible, it's not only my belief...it happens to also be the belief of billions of people all over the world.

All I know is that from reading God's account of Genesis with Him explaining the way things went down "in the beginning" and  then link that to modern genetics which seems to confirm that DNA was designed by God so that only variety within "kind" can occur.  With that, the objective truth now seems clear....Macro-Evolution did not occur because it cannot occur.

I suppose you should read up on evolution.

It has nothing to do with the "creation of life per se" element of Creationism. It's only about how life transformed into so many species.

Yes. And there there are billions who believe something else.

And whenever we find a new manuscript we have to figure out which known version of the Bible is the word of G-d. Is it the Septuagint? The dead sea scrolls? Other inscriptions found? The Sumerian legends that tell the same stories and are older than the Torah? It's hard to say.

But if you read the Bible you will find that it doesn't say anything about evolution one way or the other. It just says that G-d created. It doesn't say how.

Lula, for the last time, and may your "Christian honesty" which you so often cite help you with this: There is NO "microevolution" and "macroevolution". There is no known mechanism that would stop evolution at whatever limit you want to define. All Darwinian evolution is what you would call "microevolution". But there is no mechanism that would make the process stop.

Let this be a test of the "Christian principle of honesty". If I find you pretending one more time that you weren't told about that, I'll know how important the "Christian principle of honesty" is to you.

And we are done.

I find any religion weird that sees G-d's words in the _translated_ version of the Bible. Suddenly a choice of words that seemed appropriate 500 years ago becomes new dogma.

My favourite example:

The biblical story of Noah tells us of a man who was the only survivor of a flood in, in Hebrew, "haAretz".

And here is the translation path.

Hebrew: "HaAretz" means "the earth" in the sense of "the thing we walk on between the waters and the rocks". "Eretz Yisrael" is "the land of Israel". "Artzot Havrit" is "the United States" ("artzot" is the plural of "eretz").

Latin: "Eretz" is translated with "terra". "Terra" means "land" as in "terra incognita" = "unknown land" (as typically marked on a map). In the 20th century the Latin word "terra" was then used to mean "(planet) earth" by science fiction authors.

English: "Eretz" is translated with "earth". The translation is correct, as 500 years ago "earth" usually meant "land". But the word "earth" is used for "eretz" in some places even when "land" is used in others. Christianity decided that the word "eretz" has to be translated differently depending on how the story fits with Christian mysticism.

That's how a flood in the land known to Noah became a worldwide flood. Is it the word of G-d after all these changes? If so, was the original Hebrew version not the word of G-d? Depends on your faith.

The story of Noah also tells us that, in Hebrew, Noah landed on "HRY 'RRT".

Hebrew: HRY is "hari" = "hills" or "mountains" (It usually means "hills", there are no mountains in Israel). 'RRT can be lots of things, depending on the (in the Bible unwritten) vowels. A good suggestion is "Urartu" which was a region covering pretty much today's Kurdistan.

Somehow this word of G-d, "on the hills of Urartu" became "on mount Ararat (in the middle of the region and far from the valley with the two big rivers that flood all the time)".

The way I see it, the word of G-d is the story as written in Hebrew and explainable by simple facts: the known land (Mesopotamia) was flooded (as the Tigris and Euphrates often will, I would be surprised if Noah of all people never experienced a flood) and Noah with his ark (and his animals) landed on the (lower) hills of Urartu. (I was actually at the place, in northern Iraq, and the region gives itself away for landing on hills before the big mountains.)

This story was already well known when Moses was on Mount Sinai. It's quite possible that G-d saw fit to retell it, given that it covers the history of the ancestor of the Israelites.

But whether we have to make that story bigger than it is and tell ourselves that it is about the entire planet when the text doesn't say that is another matter.

Does the word of G-d remain true if we translate it and change the words? What if we replace other words, instead of making "planet earth" out of "land" we could make "evil warmonger" out of "saviour". Would the "New Testament" still be G-d's word and true if we changed a few words? If not, why can it be done with the "Old Testament"?

It's a question of faith.

I believe that the Torah is the word of G-d, in one way or another. And I believe that it is G-d's law for the Jews.

Whether you believe that too, I don't care. It's up to G-d to figure out if there is a need for you to believe it if you don't want to.

Fact: The Torah is Jewish law.

Belief: That law was given to the Jews by G-d.

Wouldn't that be nice.  Wishful thinking, I'm afraid.

So it's just a numbers game?  Interesting concept of 'truth.'  Even by that measure, Christianity loses as only 1/3 of the world's population is Christian.

well I disagree.  I think the proof is right there in the writings.  HAve you ever studied the scriptures?  I mean really studied them?  I've spent the last 38 years to some degree reading this book and the last  and I can see many proofs that this is the inspired word of God.  Should I share? 

It does give us a time period tho and it's not billions of years.  It's very clear that its a 24 hour period between certain created things.  On top of that everything was created with age to it. 

just like we use fallible instruments when we write.  It doesn't stop us from getting our point across does it? 

I'm glad to provide a good hearty laugh!

Again, I believe in God's first hand account of His own Creation of the universe and all that's in it, including mankind, in Genesis....I believe in the literal meaning of a 24-hour Creation day. There wasn't hundreds of millions of years between the ultimate extinction of the big dinosaurs and God's crowning acheivement of creating mankind. The Catholic Douay Rheims Bible has a detailed historical and chronological index showing there were only approximately 4,000 years from Day One of Creation to the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior.

I couldn't believe Creation days were anything other than 24 hours becasue Christ referred to the creation of human beings, "In the beginning" i.e. on Day 6, so therefore the claim the universe is billions of years old doesn't make sense.   

Again, am I going to believe in fallible pseudo science which claims without proof that dinosaurs lived for millions of years before suddenly becoming extinct some 65 million years ago or the Divinely revealed info given in Sacred Scripture? Genesis 2:19-20 informs us that God formed out of the ground all the beasts of the earth and brought them to Adam for him to name. How could Adam name all the beasts of the earth, including dinosaurs, big lizards, if they were long extinct and buried as fossils? Besides, death and bloodshed didn't come to the world until after the sin of Adam and Eve and their Fall from God's Divine grace.  

There is solid evidence that dinosaurs lived with people...footprints of both, cave drawings as well as rock carvings, not  mention the legends that abound.  

The huge dinosaurs met their fate in Noah's Flood; many were buried rapidly and that's why we have their fossils. Fossils are formed from rapid burial in sediment. Only the Flood of Genesis could have provided perfect conditions for the formation of millions of fossils all over the world. Animals which die since then are very unlikely to form into fossils becasue what it takes to form them is not an everyday normal occurence.

Well, if the proof is so obvious, what's the point of faith?  Why do we need faith if there is proof?  Your reasoning is entirely circular.  "I believe it is the Word of God because... I've read the Word of God."