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.
I am just trying to win the thread. Looks pretty good so far...
You would think these folk would learn. I mean PH posts the definition when he pings folks, for goodness' sakes!.
Isn't he the baraminologist?
Why would anyone pay any attention to anything he said about science?
It's rather like repeatedly posting ASCII bats and an rant titled, "God Hates Idiots, Too."
You have something against BS?
LOL! Sounds like the soundtrack to a standard CREVO thread after us who understand science show up and interrupt the echo chamber.
What about evolution would cause you to expect to observe a species change?
"Which is more likely? Evolution by natural selection or an invisible man in the sky directing microbiology?"
Neither
Species changes are the sine qua non of environmentalism. Without them you have to way to explain going from one cell to mankind.
But what about evolution would cause you to expect to observe a species change?
Quite a claim. Mind if I quote you? "who started at the end point and then drew his lines in reverse, then plotted the points. Yes, I realize I'm being over simplistic by quoting you.
Can't wait to see the migration maps for some plants & critters. Continental drift models against frog emergence dating leaves me wondering about the migratory habits of frogs. Thus far, looks like the rock people have veto power over the critter people. Birds crapping out eggs only take me so far.
When I asked myself the migration question about fresh water fish, I happened upon a page at a site that's been commonly used by people on the ToE side in the debates here. The piece I found was written by a Wisconsin biologist & she was talking about the populations of blue gills in a lot of local lakes. We're talking an area that was under a glacier during the last ice age... Tribes in the area operate huge game fish hatcheries. Think I should tell her or should I assume she would already know, being an expert in the field 'n all?
You can be mean when you don't want to be!
5? 5 is nowhere near the toaster, sorry - for 5, you get the commemorative DC vinyl keychain. Toaster doesn't come until 50. The record for "it's just a theory!" is 472 instances on a single thread - beat that, and you win the all-expenses-paid vacation to the DC resort in the Galapagos :)
I didn't say the whole story has been told, but that it is being told ("telling").
You can start by looking at: http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=2177&program=CSC%20-%20Scientific%20Research%20and%20Scholarship%20-%20Science
One of hundreds of peer-reviewed articles showingf how DNA is confirming more aspects of TToE and filling in additional information.
You think God just shoved a bunch of nearly identical DBA in chimpanzees and humans?
http://www.genome.org/cgi/content/abstract/16/2/173
http://www.nature.com/nbt/journal/v21/n10/full/nbt869.html
I don't make statements out of the blue, nor do I make "but it seems to me" statements when I am dealing in area which I am familiar with yet not an expert. I know I what I am saying is scientifically correct before I post.
Every CR/Ider thinks they are an expert on TToE just because they read Genesis.
*sigh* and I bet duplicates don't count...
Don't forget the contributions of Jack Chick.
I thought the Gravity story was going to include Thetans and Xenu...
Seriously wrong. You have made a serious error with the attribution of this quote--but let me give you the benefit of the doubt and allow you an opportunity to correct the quotation and give a source. I don't wish needlessly to embarrass you; but I would like to see this egregious misattribution corrected.
You have been misled by one of a number of Creationist websites that places as fast and loose with quotations as Dan Rather.
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