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.
This is an excellent point. Science converges on a good theory, and evolution is a fine example, supported by data and measurements, hard facts, from physics and astronomy; chemistry and biochemistry; biology and genetics; geology and palentology; medical science and anatomy.
Religion has splintered ever more with every decade. Today there are some 189 different sects in the USA alone. Catholics into a dozen or so, Eastern, Marionite, Roman, etc. Protestants into more than 120 denominations, and they schism more every year. Judaism is divided into a half-dozen different groups. In the years since Darwin alone, whole new denominations have sprung up: Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, and countless cults. There is obviously no convergence of belief amongst churches or believers in the supernatural.
Science has no "sects" or "denominations". There is no Jewish science, no Christian science, no Islamic science, no Hindu science. There is also no American science, no Chinese science, no Brazilian science. Science is just what can be consistently observed, what logically fits together to make a coherent picture, what can be predicted and tested.
ID has none of these characteristics. Re 73: What you call faith is indeed a private matter, and arrives at no consensus over time. Faiths tend to splinter rather than converge.
This is an excellent point. Science converges on a good theory, and evolution is a fine example, supported by data and measurements, hard facts, from physics and astronomy; chemistry and biochemistry; biology and genetics; geology and palentology; medical science and anatomy.
Religion has splintered ever more with every decade. Today there are some 189 different sects in the USA alone. Catholics into a dozen or so, Eastern, Marionite, Roman, etc. Protestants into more than 120 denominations, and they schism more every year. In the years since Darwin alone, whole new denominations have sprung up: Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventists, and countless cults. There is obviously no convergence of belief amongst churches or believers in the supernatural.
Science has no "sects" or "denominations". There is no Jewish science, no Christian science, no Islamic science, no Hindu science. There is also no American science, no Chinese science, no Brazilian science. Science is just what can be consistently observed, what logically fits together to make a coherent picture, what can be predicted and tested.
ID has none of these characteristics.
I didn't attack the scientific method, just the way some try to use it. That is the reason I selected the sub-group I did.
Then there's this: ToE "fits the facts" for philosophical reasons... the possibility of all "supernatural" explanations have to be excluded, as they fall outside of the realm of all "real" science. The study of science has fallen into a circular argument, favoring one philosophy over all others.
I tend to define supernatural as anything that falls outside of direct observation using our current tools, which is why I put the word supernatural in quotes. The kind I'm talking about does not rely on an existence of any god. Yes, I wish I had a better word to use to explain what I'm talking about. Extra-natural? We can observe the effects & come up with a bunch of different ideas about the cause.
On some digs somewhere, a bunch of horses & carts are found. Most of the digs find many carts & very few horses. Other sites have a lot of horses, but very few carts. Science concludes few or no connections between horses & carts. Then one day a discovery is made of a horse that is tied to the back of a cart. Findings from previous digs are reevaluated & support is found to support the "horses push carts theory".
This is not a circular argument. Science has no means for measuring the supernatural, so it must exclude it. (Not deny it, just exclude it).
While ToE is the best current explanation for the variety of life on Earth, it could be wrong. If all hypotheses begin with the assumption that ToE is correct, all evidence found will tweak it & none will challenge it. Begin with the assumption that ToE is wrong... or is that too wild to even contemplate?
Your complaint is akin to rejecting a yardstick because it won't give you the barometric pressure.
Yardstick, measures distances, right? As you pull out your yardstick to measure the diameter of the Earth, maybe it would be better if I didn't voice any questions about your method. Carry on. When y'all pull it out to measure the distance between the Earth to the Sun... oh, never mind. ;o)
One of the interesting characteristics of science is that enormous imformation is contained in the simple announcement that something can be done. For example, the fact that an atomic bomb has been successfully tested is worth more than the lab notes of the people involved. this is true in many areas of science. Anyone can confirm anything if they understand what is claimed.
Your dislike for randomness is curious. It seems to be true that humans mentally prefer predictability and certainty, and religions try to offer that. But, in fact, every one of us is the product of more or less random events: who we meet and have children with; exactly which sperm united with which egg; the particular biochemical environment in the womb; surviving or missing natural calamities; diseases. A degree of randomness is inherent in every aspect of life.
Faith in the virgin birth is not at all equal to confidence in the age of the earth. Altho the VB of Jesus cannot be disproved, it is sensible to note that it is extremely improbable. No virgin birth has been observed since then; there are numerous claims to a VB in other cultures hoping to give special status to a god or emperor, so the pattern is well-known in anthroplogy.
And, to turn the probabiliuty "argument" about a 747 being assembled by a tornado in a junk yard on its head: What is the probability that a man came from a VB 2000 years ago, given what we know about a sperm and ovum having to unite in a unique way, given what we know about genetics and DNA, given that we know that at least 7 billion other human births have taken place via a natural process that is a product of evolution and remarkably similar in all mammals?
It would seem that the probability of such a VB is mathematically as close to zero as you could want.
The age of the earth has been measured repeatedly by a whole ensemble of methods from nuclear physics, from astronomy and cosmology, and geology.
ID, on the other hand, has never published a single measurement of anything; ID has no laboratories, no field expeditions, no discoveries of anything, and no professional journal.
"I've read some agnostics who think Darwinism is bogus."
Really? Care to share any names so I can read them, too?
Strange, but revealing, use of words. The "final solution" comes to mind.
Actually Darwinoids have a far more difficult task proving that somehow humans "evolved" from nothing.
Keep on trucking...
'pile' is probably the right word for this.
If the judging body is a jury, it is very unlikely the defendent will escape jail by claiming, "The victim's wallet just miraculousy appeared in my hand. Really, it was supernatural. And evidence of intelligent design--I really needed the money."
Life is tough I know...thank GOD for the moderator.
Thank God.-
"You are a funny guy!"
It does have a pretty good PR budget.
NO problem funny guy.
Are you proposing that there should Jewish-based science, Hindu-based science, Islam-based science, Buddhist-based science? We could extend this to --based medicine. Maybe every church and pagoda can set up its own lab?
Then Christainoid or Jahwehoid would be perfectly acceptable? Because of the dogma "made in the image of".
It is a sign of a very weak argument when negative labeling is used to try to win. Never try to teach a pig to sing. It is a waste of time and it annoys the pig.
Ah, but teaching them to think is an even more hopeless endeavor.
Are you proposing that there should Jewish-based science, Hindu-based science, Islam-based science, Buddhist-based science? We could extend this to --based medicine. Maybe every church and pagoda can set up its own lab?
The goal of ID and The Wedge Strategy is not science as we know it. It states:
Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist worldview, and to replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.So, you don't agree with the Bible--Gone!
Biology--you are the primary evol doers. Gone!
Paleontologists--you keep finding those darn inconvenient fossils. Gone!
Physicists--you invented and perfected radiometric dating. Gone!
Archaeologists--you can't find the global flood. Gone!
Astronomers--you are all-around inconvenient. Gone!
Geneticists--you and that silly DNA stuff. Gone!
Well, you get the idea.
Is this the kind of science you want? That's what the Discovery Institute has promised. (Lysenko would be very proud!)
I knew I could depend on one of our FRevolutionists to post a beautiful picture and chart that is allegedly of an irrefutable transitional fossil that's widely accepted by the whole world, a picture that settles it once and for all. And I was right.
Unfortunately, like every other such example, 3733 isn't even settled in the circles of evolutionary dogma; its rightful place in the charts is far from obvious and irrefutable, even among the most faithful evolutionary apostles. As should be the case, since it's almost certainly just a human skull. Hint: There are MANY variations in the shape of the human skull, even today.
Like I said, there are NO obvious transitional fossils. Not one. Amusing that stuff like this is the best you can come up with, when Darwin's own writings made it clear that the fossil record should now be OVERFLOWING with them.
MM out.
Us darwinoids are quite content and confident that the scientific method will continue to be used to make advances in medical science, to understand the Universe, and the history of life on planet earth. Evolution has been such a comprehensive theory integrating facts and measurements from many scientific disciplines, it is unlikely to be abandoned because of factless arguments from religion.
About as improbable as the virgin birth, as I posted earlier.
Personally, I liked the old gods better. The rain god, the traffic god, the fertility god,... some great festivals. And they had the great advantage that you could curse them if it didn't rain. Or if the traffic was a mess, you could sacrifice a Honda.
You're about 50 posts too late...we have already gone over this ad nauseum.
Have a nice one.
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