Common Creationist Arguments - Pseudoscience

http://www.stardestroyer.net/Creationism/Arguments/Pseudoscience.shtml ^

[BMCDA]

From that page:

In fact, by analyzing electrophoritic separations of selected enzymes and studying DNA patterns, the two subspecies klauberi and eschscholtzi are different species by every definition. (Wake, Yanev and Brown, 1986) This poses a very interesting problem. Should the species Ensatina eschscholtzi be split into two or more species, or be considered a single species? If the species is to be split, where does one draw the line?

^{Also posted earlier by VadeRetro in #819}

But where would you draw the line? Why are they the same species if they can't interbreed? Or is there also another definition of species? Why can't the two populations that "close the ring" not interbreed?
So many questions...

[tallhappy]

Evolutionists do not use the terms micro- or macro-evolution!

Couple things. Here the response is so? You know what he means. He means natural selection for micro and initial origens of life and speciation for macro.

Don't proselytize, address the topic he brings up.

VadeRetro has posted the series showing the modification of the jaw bones of reptiles to be ear bones of mammals.

Stuff like this is one of the reasosn people are quite rightly skeptical of evolution. So much of it has been junk science. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny -- not even logical).

The behavior of the religious evolutionists is quite apalling as well and turns people off to the subject as well and harms the reputation of science.

It is unfortunate these religious fanatics have tried to hijack science.

[Junior]

Don't proselytize, address the topic he brings up.

If you read the rest of the post, I did address the questions he brought up. Do you do anything but carp at the way the game is played? Do you ever actually add anything to the debate on either side?

[Lurking Libertarian]

VadeRetro has posted the series showing the modification of the jaw bones of reptiles to be ear bones of mammals.

Stuff like this is one of the reasosn people are quite rightly skeptical of evolution. So much of it has been junk science.

How is the sequence of reptile to mammal skulls "junk science"? It is exactly what Creationists claim has never been found-- a full series of fossils which show gradual modifications, each one only slightly different from the predecessor, but eventually leading to a whole new type of animal.

[tallhappy]

If you read the rest of the post, I did address the questions he brought up.

I didn't see that. I saw what you consider addressing the question as proselyltizing.

To address you would have to acknowledge clearly the question asked -- which you didn't do, you denied its validity out of hand. How or why would you answer a question you say makes no sense?

Buddy, science is carping.

[Nebullis]

It is unfortunate these religious fanatics have tried to hijack science.

What takes place on these threads is not always about science, even if, at times, it is. It's not always about religion either. But it can be fun. The creationists on the threads are, for the most part, not interested in science and the discussions repeatedly lead to the same irreconcilable arguments.

Junior is particularly recalcitrant about issues which I have pointed out to him as scientifically incorrect. He carries on with statements like "Evolutionists do not use the terms micro- or macro-evolution!", pictures of humans with "vestigial tails", incorrect definitions of speciation, etc.

When I first started on these threads, I sang somewhat the same tune you do. This isn't science, I'm a molecular biologist, and so forth. But, so what! The creationists are even less about science than the evolutionists here are. I try to infuse a little current scientific knowledge, but I realize that the simpler, pedestrian version of the evolutionary narrative is more than the creationists can handle.

[tallhappy]

Thanks for your comment. I'm not sure I share your analysis on the two populations.

[medved]

I've never called anyone a liar without having facts to back up my assertion....

So far, I've never really seen anything on these threads which would make me want to call anybody a liar. It used to be that calling somebody a liar was always good for starting fights and anybody who used words like that loosely, as you appear to, was somebody in a permanent state of getting his ass kicked in. That may be something which has changed or a symptom of some sort of a generation gap, but it still sort of throws me for a loop to see anybody using language like that loosely.

[medved]

Is there any evidence that electro-magnetic forces played a larger role in the Solar System in the recent past than they do now?

Most of the crevo people seem to have missed the thread on plasma cosmology the other day.

Item 15 was particularly interesting, noting that

"The cosmologists of the future will be electrical engineers!"

It turns out that most of the cosmos is governed by electrical and magnetic rather than gravitational forces and that we live in a little backwater which is an exception to the rule rather than the rule. When you see something in space which is roundish or amorphous, gravity is usually at work. When you see things like this:

then electromagnetic forces are at work.

There are numerous things out there which are clearly electromagnetic and not gravitational phenomena. In the case of the spiral galaxy above, the arms, particularly the upper arm, show material being held in a straight line until some point at which the field breaks down, after which material very quickly trails away and dissipates.

Again, this is obvious and nobody should need to be Albert Einstein to comprehend it. There is no conceivable way gravity could do something like that.

In the case of our own Earth in the recent past, antique literature describes a more active static electrical kind of world and you don't need to look terribly far to see evidence of major kinds of electrical effects. The fractal rilling and topography of the Grand Canyon, for instance, is precisely what you get when you run an arc welder to rocky ground and blast out channels. The idea of the Colorado river carving that canyon out of rock is a sick joke.

[Heartlander]

The odds of the single ‘ancestor’ coming into existence in the first place are beyond astronomical if one limits their beliefs to ‘natural occurrence’. But, for the sake of this discussion let’s say that it happened – it just beat the odds. Let us truly apply the probability theory to genetic mutations.

“The odds of a single cell possessing non-harmful mutations of five specific (functionally related) genes is the product of their separate probabilities. Morris, 63. In other words, the probability is 1 in 108 X 108 X 108 X 108 X 108, or 1 in 1040. If one hundred trillion (1014) bacteria were produced every second for five billion years (1017 seconds), the resulting population (1031) would be only 1/1,000,000,000 of what was needed!
But even this is not the whole story. These are the odds of getting just any kind of non-harmful mutations of five related genes. In order to create a new structure, however, the mutated genes must integrate or function in concert with one another. According to Professor Ambrose, the difficulties of obtaining non-harmful mutations of five related genes "fade into insignificance when we recognize that there must be a close integration of functions between the individual genes of the cluster, which must also be integrated into the development of the entire organism." Davis, 68.
In addition to this, the structure resulting from the cluster of the five integrated genes must, in the words of Ambrose, "give some selective advantage, or else become scattered once more within the population at large, due to interbreeding." Bird, 1:87. Ambrose concludes that "it seems impossible to explain [the origin of increased complexity] in terms of random mutations alone." Bird, 1:87.,
When one considers that a structure as "simple" as the wing on a fruit fly involves 30-40 genes (Bird, 1:88), it is mathematically absurd to think that random genetic mutations can account for the vast diversity of life on earth. Even Julian Huxley, a staunch evolutionist who made assumptions very favorable to the theory, computed the odds against the evolution of a horse to be 1 in 10300,000. Pitman, 68. If only more Christians had that kind of faith!”

“The evolutionists’ argument is that an a priori adherence to materialism is necessary to protect the very existence of science. If design in biology is real, then the Designer also might be real, and scientific materialists contemplate this possibility (if at all) with outright panic. Science will come to a screeching halt, they insist, because everybody will stop doing experiments and just attribute all phenomena to the inscrutable will of God.
Nonsense. On the contrary, the concept that the universe is the product of a rational mind provides a far better metaphysical basis for scientific rationality than the competing concept that everything in the universe (including our minds) is ultimately based in the mindless movements of matter. Perhaps materialism was a liberating philosophy when the need was to escape from dogmas of religion, but today materialism itself is the dogma from which the mind needs to escape. A rule that materialism should be professed regardless of the evidence, says Behe, is the equivalent of a rule that science may not contradict the teachings of a church. "It tries to place reality in a tidy box, but the universe will not be placed in a box."
The fundamental principle is that "scientists should follow the physical evidence wherever it leads, with no artificial restrictions." Science has come as far as it has because scientists of the past were willing to describe the universe as it really is, rather than as the prejudices current in their times would have preferred it to be. The question is whether today's scientists have lost their nerve.”

“Whether one looks to mutations or gene flow for the source of the variations needed to fuel evolution, there is an enormous probability problem at the core of Darwinist and neo-Darwinist theory, which has been cited by hundreds of scientists and professionals. Engineers, physicists, astronomers, and biologists who have looked without prejudice at the notion of such variations producing ever more complex organisms have come to the same conclusion: The evolutionists are assuming the impossible. Fix, 196.”

[VadeRetro]

You need to read the thread before shooting your mouth off, pal!

Junior: VadeRetro has posted the series showing the modification of the jaw bones of reptiles to be ear bones of mammals.

slaphappy: Stuff like this is one of the reasosn people are quite rightly skeptical of evolution. So much of it has been junk science. (Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny -- not even logical).

Junior refers to the following:

Please explain how "recapitulation" applies here. Where's the ontogeny? You do not know what you are talking about.

You are slipping in your avowed role of word-twister and useage police. I have made two posts lately, one of which could be interpreted to mean I don't know a gene from an allele. The other could be interpreted to mean that I don't know an intron from functional DNA.

The more you post, the more you show you can't read.

[VadeRetro]

There is no conceivable way gravity could do something like that.

Your inability to conceive is not evidence. Why does that galaxy appear to have a large central whorl and a smaller one beside it?

[VadeRetro]

The idea of the Colorado river carving that canyon out of rock is a sick joke.

You're kidding, right? How about the gorge of the Brahmaputra?

[Lev]

You have not answered my question as to why these species have not been mutating for 400 million years. There are always improvements possible regardless of how limiting the environment may be. In fact, if punk-eek is to be true for example, the species in the limited environment must overcome the limiting environment in order to spread itself past its boundaries. I also see no particular limitation to the coelacanth's environment. The oceans are huge and there is no reason why the species could not have improved itself. Unless of course the demi-god Darwin ordered them to stop mutating, to stop adapting, to stop evolving.

I'll try again.

  fitness
  ^
  |
  |       _ max B
  |      / \
  |     /   \_
  |    /      \       _ local max A
  |  _/        \     / \
  | /           \   /   \__  __
  |              \_/       \/
  |-------B-------X--YA---------> gene pool

Suppose particular species in particular environment has this fitness function. Now, how do we get from point A to a higher fitness point B? Mutations will get some organisms to point Y which has LOWER fitness. They will have fewer offsprings than those staying at point A. Some organisms will mutate even closer to point X but according to the fitness function the closer they get to X the less likely the mutations in that direction will be passed to the next generation. With time environment may change which would cause the fitness function to change, let's say fitness at point X increases - this will allow some organisms to reach B. The fact that there are not many 'living fossils' around indicates that environment does change and species do 'improve themselves', as you say. But in some rare cases they get stuck at a nice and warm point A and don't change much for a long time. Any questions? Which part of this do you disagree with?

[Junior]

Interesting link. I'll be awhile digesting it.

[VadeRetro]

I forget to source that figure every time I post it.

Clifford Cuffey, THE FOSSIL RECORD: EVOLUTION OR "SCIENTIFIC CREATION."

[Junior]

He carries on with statements like "Evolutionists do not use the terms micro- or macro-evolution!", pictures of humans with "vestigial tails", incorrect definitions of speciation, etc.

Number one, the micro- macro- thingy is a creationist creation; it does not appear in any of the books on evolution I have, and I'd never run across it before beginning to debate creationists on these threads. Secondly, I conceded the point on human tails. I specifically remember telling you that all we had to go on was that photograph of the kid with the tail, we did not have any additional information on the tail structure. And as for the speciation definition, as far as I can tell there are several competing definitions of speciation, which the creationists gleefully glom onto so they can change their definitions of macro- and micro-evolution to fit their particular arguments. I've typically stuck with the "unable to mate with any other species" definition.

I will be the first to admit I'm an amateur when it comes to biology, but I do have to point out that I make an effort to track down the information I need and seldom post without having something (a link, a reference, something) to back up my contentions. Mr. tallhappy, on the other hand, has been horribly unforthcoming with any actual information, evidently relegating himself to sitting on the sidelines carping.

[VadeRetro]

The behavior of the religious evolutionists is quite apalling as well and turns people off to the subject as well and harms the reputation of science.

The behavior of Joe Cheapshot tallhappy is quite appalling and turns people off to any thread he pollutes with his venomous presence.

[Doctor Stochastic]

The odds of a single cell possessing non-harmful mutations of five specific (functionally related) genes is the product of their separate probabilities.

False. Odds are not products of probabilities. Makes one skeptical that the author even understands simple mathematics. Second this would only be true if the mutations were independent. Selection creates dependencies.

[Doctor Stochastic]

Filler post to make a trivial point.