Posted on 07/23/2006 9:36:42 AM PDT by tomzz
Assuming macroevolutionary scenarios were possible (they aren't), the question arises, how much time would you actually need for them? The basic answer to that question is known as the Haldane Dilemma, after the famous mathematician and population geneticist J.B.S. Haldane who published his work in the mid 1950s. The basic answer is that you would need trillions and quadrillions of years, and not just the tens of millions commonly supposed. Walter Remine puts a simplified version of the idea thusly:
Imagine a population of 100,000 apes or “proto-humans” ten million years ago which are all genetically alike other than for two with a “beneficial mutation”. Imagine also that this population has the human or proto-human generation cycle time of roughly 20 years.Imagine that the beneficial mutation in question is so good, that all 99,998 other die out immediately (from jealousy), and that the pair with the beneficial mutation has 100,000 kids and thus replenishes the herd.
Imagine that this process goes on like that for ten million years, which is more than anybody claims is involved in “human evolution”. The max number of such “beneficial mutations” which could thus be substituted into the herd would be ten million divided by twenty, or 500,000 point mutations which, Remine notes, is about 1/100 of one percent of the human genome, and a miniscule fraction of the 2 to 3 percent that separates us from chimpanzees, or the half of that which separates us from neanderthals.
That basically says that even given a rate of evolutionary development which is fabulously beyond anything which is possible in the real world, starting from apes, in ten million years the best you could possibly hope for would be an ape with a slightly shorter tail.
But nobody ever accused evolutionists of being rational. Surely, they will argue, the problem might be resolved by having many mutations being passed through the herd simultaneously.
Most of the answer involves the fact that the vast bulk of all mutations are harmful or fatal. ANY creature which starts mutating willy nilly will perish.
So much for the amount of time evolutionists NEED (i.e. so much for the slice of wonderbread on the bottom of the basic evolutionist time sandwich. What about the slice on the top of the sandwich, i.e. how much time do they actually HAVE?
Consider the case of dinosaurs, which we are told died out 70 million years ago. Last summer, scientists trying to get a tyrannosaur leg bone out of a remote area by helicopter, broke the bone into two pieces, and this is what they found inside the bone:
This is the Reuters/MSNBC version of the story
That meat clearly is not 70 million years old; I've seen week-old roadkill which looked worse.
In fact, we appear to have one state named after a dinosaur, Mississippi being a variation of the Ojibway name "Mishipishu", which means "water panther", or stegosaur. DeLoria notes that Indian traditions describe Mishipishu as having red fur, a sawblade back, and a "great spiked tail" which he used as a weapon.
In fact you find pictures (petroglyphs) of Mishipishu around rivers and lakes and Lewis and Clark noted that their Indian guides were in mortal terror of these since they originally signified as much as "One of these LIVES here, be careful".
The pictograph at Agawa Rock at Lake Ontario shows the sawblade back fairly clearly:
and the close-eyed will note that stegosaurs did not have horns; nonetheless such glyphs survive only because Indians have always gone back and touched them up every couple of decades, and the horns were added very much later after the creature itself had perished from the Earth.
You add the questions of other dinosaur petroglyphs and Ica stones and what not into the mix and it seems fairly obvious that something is massively wrong with the common perception that dinosaurs died out tens of millions of years ago.
That is basically what I call the evolutionist time sandwich. They need trillions or quadrillions of years, and all they have is a few thousand.
"Is mead best sipped or chugged?"
If you don't stop that you'll go blind as a bat.
Why do you think Piltdown Man is a fraud?
For decades, a fossil skull discovered in Piltdown, England, was hailed as the missing link between apes and humans. Entire careers were built on its authenticity. Then in 1953, the awful truth came out: "Piltdown Man" was a fake! But who done it? In "The Boldest Hoax," NOVA gets to the bottom of the greatest scientific hoodwinking of all time.
The search for clues takes NOVA to the archives of Britain's august Natural History Museum in London, where intriguing documents shed new light on the notorious case. Offering theories on the deception are two prominent paleontologists at the museum, Chris Stringer and Andy Currant. Also sleuthing for NOVA are archeologist Miles Russell of Britain's Bournemouth University, historian Richard Milner of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and Giles Oakley, son of Kenneth Oakley, the scientist who blew the whistle on the hoax in 1953.
It all started in the early 1900s, when a laborer digging near the village of Piltdown in southern England reportedly found a strange piece of skull that he passed on to Charles Dawson, a local amateur archeologist. Dawson obtained more fossils from the site and, believing they were the remains of a very ancient human, approached Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Natural History Museum. In December 1912, the two jointly presented the reconstructed skull to the public as humankind's earliest ancestor.
"Piltdown Man was a really big deal in 1912, because it was a time when very little was known of human fossil remains," says historian Richard Milner. "It was perceived to be the missing link, the fossil that connected humans with apes." Notably, Piltdown Man was even more spectacular than the celebrated human fossils already discovered on the European continent, such as Neanderthal Man in Germany.
More remains turned up in Piltdown through 1915, the year before Dawson's death. These included a second partial skull and a strange bone artifact resembling a cricket bat—a fishy find that looked suspiciously like a hoax but was accepted by Woodward as an ancient implement. Forty years later, new scientific tests showed that Piltdown Man was a forgery, concocted in part from what was probably an orangutan's jaw. Suspicion immediately fell on Dawson, but there were other candidates.
Some scholars believe that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories, was the mastermind. Conan Doyle had a motive: desire for revenge against the British scientific establishment for ridiculing his spiritualist research. He also had the opportunity, since he lived just a few miles from Piltdown and frequently played golf nearby. Others think that Woodward was the instigator or at least Dawson's collaborator, since the fossils were faked with far greater skill than any amateur presumably possessed.
In recent years, another suspect has emerged: Martin Hinton, a staff member at the Natural History Museum who had the motive, means, opportunity, and personality to perpetrate an expert scientific fraud. Plus he left several suggestive hints. On the other hand, the evidence against Hinton can be read in more than one way, and the real swindler may be the obvious one: the man who had the most to gain from convincing the world that Piltdown Man was the fossil to end all fossils—Charles Dawson.
But all that material is the work of people who are using the Theory of Evolution as a framework. They've concluded that Piltdown is a fraud because it doesn't fit the TOE. What's your reason?
What is truly shocking is not just that people in the early 20th century believed this but people now do with all the tools and resources available to properly date things.
Regards. If you are skeptical yet, just Google Piltdown man or better yet Piltdown Man Hoax. You can read for days.
This seems to be even scripturally sound, as Christ gave instructions on HOW to pray, so it seems like there should be a method which gives a better chance of obtaining the desired results.
Praying "better" isn't gonna change God's will. Thy will be done. Ya know? Most people think they're more capable of doing their boss's job than their boss, cuz they can't see the big picture.
No, DNA is proof of Creationism.
In fact, once the faithfullness of DNA was discovered, Evolution should have come to a screeching halt.
THAT is Science.
Evolution is a false religious belief, based on bad science and requires giant leaps of faith to believe it.
Creationists right here on FR insist that archaeologists and paleontologists don't know what they're doing, their methods are faulty, their measurements meaningless. So how do you know the skull is 1000 years old? The number of times creationists right here at FR have rejected scientific methods of dating fossils is countless. Is there some other method they have?
What is truly shocking is not just that people in the early 20th century believed this but people now do with all the tools and resources available to properly date things.
I don't get it. Here you appear to accept "all the tools and resources available to properly date things," and yet, when those tools and resources give results that support the TOE, somehow there's a problem.
Regards. If you are skeptical yet, just Google Piltdown man or better yet Piltdown Man Hoax. You can read for days.
I'm skeptical that you have a reason for rejecting Piltdown Man that doesn't involve the same tools and resources that support the TOE, as I stated above.
So, what do evolutionists come up with to answer this one? OK I know the first thing they say is that this and we are stupid. Then they ask if we are scientists and if now how dare we think about such things. Have any entered into the actual point yet?
Sounds like the first taste didn't cure you & you went back for more.
"MineralMan, why are you beatin your head against that wall?"
"Because it feels so good when I stop."
It gives the benefit to evolution. In reality the mutation would probably be lost in the herd making evolution even less likely. Even when evolution is given this advantage it still comes out a loser.
Can you tell me what the point is of using cave paintings (anatomically incorrect ones at that) as evidence for recent living dinosaurs -- even after admitting that the paintings have been touched up every few decades?
I'll take that as a no.
Can you tell me the point is of lying about the so-called dino meat? What is the point of lying about this stuff, when the odds of being caught are 100 percent?
I don't know what lie you're talking about. I am interested hearing the evolution side of the first part of the post, the 100,000 ape problem.
Walter Remine puts a simplified version of the idea thusly:
Imagine a population of 100,000 apes or “proto-humans” ten million years ago which are all genetically alike other than for two with a “beneficial mutation”. Imagine also that this population has the human or proto-human generation cycle time of roughly 20 years.
Imagine that the beneficial mutation in question is so good, that all 99,998 other die out immediately (from jealousy), and that the pair with the beneficial mutation has 100,000 kids and thus replenishes the herd.
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