RE: The whole problem with this example is that it takes a preconceived belief and The whole problem with this example is that it takes a preconceived belief and interprets evidence to fit the belief. That isn’t science.That isn’t science.
Well, what is the ToE if not a set of preconceived beliefs to fit the belief?
By definition, evolution offers an explanation for how things got to be the way they are without any intelligence (I’m referring to what’s known as the “general theory of evolution”).
This is why it made such a splash. Do you think that if God could be worked into the evolutionary picture, then evolution would have taken off the way it did? Of course not.
Richard Dawkins, author of The Blind Watchmaker and one of the world’s preeminent evolutionists, was right when he said that Darwin made the world safe for atheism. But if Darwinism can be easily baptized with theism, how can it be that Darwin made the world safe for atheism? It’s precisely because evolution seemed to explain things that used to require the existence of God to explain them that Darwinism became so popular and accepted within ten to fifteen years after Origin of Species was published in 1859. It’s precisely because God is out of the picture that evolution is so appealing.
When you listen to evolutionists like Harvard paleontologist Stephen J. Gould, he’s very willing to admit you can believe in God and also be an evolutionist. No problem. But that doesn’t mean Gould approves of theistic evolution. Gould means that plenty of his friends believe in God, but their belief in God is a religious thing they do in their closets, inside their homes and behind the closed doors of the churches. They don’t mix religion and science, God and evolution, fantasy with fact.
RE: Clearly, that is a thinly disguised religious story that does not belong in schools which are supposed to remain religion-neutral.
If you read the creation science literature, you will see that they clearly state that they want public schools to teach all the scientific data, censoring none, but do not want any religious doctrine to be brought into science classrooms.
They are not even going to FORCE teachers who do not want to teach anything other than evolution to teach the creation model. However they OBJECT to CENSORING teachers who want to.
This includes the scientific evidence for a sudden creation of complex and diversified kinds of life, with systematic gaps persisting between different kinds and with genetic variation occurring within each kind since that time. The scientific model of evolution, in summary, includes the scientific evidence for a gradual emergence of present life kinds over aeons of time, with emergence of complex and diversified kinds of life from simpler kinds and ultimately from nonliving matter. The creation model questions vertical evolution, which is the emergence of complex from simple and change between kinds, but it does not challenge what is often called horizontal evolution or microevolution, which creationists call genetic variation or species or subspecies formation within created kinds.
RE: The coherence of ToE
An explanation can be coherent and consistent within its model and yet, be found wanting.
In my view, the genetic differences between organisms are mathematical show-stoppers for evolution. A simplistic comparison of human and chimpanzee DNA shows that the genetic divergence is at least 4%. (The difference is certainly much larger than this number which was derived from a technique not as precise as lining up sequences as in our example above. This “4% difference” does not take into account the different number of chromosomes in the two genomes, the different arrangement of genes among the chromosomes, and a lot of non-coding, but regulatory DNA that show significant variations.)
But let’s assume the measly 4% often quoted. How big is 4% in the DNA? It doesn’t sound big, does it? But the human genome has the information content of one thousand 500-page books. A 4% change would be about 40 large books, equivalent to about 12,000,000 words. We are expected to believe that random mutation plus natural selection (somehow driven by the right combinations of zillions of environmental changes) can generate 12 million words in a precisely meaningful sequence – just to get the “little” divergence between chimps and people.
Evolutionist always says that “given enough time – millions and millions of years,” such miracles can happen. But evolutionists claim that human evolution would have taken place over the last 10 million years, with creatures like humans and apes sharing a common ancestor. Is that long enough? Note that a human generation is about 20 years. You have to hope very optimistically for rapid mutation and natural selection. In fact, detailed population genetics calculations have shown that only about 1700 mutations could arise in a population over a 10 million year period. That’s only a “page or two” out of the required 40 large books.
Evolution – to qualify as a science – must provide evidence that these events have actually occurred! Not only is the evidence lacking, but any mathematical analysis shows that these transformations of species are impossible!
This is analogous to a district attorney hoping to convict someone, not only with no evidence, but with overwhelming data that proves that the suspect could not possibly be responsible.
You don’t have to tell me to be careful with creationists websites, I believe I am discerning enough to determine which argument is sound and which ones are not ( and this would include websites promoting darwinian evolution ).
By definition, evolution offers an explanation for how things got to be the way they are without any intelligence (I’m referring to what’s known as the “general theory of evolution”).
This is why it made such a splash. Do you think that if God could be worked into the evolutionary picture, then evolution would have taken off the way it did? Of course not.
No one invented the ToE based on preconceived beliefs; that rather begs the question of where those preconceived beliefs arose. The observations of the fossil record and other observations predated Darwin and his contemporaries' and predecessors' various ToEs; even the ancient Greeks were observant enough to propose some variant of the theory.
Being a biochemical process, evolution offers no explanations of anything. The ToE explains the process, and, like any scientific theory, is religion neutral. I do not need to resort to calling upon God to explain chemical reactions; I need only understand how atoms interact with each other. Physical phenomena behave identically regardless of whether the observer is Christian, Muslim, Zoroastrian, Buddhist, or atheist. Evolutionary theory "took off the way it did" (as you put it) because it is a wonderful predictive theory; we have made incredible advances in life sciences using that tool. Our current state of medicine wouldn't be possible without it.
If you read the creation science literature, you will see that they clearly state that they want public schools to teach all the scientific data, censoring none, but do not want any religious doctrine to be brought into science classrooms.
Of course they say that. If they were to come right out and say they wanted one specific religious version of creationism taught in the guise of science, they would get no support at all. So they disguise their intent by claiming that they just want "all points of view" taught, as if scientific facts can be determined by democratic vote instead of by empirical observations.
The creation model questions vertical evolution, which is the emergence of complex from simple and change between kinds, but it does not challenge what is often called horizontal evolution or microevolution, which creationists call genetic variation or species or subspecies formation within created kinds.
The creation "model" is a subterfuge. Like any pseudoscience, it contains just enough real science or scientific sounding language to sound authentic to those who have little scientific training. It is neither scientific nor biblical.
In my view, the genetic differences between organisms are mathematical show-stoppers for evolution. A simplistic comparison of human and chimpanzee DNA shows that the genetic divergence is at least 4%. (The difference is certainly much larger than this number which was derived from a technique not as precise as lining up sequences as in our example above. This “4% difference” does not take into account the different number of chromosomes in the two genomes, the different arrangement of genes among the chromosomes, and a lot of non-coding, but regulatory DNA that show significant variations.)
Estimates of the differences between humans and chimps vary, but are generally between 95% and 99%. So, let's take the lower number, 95%, and analyze it mathematically.
The haploid human genome contains about 3.2 billion base pairs. According to this blog, written by a biochemistry professor, there are about 130 mutations per human zygote (the assumptions and calculations are at the blog). Humans and chimps diverged ~5 million years ago. Assuming 20 years per human generation, this (roughly) comes out to:
(5,000,000 years/20 years per generation) = 250,000 generations.
(250,000 generations x 130 mutations/zygote) = 32.5 million mutations [using a zygote as a proxy for a generation]
(3,200,000,000 base pairs x 0.05 human-chimp genome difference) = 160 million differences (mutations)
(160 million mutations/32.5 million mutations) = 5 (rounded up)
Thus, all you would have needed would have been 5 individuals in the ancestral population to account for all of the DNA mutations between humans and chimps. Since it's highly unlikely that such a small population could have survived, the original population was more than 5, and from a purely mathematical perspective, the difference between human and chimp genome is fully explainable.
As for gene duplications, rearrangements, chromosome breakage (chimps have one more chromosome than humans), etc., those are all fairly common occurrences. During the process of meiosis, extensive chromosome rearrangement occurs; except for the Y or X chromosomes donated by the sperm, no chromosome in an offspring is identical to any chromosome in a parent. (That's in mammals only; other species have other mechanisms for determining male and female, and, therefore, this mechanism would be different for them.)
Note that the websites I used gave varying numbers; I took the extreme number from each range so as to maximize the calculated number of mutations and minimize the amount of time for the mutations. Higher than 95% homology between chimps and humans would decrease the number of calculated mutations. A divergence more than 5 million years ago would increase the amount of time for mutations to accumulate. Even using the extreme range values, the mathematics clearly support the evolutionary model.