A Revolution in Evolution Is Underway

Thomas More Lawcenter ^ | Tue, Jan 18, 2005

[cornelis]

uncomfortable for creationists, and thus ignored)

I reckon nobody has a monopoly on that kind of behavior. I've always thought honesty is the greatest academic virtue, but a semblance of honesty its most dangerous vice.

[DannyTN]

Here's a creationist view of the find at ediacara. It has very negative implications for the traditional evolutionist framework.

“Holy Grail” or another evolutionary tale?

"The fossil generating all the excitement is quite different from any Ediacaran fossil found to date—quite simply, it’s believed to be a fully-fledged vertebrate (an animal with a backbone). Only 6 cm (2.4 inches) long, it has also been shown to have had muscles, a fin on its back and a head. And yet it’s supposedly 560 million years old, a time when it was previously believed vertebrates had not evolved yet! This is so stunning, that when it was first mooted in the press in late 2003, most evolutionists denied that it could be a vertebrate. Vertebrates were just not supposed to be there. ....

"It would have been too much to hope for the evolutionized media to acknowledge the fact that this find is great news for creationists (because with a stroke it appears to wipe out all and any previous multicelled fossils as candidates for the ancestry of all vertebrates). Instead, this is being beat up [touted] in such a way that the public will mostly get the impression that it somehow supports evolution! (The ABC report referred to even said, in what would have to rate as irrational exuberance even to an informed evolutionist, that this fossil could be “the elusive Holy Grail that scientists dream of—showing the origin of life itself.”1 Huh?)"

[DannyTN]

As Patrick well knows, Creationists aren't troubled by evolutionist claims that the Cambrian was 50 million years. We don't agree with the time frame.

The following article on the Cambrian asks the following:

"Why haven’t new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years?"

Think about it. Every phylla is represented in Cambrian rock which y'all claim was 50 million years, but not a single new phylla has been generated since then. And according to y'all, it's been 500 million years.

[DannyTN]

As Patrick well knows, Creationists aren't troubled by evolutionist claims that the Cambrian was 50 million years. We don't agree with the time frame.

The following article on the Cambrian asks the following:

"Why haven’t new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years?"

Think about it. Every phylla is represented in Cambrian rock which y'all claim was 50 million years, but not a single new phylla has been generated since then. And according to y'all, it's been 500 million years.

Exploding Evolution

[StJacques]

Danny, with all due respect, there is no more bogus web site on the entire internet than answersingenesis.com. They also argue that Geologic Time is flawed, that the Grand Canyon was created in a very short period of time and may have been the result of Noah's flood, that the Dover chalk deposits were created in a couple of hundred years, and that the recent debate over the constancy of the speed of light could have the implication of changing its calculation by a factor of ten when even the proponents of an inconstant speed of light argued it would only be one part in one hundred thousand.

Translation: They're idots Danny.

[PatrickHenry]

... there is no more bogus web site on the entire internet than answersingenesis.com

It's pretty bad, no doubt about it. But -- wouldja believe it? -- there are far worse. In my service on the evolution threads, I've seen most of them. At least answersingenesis has this article:

Arguments we think creationists should NOT use.

All the rest of that website is, like all creationist websites, utterly worthless. (And creationists still use all of the "don't use" arguments anyway.)

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for including the disclaimer with your links!

Since it has not been authenticated, it is clearly the right thing to do even if you strongly suspect it was a real "white paper" on the basis of Johnson's book.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you for your reply!

Yes; exactly. If no universals exist outside of the mind then the truth or falsity of a proposition follows from the definitions and/or assumptions upon which it is based.

Since I am not a Nominalist, the universals I have used (in this case, mathematical structures such as pi) exist outside of anyone's mind.

It seems to me a Nominalist's propositions would have to be based on his own mental abstractions. Your original statement and its rephrasing would apply in either case (Nomalist or Realist):

1. its utility follows from its definitions

2. the truth or falsity of a proposition follows from the definitions and/or assumptions upon which it is based

IMHO, if the definitions or assumptions are personal imaginings (such as an extreme, a man thinking he's Napoleon) any conclusions therefrom are likely imaginings as well.

[TheBrotherhood]

**Darwin never discussed the Origin of Life in a single published book or article in his life.**

So, he discussed the Origin of Species. So, how did the species orginated, other than life? The Origin of Species is equivalent to speculating on the origin of life.

[Reuben Hick]

It doesn't matter. You can define the alternative solutions as simply "intelligent external inteference" OR "intelligent design".

This all appears to be a matter of recognizing the Primary Cause.

A Materialist, an adherent to ID and a Young Earth Creationists are standing on a bridge overlooking a river. Just upstream from them is a bend where they can't see beyond. Floating towards them is what appears to be an abandoned rubber raft. The ID scientist says, someone must have lost that raft up near the park a mile away. The Materialist yells an insult at the ID scientist and says No way! That rubber raft formed itself out of debris around this river's origin hundreds of miles away. So the two argue about the source of the raft, while the Creationist goes down, wades into the water and intercepts the raft. "What are you doing!?" the two on the bridge yell. The Young Earth Creationist yells back, "My wife just called and told me that our son's raft got loose and was floating down stream and asked if I would go get it.".

The point being, both the ID and the Young Earth Creationists knew instinctively that there is a reasonable explanation for the evidence. The Materialist, seeing the exact same evidence categorically rejected the idea that the raft was made and released in the river only twenty minutes upstream and believed that the raft came together purely by accident and that it began its journey from debris only found at the beginning of the river. The Creationist, relied on the information given to him by an eye witness of the event, and acted on this information to actually accomplish something while the others stood above it all arguing and doing nothing.

[DannyTN]

"They're idots, Danny."

A better rebuttal would have been to answer the questions they raised or at least spell "idiots" right.

Specifically...

• All 26 phylla suddenly appear in the 50 million year Cambrian explosion, shouldn't there have been more over the next 500 million years?
• Doesn't a vertebrate from the Vendium period destroy the carefully constructed progression presented by the evolutionist community which had the vertebrates not evolving until late cambrian?

DannyTN, an "idot" who believes in God, the Bible, Creation, and who doesn't buy the evolutionist's interpretation or dating of the geologic column. And who believes man is pretty arrogant to challenge God on past events when man didn't even know what a dinosaur was two hundred years ago; can't create life; doesn't know how most DNA works; can't create matter, a planet, much less a solar system or galaxy or a billion galaxies; and has a very incomplete knowledge of physics;

[DannyTN]

LOL, that's great!!!

[DannyTN]

I like the arguments Creationist should not use article from AnswersinGenesis. I also like this one from rae.org

Top Bonehead Arguments of Evolution"

Top Bonehead Arguments of Evolution

Author: Doug Sharp
Subject: Creation-Evolution Overviews
Date: 12/1/1999

1. Argument by definition: "Creation is outside of science."
2. Argument by appeal to authority or intellectual snobbery: "All those scientists can't be wrong."
3. Argument by lining up ducks in a row (homology). This is like space travelers visiting earth in year 3000 finding cars in a junkyard and creating an evolutionary sequence from them.
4. If you can't explain it, give it a scientific name (evolutionist fairy dust).
5. Arguing that if you have described a process, you have explained its origin.
6. Assuming what you want to prove (tautology).
7. Mistaking devolution for evolution. (Devolution is like a nail spontaneously turning to rust. Evolution is like rust spontaneously turning into a nail).
8. Selection (eliminating features) produces new features.
9. If an evolutionist can come up with an ad-hoc argument that seems to explain something, it refutes the creationist explanation.
10. Punk-eek (Punctuated equilibrium). "Evolution happened too fast to find transitional forms in the fossil record."
11. The straw man (creating a misconception or false image of what creationists believe). "Creationists believe that the earth is flat."
12. Creationists who sell books are “money-grubbers” motivated by profit.
13. Comparing Christians to Islamic fundamentalists and the Taliban.
14. “Creationists don’t publish in the top evolutionary science journals.” (Hmmm…I wonder why?)
15. Teaching creation violates the separation of church and state. (As if teaching evolutionary doctrine doesn’t.)

All of these arguments are either patently false or so ridiculous they don’t merit the time spent to answer them. If a person resorts to arguments like these to bolster evolutionary theory, their thinking is so out-of-whack foundationally that it would take months to straighten it out.

[StJacques]

"Specifically...

All 26 phylla suddenly appear in the 50 million year Cambrian explosion, shouldn't there have been more over the next 500 million years?"

Before we get to the falsity of this claim, the answer is not if the evidence doesn't present the case. There is no line of reasoning which says that more should have appeared except a mathematical postulation based upon predefined premises of probability which argue they should have done so. Applying such a "postulated," i.e. "axiomatic," approach does not have value for presenting a case for what actually happened. The only way that case can be presented is to view the evidence that exists, which Creationists refuse to do, or, as you will see with what follows, which they misstate in presenting "facts" that are simply not true. The logical chain of events that matters to support evolution is that the fossil record should present increasing diversity and disparity over time, which it does. Or do you want to return to answersingenesis.com and try to argue that dinosaurs have been found intermixed with modern life forms? LOL! Go ahead and try that one if you want!

No, it is not true that all currently existing phyla developed in one 50 million year period during the Cambrian period or, as others argue, that they appear in their current forms. There were no plant, fungus, or microbe groups for starters and the evolution of forms for all groups has continued ever since. And there are distinct phyla evident in the Pre-Cambrian. Do I have to present links to prove this? Will it matter?

". . . Doesn't a vertebrate from the Vendium period destroy the carefully constructed progression presented by the evolutionist community which had the vertebrates not evolving until late cambrian? . . . "

Pray tell, what vertebrate are you talking about? I hope you don't mean Spriggina from the examples I posted. You can clear this up for us.

". . . DannyTN, an "idot" who believes in God, the Bible, Creation, . . ."

Well I believe in God and the spiritual truth of the Bible -- I agree with Pope John Paul II that the Bible is not a scientific text presenting a history of the origins of the material form of man -- and I believe God created the universe, though the nature of God is unknowable to man and that creation cannot be explained in rational scientific demonstration.

". . . and who doesn't buy the evolutionist's interpretation or dating of the geologic column. . . ."

I'd like to hear your explanation as to how Geologists use the Geologic Column to examine stratigraphic layers of sediment when looking for oil and actually are able to find it using what they and others before them have observed. If the Geologic Column is incorrect as so many Creationists claim, then you must be arguing it is blind luck that they can actually tell oil companies where to drill for oil and, when that is done, oil is found.

". . . And who believes man is pretty arrogant to challenge God on past events when man didn't even know what a dinosaur was two hundred years ago; can't create life; doesn't know how most DNA works; can't create matter, a planet, much less a solar system or galaxy or a billion galaxies; and has a very incomplete knowledge of physics;

No one is challenging God. The Theory of Evolution is viewed by many, including myself, as an explanation for the material origins of the human form and is not to be taken to undermine the existence of man's spiritual being or the origins of his soul as derived from God. Pope John Paul II has said the same thing and I will now quote him as such -- how many threads have I used this one on Patrick? -- from his 1996 address to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences:

". . . Today . . . new knowledge has led to the recognition of the theory of evolution as more than a hypothesis. . . . It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence, neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favor of this theory. . . . If the human body take its origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately created by God . . ."

One only sees conflict between Evolution and the Bible if you insist that the spiritual and material histories of man have the same beginning. I do not. And my belief in no way denies God.

[PatrickHenry]

... how many threads have I used this one on Patrick?

Quite a few now, and there will be no end to it. I've been mentioning the Galileo affair for about five years on this website, and I've posted links to the Pope's 1996 statement for almost that long. It never makes a difference -- at least not to those who remain to fight what they consider to be the "good fight."

I understand that the Pope isn't regarded as authoritative by most Americans. Still, he is very well advised in matters of science; so even if one doesn't consider himself bound by such statements, it's very useful to review his opinion on the matter. It's rather well reasoned. And it embraces Galileo's method of reconciling apparent science/scripture conflicts. I regard it as very significant. It's an intellectual milestone in the history of the West, really -- it marks the end of the Galileo affair.

Some denominations seem determined to be left behind, as the rest of the society moves on. Like the world of Islam, they will be increasingly isolated from our civilization, and increasingly embittered. Even now, on this website, we can see their adherents waging what they call "spiritual warfare" against science. Google that expression. There is a whole genra of books on the subject. It's a comic-book way of presenting a war against reason -- a most unhealthy situation.

We're not just talking about some quibbles concerning the theory of evolution. The issues go way beyond that.

[ThinkPlease]

And it's been fairly recent. 10 years ago, hardly anybody talked about abiogenesis and evolution being two different things.

Here's your specific quote. If you are going to make a claim such as this, surely you have a few quotes of an evolutionist or two merging the two within the past 10 years(even 15 years)?

I'm not looking for you to prove a negative, I'm just looking for some examples of what you say. No need to get all defensive.

[DannyTN]

You are reading it wrong. I'm saying they started separating the two about 10 years ago. I need to show quotes OLDER than 10 years where they were combined, which I have done. The quotes on this thread alone will suffice to show that they are now separating the two.

[atlaw]

Sorry. I went out of town over the weekend, and just saw your post this morning.

Is it your contention that there are no theoretical mechanisms that have been offered to explain what might be considered the "fact" of evolution? Or are you simply challenging whether or not certain posters here can state these mechanisms?

[PatrickHenry]

... If the wedge "white paper" has never been authenticated ...

I've been looking around. The "white paper" describing the Wedge strategy appears to be entirely genuine. Check this out:
The "Wedge Document": "So What?" That's posted at the website of the Discovery Instutute. They defend the document. I'm removing the disclaimer from my homepage.

[PatrickHenry]

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