Posted on 02/19/2002 2:59:38 PM PST by Cameron
It also seems to align rather well with the actual known fossil evidence.
I think not. Yours is instantaneous. There are known counterexamples.
Smooth Change in the Fossil Record.
(No, I'm not really Don Lindsay. I use other stuff in other discussions but he has some nice pages on speciation, mutations, etc.)
Are you familiar with Punctuated Equilibrium, and if so, can you explain why it was needed if Darwinism was correct in the first place?" -- Southack
Darwin was not wrong. Rate of change depends on the selection pressure and opportunity. Horseshoe Crabs are still here, morphologically unchanged for eons, yet have the highest degree of genetic polymorphism yet measured. The Dinosaurs went extinct in a virtual heartbeat allowing for the rapid expansion of opportunistic survivors. The rate of evolutionary change is not uniform from place to place or over time.
The Punctuated Equilibrium models owe their construction more to the ecologist than the evolutionist. Measurements of island species diversity as a function of land area, age, stability, and proximity to mainland sources of migratory species show significantly different equilibrium points and rates of speciation. Singular events (hurricanes, volcanic eruptions) can completely disrupt (or punctuate) the equilibrium. When life returns to normal there may be a few players missing and a new chance for somebody else to join the game.
Your little joke is starting to get a bit stale. Let's suppose for an instant that you are a real scientist looking for evidence of intelligent design in nature. You gather a few likely specimens and return to your lab. There, using a viral vector purchased at little expense from any one of half a dozen University labs, you surreptitiously insert a gene into the eggs of your specimen, grow them up and then point to the product of your deceit and gleefully proclaim that you have discovered an incident of Intelligent Design occurring in nature.
What you have done is called fraud. You would be drummed out of the profession and likely never work again. But this is exactly what you are proposing with your proof that Intelligent Design is possible. You have to show that it is possible in nature. The lab demonstration doesn't count.
Your theory doesn't predict rapid, it predicts instantaneous. Cross breeding of geographically isolated species strikes to the heart of your theory and invalidates it instantly. For a theory to survive it must withstand all assaults. If it fails even once it must be abandoned or revised. ID is dead from a hundred fatal wounds. Abandonment is the only recourse you have.
Those are not human organs growing in pigs. Those are pig organs growing in pigs that have an expressed gene for a human cell membrane protein that helps mask the cell surface and reduce the rate of tissue rejection that always occurs with transplants.
Why do you suppose a pig organ can be used in place of a human organ? Could it be because the pig and the human are distant relations? Let's see -- both are vertebrates, both are mammals -- yes indeed, they are related after all.
One must have Intelligent Design for both, unless you hold that Evolution is responsbile for Genetic Engineering in today's science laboratories.
What the author calls "smooth" in those examples are in reality distinct quantum steps of speciation.
Science in the lab doesn't count?! Universities and research facilities should be defunded at once! < /SARCASM >
Actually, we do see evidence of Intelligent Design in the wild as well as in the lab. Man uses genetic engineering for profit out in the field and not just for lab experiments on pigs and rats, after all. We also see computer programming, self-replicating machines, et al.
But we see no such examples of DNA self-forming in either the lab or out in the wild that would support Evolutionary Theory...
Well, then we can just use any old swine body parts for your next operation, since no genetically modified organs are needed in your views??
No, I wouldn't do that to you. I know that using an non-genetically-modified pig organ would kill you, and I wouldn't allow that to happen. Man has to reprogram the pig's DNA via Intelligent Intervention for you to live, and even though you doubt the theory, I'll make certain that it saves your life.
(Snort!) Lest I taken for Doris Kearns Goodwin, I'll diligently research where I saw the answer to this one.
Here the estimable cracker writes:
"I see you have a nice collection of small pictures, arranged in chronological order, and affixed to a narrow strip of celluloid. An impressive display, but there is no evidence here. You claim these are moving pictures - but which picture shows the motion?"
"Your theory doesn't predict rapid, it predicts instantaneous. Cross breeding of geographically isolated species strikes to the heart of your theory and invalidates it instantly." - Vercingetorix
Cross-breeding (which I've already explained is a bad example for this debate due to the 1st and 2nd species of Life) is an INSTANTANEOUS speciation event, which is precisely what Intelligent Design predicts. Cross-breed two species and the resultant mix is immediately a distinct new species.
What you've failed to understand is that cross-breeding is insufficient to explain the origin of species. By definition, the very first two species of Life on this planet could NOT have been produced via cross-breeding, rendering any theory dependent upon said cross-breeding moot.
The joke is cute, but misses the point. The evidence at hand is comprised of fossils in distinct stages. Scientifically, this evidence can support both punctuated equilibrium (aka Evolution) and Intelligent Design. It would take different evidence to refute either theory. If you can't produce different evidence, then you can't refute either theory, QED.
One could look at the various models of automobiles buried in junkyards and point out how smoothly some models changed from year to year, yet pretending that cars self-evolved without Intelligent Designers based upon that data would get you laughed out of any serious discussion on the planet. Likewise, the same can be said for drawing overly broad conclusions from our fossil data.
Why is it so gradualistic/incremental/evolutionary-looking? Did He not know what He wanted early on? Did He not know how?
I've asked the same question about why it took Microsoft so long just to get to Windows. I'd have to guess that good programming is elusive and time-consuming at various stages, but since I wasn't there and don't have the data, anything more than a guess would be a bit arrogant...
Some models, sometimes, but that's not even the norm.
Perhaps you're familiar with the Duane Gish strawman parody of punctuated equilibrium. "One day a dinosaur supposedly gave birth to a bird! But where was another bird for that one to mate with?"
I don't have to tell you that punk-eek isn't really like that. But Intelligent Design is like that. One year, Ford discontinues rear-wheel drive sedans and out comes the all new Taurus or whatever. Boom!
But nature's Intelligent Designer never makes a big new design release. There are some mechanisms in plants and asexuals that do produce single-generation speciation, but these are limited in effect. Let me add that these are well-understood naturalistic causes (polyploidy, hybridization).
ID doesn't say the designer has to mimic evolution, but He always does. ID doesn't say why.
(I'm not going to go on debating an argument which is essentially this: "We can move genes around, therefore -- ta da! -- Zeus is alive and well on Mount Olympus.)
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