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 probably should have noted that the powerpoint presentation which the link involving the Haldane Dilemma points to was for a little presentation I gave at the McLean Bible Church in Virginia on the topic about a couple of months ago.
Ping for later.
I've found this to be a fascination subject. Chuck Missler did a study on it that I still have on tape and bring out every now and then. It's still over my head, but it's fascinating.
I'm bookmarking - this could get interesting. I'll sit on the sidelines and watch.
Expect a lot of flammage.....
I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which it's been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books in the future. Posterity will marvel that so very flimsy and dubious an hypothesis could be accepted with the incredible credulity that it has. -- Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom
Read later
It takes all of two minutes to google up how the Haldane Dilemma is invalid .
Haldane's "cost of natural selection" stemmed from an invalid simplifying assumption in his calculations. He divided by a fitness constant in a way that invalidated his assumption of constant population size, and his cost of selection is an artifact of the changed population size. He also assumed that two mutations would take twice as long to reach fixation as one, but because of sexual recombination, the two can be selected simultaneously and both reach fixation sooner. With corrected calculations, the cost disappears (Wallace 1991; Williams n.d.).More in-depth analysis of the Haldane Dilemma here .Haldane's paper was published in 1957, and Haldane himself said, "I am quite aware that my conclusions will probably need drastic revision" (Haldane 1957, 523). It is irresponsible not to consider the revision that has occurred in the forty years since his paper was published.
I think a reasonable person can be a believer in creation or ID, and I have absolutely nothing against them. But theres something seriously wrong with someone who goes out of their way to misrepresent evolution.
Ignorance is bliss placemarker.
How have you been Ted?
I dunno. You come here to get news about the Israel/Lebanon war, and all you find is newbies posting crevo threads, eh?
And as vanities, to boot.
LOL. That was funny!!!
Yeah, but it's sort of an inside joke. Over the head sort of thing, I expect.
Haldane Dilemma: Not actually a dilemma placemarker
One can be a believer and not deny evolution.
One who is an atheist or agnostic must by necessity believe in evolution. If intelligent design or some other matter suggesting God action is proved then ipso facto they are wrong.
A agree with Coulter what people miss in this discussion is not the religion of the intelligent design believers but the religion of the Darwinists. The reason even a tepid, incomplete discussion of intelligent design cannot occur in the public schools--is the Darwinist religion cannot permit what to them is a heresy. Claiming no faith in God does not make one more objective or "scientific." Such claims themselves are leaps to faith just like any ohter religion.
No kidding. Did you talk about the electric sun and remote viewing too? Betcha that would've been a hit.
What would you expect form the clown prince of astrophysics?
How about the Felt Gravity Effect? And ascii bats?
I am supposing you are right. After all, we are still talking about the "dinosaur meat", and that leads me to think it is not over the head, so much as through the head and out the other side.
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