Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I seems that one of your main points in all this garbage is that science cannot prove anything, it can only run test upon test and experiment upon experiment until the statistics show that whatever you where trying to say is correct. This being the case, I think it is amazing that the "evolutionists" still hold on to these beliefs with such fervor. It seems to be that the search for truth is not at the heart of what you are doing, but the hatred of creationism and fear of God being the one true creator is. Anyone can research anything and put down facts as long as they agree with what they believe and they have a few friends with Phd's to agree. But nothing you have stated seems to be factual without doubt. Creationism takes faith but this is the very beginning of what christianity is about. If God didn't "speak into existence" the universe and everything in it then to believe the rest of the Bible as complete and total truth would be very hard. I could not have unshaken faith that God is my savior and i will undoubtedly spend eternity with Him if I didn't know that He was the creator of everything. You see the true christian will never have their faith in God as creator moved because they truly know it is the complete and total truth. It can't be added to or taken away from. To have complete and "real" knowledge that your life is guided by the "God-man" (100% God and 100% man) who is the only creator and ruler is absolutely the only thing that can bring true peace. Creation of the world is only one of the thing christians know to be true that so called "scientists" cannot grasp. What about the trinity, the holy ghost itself, all the wonderous miracles Jesuse performed, actually being raised from the dead after being killed for His children. Now that takes faith, something that I pray each one of you will someday realize. You see, christians are filled with hope that can't be taken away. People that don't know my God are hopeless and they know this when that feeling hits them at different time. The fear of death, the pain you feel when a family member or friend dies is something that true christians don't experience in the hopeless way lost people do. You see, to the christian, what you are doing by trying to lead people away from the truth of God is in no way unexpected. We were warned of this two thousand years ago when God spoke to the authors of the Bible. So you see there is absolutely nothing that can shake my faith or anyone else that is a true christian because your work is negated by the only completely 100% true science/history book ever written, and guess what... it was written by the same God who created the universe and everything in it. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | "The theory
of evolution is univerally accepted not because it can be
proved by logical, coherent evidence to be true, but
because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly
incredible!" -D.M.S. Watson
Evolution is so full of holes, and contradicts so many physical laws (the most notable being the second law of thermodynamics), that I don't see how you can possibly defend it. Sometimes you need to step back and look at the big picture, get out of the nuts and bolts and look at the thing as a whole: Evolution says that all things are progressing upwards, but one of the most proven laws of nature says that all things are deteriorating. |
Response | |
From: | |
Author of: | Evolution and Philosophy |
Response: | Since you
found this site, you have no doubt read the following FAQs
but I'll give them to you anyway:
Evolution does not contradict the second law of thermodynamics. See
Also, evolution is not progress. That is a common misunderstanding. Older versions of evolution before Darwin were progressive, and some later writers revived it, but Darwinian theory predicts nor prohibits progress. See for a brief discussion. As to what the "theory of evolution" actually is, note that Darwin proposed seven distinct theories, of which he admitted he was original author of two, one of which was wrong, see (Darwin's Precursors FAQ). The one that is an alternative to special creation is the transmutation of species, and if Watson is quoted in context, it is that theory that he refers to. |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | I would like to comment on some of the articles I have read in your website. I am a Christian and also believe in the creation story because it makes more sense to believe that than in a story that s says that animals and humans are here by chance. If a person has ever seen a newborn and then watch them grow up to adulthood, it is very hard to believe they turn out the way they do according to chance. I acknowledge that there might be some questions about the validity of claims made by creationists but the fact remains that we got here somehow, I choose to believe that we got here by divine ways. And the techniques used by people to gather evidence, both for and against the Bible, are all fraught with mistakes. I have just met God in my heart and I think that we cannot ignore things like the beauty of nature and just say that it got here by an explosion. There are too many holes in that theory. So in conclusion, I would say that each person needs to look into this for themselves and find out the truth, not according to what we read, but according to what we find. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | A child
growing to adulthood is indeed a wonderful thing, and it
does not occur due to chance. It is, however, a natural
process which can be studied and illuminated at least in
part as resulting from the normal workings of natural laws.
Certainly nothing has been seen which is in conflict with
natural laws, nor is there any specific part of the process
which can be singled out as due to some non-natural
external influence.
Christians have various ways of understanding God's involvement in that process. Some attempt to set apart the natural part of the process as due to natural processes in contrast to to other aspects due to God. This is the classic God of the gaps, and is opposed to the view of God's involvement in the normal unfolding of events. We discern regularities in nature and describe them as laws... why would you want to insist these regularities are not divine? Why would you refer to such regularities as "chance"? It is the opposite of chance! Just as the growth of a baby to an adult is a natural part of the unfolding of the world, which can fill us with awe even as we study to illuminate the principles according to which this growth occurs; so also the diversity of living things is a natural part of the unfolding of the world, which can fill us with awe even as we study to illuminate the principles according to which this diversity comes about. That study is called evolutionary biology. |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | I am very
interested in the real differences in creationists'
arguments against evolution and what evolutionists see as
truth. I also saw a few mistakes while reading Five Major
Misconceptions about Evolution. One was that the author
talks specifically about evolution and then goes on to
outline definitions of evolution, theory, and proof. His
definitions seem viable, but are very different than others
that I've heard. An example of this is the American National Association of Biology
Teachers (NABT), which defined evolution in this way:
"The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of
evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable, and
natural process of temporal descent with genetic
modification that is affected by natural selection, chance,
historical contingencies and changing environments." The
author of Five
Major Misconceptions defines evolution simply as "a
change in allele frequencies in a population over time."
Can someone respond to me and tell me which definition of evolution is the one that the scientific community stands by? |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Both are, in
their own way, correct.
The definition given by the Five Major Misconceptions about Evolution FAQ concerns the fact of evolution. We observe changes taking place in the gene pool of terrestrial organism populations. Populations evolve, traits change, and new species emerge. The definition given by the National Association of Biology Teachers in their Statement on Teaching Evolution concerns the theory of evolution. The theory of evolution, as first outlined by Darwin and since refined, explains the fact of evolution. It explains the evidence that we see, more fully than any other explanation to date. Consider gravity. Things fall; that is the fact of gravity. Theories of gravity, including Newton's laws and relativity, explain why things fall, why we observe what we do. Please read the Evolution is a Fact and a Theory FAQ for more information on this distinction. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | This is more
a question than a comment ... and will probably not meet
your requirement of being brief.
Classic Darwinianism and neo-Darwinianism, do not, in my opionion, address one basic tenet of the "survival of the fittest" model. Empirically we know that inter-species breeding produces sterile offspring or no offspring. How is it then that genetic drift is able to produce a fertile pair? Variation within a species is fully explained by the "survival of the fittest" model, but what model explains the quantum change in chromosome count between species? This quandary has bothered me since high school. I hope your web site is able to resolve it for me. Thanks for a great site - I look forward to your response. Regards, Jonathan Lee. |
Response | |
From: | |
Author of: | Punctuated Equilibria |
Response: |
The possible results of inter-species breeding rather depends upon the species concept used to define "species" in the case under consideration. Please look at Boxhorn's Speciation FAQ for more information. I think that reading Chris Colby's Introduction to Evolutionary Biology text would go a long way in clearing up what "natural selection" and "genetic drift" actually imply. As to changes in chromosome number, there are a number of known means for chromosome number to change. Some of those covered in genetics texts can be located under the terms "fission", "fusion", and "polyploidy". It should be noted that while a difference in chromosome number is often a bar to inter-fertility, it is not always so. Thus, a change in chromosome number does not always mean that an individual is automatically not inter-fertile with others of the parent population. In those cases where chromosomal re-arrangement does imply that inter-fertility is reduced or eliminated, reproduction may still occur if the species is self-fertilizing or the same or similar change occurs in two or more individuals of complementary genders at the same time. This is a gross simplification of the genetic realities, but is reasonably accurate. How genetic change happens in an individual is a separate concern from how such changes either are eliminated or are spread through a population. The genetic processes concerning change in karyotype address one class of change under the former. For the latter, natural selection and genetic drift each offer explanations of observed phenomena. If chromosomal change or re-arrangement occurs, and such change does not affect the fitness of the individuals bearing that change, then genetic drift is the appropriate model for how that change may or may not spread. If fitness is affected, then natural selection comes into play. The "size" of the genetic change involved doesn't bear on which mechanism applies. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I have read some of the articals on Noahs Ark, and I think the people who spend all of their time trying to prove it wrong, aren't getting anywhere. The way God has made this world, is not meant to be understood, or to be proven. God should not have to prove him self to anyone! Just like your parents who you respected, and listened to, you never asked them why they did what they did, because they knew what they were doing was for your own good. So with God, he only did what he thought was good for the world. With Noahs Ark, God didn't want to destroy all he had created, only what had already started to destroy itself. He was wrong in doing it, and he admits that, but evil had taken over man, and God felt he had failed, so he wanted to start over. Now many people ask "How did Noah, get all the animals from every part in the world, when he had such little transportation?" Well, how do you figure, that if God can create the Universe, and all living things, then why is it so hard for him to help Noah out a bit, and bring the animals to him? And for all you people who believe we were made from monkeys, and before that, gases, then why are their still monkeys? Why havent they turned into humans like us? And if we were first made from gases, then where did the gases come from? Something had to create them. Or maybe it was an alien that created the gases. Everything has to come from somewhere, and no scientist can prove that their is no God, and there are many facts that show readings from the bible are true. Unlike all scientists theroys, which is code name for a guess, or a guess with no true facts. So, after saying all this, I just like to add, that final days will soon be coming, and for all the people who refuse to believe in God, and try to convince themselves that scientist do not lie, I'd like you to look at one thing, HISTORY, if there is no God, then history must lie, using like 2053 B.C. and 893 A.C. as to tell when events in history occured, must just be for convenince and not for the reason of saying Before,and After Jesus Christ came. And having the moto "In God we trust" on every American dollar, must just be for it to look nice, right? Sorry this was so long, I just dont understand why people cant just have faith, and believe, instead of trying to prove that we're on this earth for no reason at all. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | In response
to... Cretinism or Evilution? No. 3 Edited by E.T. Babinski
Men Over Ten Feet Tall
I must confess that I'm hardly sold on the Theory of Evolution. Furthermore, I'm more inclined --logically, according to my own reasoning-- to follow the concept of a Creator. Having admitted that....ugh....I wanted to share the following if I could. I love the truth while I hate all lies. And in this game of Creationism vs. Evolution, this is no shortage of lies propagated by those who desperately seek to win the minds of opposing opinions. This does not help us to understand one another and only sows discention. I thought the article was well written. I stumbled upon it while researching the photo myself. I like to test anything that common sense would dictate a purpose to. My respect and thanks to the Author for doing alot of leg work for us. A final reminder for: CREATIONIST- We are all children of God. There is no room for pride. Nor does self-righteousness make an excuse to dispise your brothers who don't hold your same belief. Be tolerant and love all. And pray! EVOLUTIONIST- Your search for truth is based on the foundation of the betterment of Man-Kind. We are all a wonderful family of this human race. Do not be quick to blindly shut out those opposite opinions that may offer insight to your own research. To Both Parties: Please only offer facts! Thank You All!!! |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | It is much to seldom that I chance across a site such as this. It warms my heart to know that someone else out there is trying to lift the veils of ignorance that have obscured truth and reason. The public must be taught the difference between mythology and science. Good work, keep it up! |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I applaud the professionalism and good science that backs up the articles on this website. I've managed to find the answers to a number of creationist critiques of evolution, and in the process, have managed to quiet some of my creationist friends. This archive is proof of two things: the voluminous amount of information proving evolution, and the length that those with religious bents will go to to try to twist objective truth to conform to their sectarian views. Keep up the good work. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Gentlefolk,
thank you for a wonderful resource for rationality! I think
that the many positions that people have on the
creation/evolution issue, more than almost any other today,
is indicative of the relationship that people of faith have
with the powers of reason and of science. What is sorely
missing among the Christian community is an integration of
faith and science. In the process, literalism dies but is,
I have found, replaced by a spirituality that is more
profound and more inclusive ... in short, more *real*.
On an academic note, something that might be a big help to the myriad number of students that visit this site is an "Authors" page with not only e-mail addresses of the authors of your FAQs, but also information such as credentials, etc. Thanks again for a great resource! With Regards, ~R~ogue |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Deja news
did not take my message for Talk Origins. Also, nothing
happened when I clicked on Talk Origins on the new headers.
But I will post anyway, here and there. I have in the past
received a couple of letters from my Talk Origins posting.
I am writing about a rock. The rock is 146 years old. If Deja News and Talk Origins cannot stand rocks 146 years old, too bad. A lot of what I see on Talk Origins is swear words. Nobody objects to them. The rock is in the Maritime Archaelogical Unit of Heritage Victoria in Australia. It is rock encrusted around two ships bells from the wooden sailing vessel Isabella Watson, which sank off the coast of Victoria in 1852. Bells were recently found from the ship in one metre of water. The bells were encrusted in rock. How old is a rock? Well, a rock does not have to be more than 142 years old. This rock is not one million years old. Not even 30,000 years old. Too bad Deja News and too bad evolutionists and too bad Talk Origins. Why can't I post. God Bless. Lester V. Tinnin |
Response | |
From: | Chris Stassen |
Author of: | The Age of the Earth |
Response: | DejaNews doesn't
support posting to moderated newsgroups (such as talk.origins). You can post to
talk.origins via reference.com [now defunct - editor] (a
different free USEnet news service which does
support posting to moderated newsgroups) or by E-mail. I
recommend reading the
talk.origins Moderation FAQ for further information
(especially for some important details on how to post via
E-mail).
If you think that a 140-year-old rock is somehow bad news for "evolutionists," you are mistaken. I have seen rocks that are even younger than yours; just a few months ago I saw many rocks at Mount Saint Helens that were less than 20 years old. Minimum formation times are only a problem (to the young-Earth crowd) for a few types of rocks; since your example was not one of those types, it doesn't really help the young-Earth cause. The age that rocks "have" to be (by virtue of the time they would need in order to form) is not nearly so big a problem as the age that many rocks appear to be (by virtue of the distribution of isotopes within them). I recommend that you read the talk.origins Age of the Earth and Isochron Dating FAQs on this site. They provide a brief introduction as well as many pointers for further reading. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | I have a pressing question to ask. I am a devoted Roman Catholic teenager who also happens to believe in evolution. Virus' unlike bacteria cannot survive without a host, and there are some virus' that only pick humans as hosts, so how did Noah and his family survive Small Pox, Polio, and almost any sexually transmited disease? Can someone please answer this pressing question. P.S. I don't think you creationists can. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | m jacobson |
Comment: | I am a
Christian (member of the Religious Society of Friends) that
believes both evolution and the Genesis stories are true,
and reconcilable. Even more, in reconciling these stories
important insights are available that we cannot reach if we
close our eyes to either.
There are many parallels in these stories. For instance, Genesis says that when land formed, there was one body of water, and thus one land mass. Continental drift theory says the same thing, all land was once part of a "supercontinent" called pangaea. Both Genesis and the archaeological evidence say that our kind began as herbivores. See Genesis 1:26-29 and any study of the Afarensis represented by "Lucy." I interpret Genesis 1:26-29 as a set of commands. By breaking with God's command to eat every seed bearing plant for food, we began on our path of sin and destruction. Consider the sequencing in Genesis: First we are given every seed bearing plant for food, then a carnivore tempts us and we fall from grace by eating something forbidden, then God "gives" us animal skins to wear. The fall from grace separated mankind into two groups, the herbivore Australeopithicines and the scavenger-incipient hunter Homo line. The Genesis story identifies these two lines as Cain and Abel. As we know, Cain kills Abel. Is it a coincidence that the Homo line killed off the Australeopithicines? Then Seth replaces Abel, and the Neandertals arrive on the scene to replace the Australeopithicines. More coincidence? Genesis says, at the time of Seth man began to "call upon the name of the Lord." Recent archaeological evidence, mainly a bone flute that is about 50,000 years old, see Scientific American, suggests that speech began with the Neandertals. More coincidence? At that time God tells us that we now know fully good and evil. The evidence of cut marks on Homo Erectus bones suggests that by that time we had become avid cannibals. I could go on and on with this line of interpretation. To me it is clear that (a) the ancients who wrote Genesis understood our evolution very well, and (b) God would not place evidence on earth contrary to the truth of our development. It is there to help us learn how to live. My conclusion is that unless we resurrect Abel in a philosophical sense and change our relationships with animals and the natural world, we will surely die. The mass wave of extinctions currently underway gives warning of this possibility. But, it is prophesized that the Wolf will lie down with the Lamb. We, being the wolf, will learn, someday, to respect animals and begin to put ourselves back on the path God had intended for us to follow in the first place. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Although I
recoginze that this is a Christian site, debating Christian
interpretations of the bible, perhaps a viewpoint from a
Jewish perspective would be interesting. As regards the Age
of the Earth and how one reads Genesis (B'Reysheet in
Hebrew). Jews have been struggling with this very debate
for several thousand years, much of it recorded in writings
by great scholars which are studied to this day. One of the
greatest scholars in all of history, Maimonides (who lived
in Egypt during the 12th century CE (of the Common Era)),
clearly stated that Genesis is not to be taken literally.
It was his opinion that Genesis is allegorical, and
mainstream Judaism is of two minds: Genesis is to
beregarded as fact, understood as an allegory, and for a
select few, 'decoded' as containing the real truth beneath
the service of 'lesser' truths. This is where it gets
interesting.
Without boring you with very difficult concepts and background, there is a teaching, hardly known even among Jews, which states the true age of the universe. By 'decoding' the original Hebrew text, and through esoteric means taught by only a few sages in every generation, it is shown that the universe was created 15,340,505,758 years ago. This dating is found in texts written by great rabbinical scholars dating to the 14th century CE, and 2nd century CE, and to the oral tradition for some 1500 years prior to that. Many modern scientific cosmologists independently date the origins of the universe at 15.3 billion years ago, as well. How could this be?? I submit this as proof of the divine origins of the Torah, in and of itself. How else would people living 500 years ago, 1800 years ago, and for centuries before that have any notion that the earth could be billions of years old - it would have been beyond the comprehension of anyone who was not deeply versed in the most intense rabbinic understanding of the Bible. But the fact remains that a handful of rabbis did teach this, they wrote it, and we have a record of it. I defy anyone to explain how they could have come to such an undestanding unless they found it in the book of Genesis itself (as they claimed) and if the knowledge was not placed there, in a hidden way, by our Creator H-imself. |
Response | |
From: | |
Author of: | Evolution and Philosophy |
Response: | This is not
a Christian site, but it must deal with the arguments of
anti-evolutionists who are mainly Christian literalists.
This is a site devoted to clearing the air regarding the
non-science that is presented by anti-evolutionists.
There are many messages latent in a large amount of text, and with suitable encoding protocols one can extract whatever one wants to find. This is a kind of natural selection, for gibberish and nonsense tends not to get passed on. The chances that a "correct" result will be found is greatly increased over simple randomness; which is in fact what natural selection does for genes. However, I doubt that it is good theology or hermeneutics to tie an interpretation of the Torah to the fact that it finds a certain value that is consistent with modern cosmology, for this is a field in which findings change matters rapidly, and you may find that the evidence turns against the divine origin of the Torah next year. Ultimately, I agree with Maimonides that the first book of the Torah is not a literal history, but instead a statement about the relation between God and Man. About that neither I nor science, nor this site, has anything to say. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | The main problem you have with understanding creationism is that you are still looking at matter and the universe in three dimensions. Mathematics shows that there are at least 11 dimensions. This would explain how the universe is billions of years old, yet the earth is about ten thousand. You also need to explain how such precise organisms such as the brain could have evolved from nothing. If this were true, then an explosion at a lumber yard would create a three story house complete with deck and garage. I find it less far reaching on my imagination to accept an all powerful God, than a theory than cannot be duplicated in a test tube and is full of contradictions. |
Responses | |
From: | Chris Stassen |
Author of: | The Age of the Earth |
Response: | The Earth
doesn't seem to be only ten thousand years old (see
the Age of the Earth
FAQ for details), and tossing in additional dimensions
won't magically explain away the apparent age of the
universe.
Your "explosion in a lumber yard" claim is a common creationist canard, but since lumber yards don't reproduce and aren't subject to selective pressures, the analogy isn't reasonable. See the Thermodynamics, Evolution, and Probability FAQ for more detail. |
From: | |
Response: | A further
comment: the notion of eleven dimensions comes from
M-theory, an active area of research in theoretical physics
for a single theory which gives a unified explanation for
all the fundamental forces. Superstring theory has also a
number of ten dimensional models. This whole area is quite
speculative and remains a ferment of theoretical research
activity. The extra dimensions are space-like dimensions
which are compactified into tight loops smaller than
the Plank length: we only perceive three uncompacted
space-like dimensions.
This is a fascinating area but complex field of study. It also has absolutely nothing whatever to do with differing ages for the Earth and the Universe. (The Earth is roughly one third the age of the universe.) |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | Trilobyte |
Comment: | I needed a figure for the age of the earth. Now I have one. 1.6 times 10^17 seconds. Thanks. |
Response | |
From: | Chris Stassen |
Author of: | The Age of the Earth |
Response: | I'm not sure it matters to your calculations, but I'd recommend using 1.44 ± 0.02 x 1017 seconds (4.55 ± 0.05 billion years), rather than 1.6 x 1017 seconds (5.07 billion years). |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | David A. Lunde |
Comment: | By the late Carl Sagan's figures, only nine percent of Americans believe in Darwin's theory of evolution. This must just drive you crazy. I, for one, do not believe we share common ancestors with birds, fish, or chimps. Disagreeing with evolutionists seems to bring on some very viscious attacks. Have you ever read anything by Phillip E. Johnson? He is a lot more convincing than you are. Why don't you admit that the evidence, or lack thereof, is NOT on your side? Answer: Because you fear your colleagues. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | You are incorrect. According to the 1991 Gallup Poll, when asked "How were people created," 47% of Americans said we were created by God in the last 10000 years, 40% said we were created by God through evolution, and 9% said we were created by evolution alone. So in fact about half of the American population believes that evolution is at least partly responsible for our creation. In other countries, the support for evolution is much greater. As for fearing colleagues, anti-evolutionists make up a very small minority within the scientific community. Phillip Johnson, who is a lawyer and not a scientist, may believe that scientists accept evolution because they presuppose a materialistic worldview, but then how does he account for the fact that the vast majority of evolutionists are themselves believers in God? |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Can I have the name of the person who made this website? I need it for a paper I'm doing on this topic. |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | The Talk.Origins Archive is the collaborative effort of many people. The Archive itself is maintained by Brett Vickers; he can be reached at . The numerous FAQs on the site are the work of their respective authors. The feedback is monitored and answered by a dozen or more people, including myself. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Nothing profound; just wanted you guys to know that you have an outstanding page that does a great deal to dispel some really ridiculous creation "science." Also, I've found it truly informative, and I'm intending to read everything you have here, to expand my knowledge about evolution. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | The axis of the earth the dinosaur lived in did not have a tilt, it formed a 90 degree angle with the suns equator. The impact of the asteroid that struck the earth punched a hole in the earths crust leading to the formation of the moon via the liquid magma. The loss of this mass eliminated the need for gigantic bodies and the tilt forever erased the perfectly stable RINGED CLIMATE ZONES of that long ago world upon earth. This is the world the bible refers to as the garden of eden. This is the same world the various races of man evolved upon and our love of stable climates......why else to heat and cool every enviroment we inhabit? If a true anaylsis of the fossile record were made you would find proof of the ringed climates of earth. The great water of the flood.. well, thats easy to understand. 1\6 greater mass (the moon still trapped within the liquid center of the earth) equated to a heavier atmosphere and huge quanities of water held in suspension at the equatorial band. Some bled off in to space with the loss of mass the SEASONAL TILT IMPACT created. The plunging artic cold brought the rest to earth as a massive rain...hence the flood memory. Where is that water now? Above the mark of the old sea levels of that world for sure which is known today as the continental shelf. The rest, in ice at the poles. The ice ages are a simple thing to understand given the exgerated effect of seasonal pressesion right after the S.T.E. . So in conclusion. Man did not evolve as you think, instead,we spent 65 million years developing a new consiousness and a smaller body to go with it. Science in its arrogance interpets this transition of sixty five million years to mean that in 4 million years we transmuted from apes to people. You see, evolution is real, but so is the bible. The bibles stories can be explained using the facts if you understand them. So can evolution. NONE OF YOU HAVE A VIEW OF SUFFICENT SCOPE TO INTERPET THE EVIDENCE. PEACE OUT. |
Response | |
From: | Chris Stassen |
Author of: | The Age of the Earth |
Response: | In order to
properly interpret the evidence, it is extremely important
to first understand it in detail. For example, the
following bits of evidence don't seem to mesh well with
your proposed scenario:
|
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Evolution can not explain everything, but creation has always compensated for the gaps. Creative evolution is simply nature taking it's course. Science has proven that evolution has and is taking place. Think about creating something from nothing. You do it everyday. Don't limit yourself to one side or the other. Creationism does not conflict with evolution. They cannot exist without each other. Can anyone accuse God of being wrong? |
Feedback Letter | |
Comment: | as a
christian who has been in a study of neo-darwinian theory,
i always find these rooms interesting. thank you for this
opportunity and the hard work you have done in producing
this site. to review the principles of the neo-darwinian
synthesis: 1) random changes (mutations) in the dna
molecule are sometimes beneficial to an organism. 2) such
beneficial mutations are passed to the next generation and
increase the vitality of an organism's offspring 3) this
increased vitality means that an organism will compete more
effectively for resources. 4) such mutations will increase
the likelihood that an organism will live to reproductive
maturity. 5) over long time periods the accumulation of
such 'beneficial mutations' will result in an entirely new
species which is genetically distinct. couple this with the
origin of complexity you have, regarding living systems,
contain many complex machine-like integrated systems.
examples of this are: visual system olfactory system
(smell-processing chemicals) urinary system (processing
waste prod.)
***the problem for the neo-darwinian evolutionary theorist is to propose how highly complex systems-eg: the visual system-which are composed of multiple subsystems, could have arisen over a long period of time being produced in a piecemeal fashion. ***according to neo-darwinian theory, the visual system was produced over millions of years (approx. 800 mil) by the gradual accumulation of mutations necessary to produce each of the subcomponents (ie: geniculit body, occipital cortex, retina, eyeball, just to name a few of the subsystems) these subcomponents were then integrated and connected, ultimately resulting in a functional visual system. the fundamental failure of mutation and natural selection, as presented by neo-darwinism, is that there is no known mechanism which will allow the mutations that produce one of the subsystems in the visual system to wait around for millions of years while the other subsystems are being produced in similar piecemeal random fashion. ***i quote from gertrude himmelfarb, 'darwin and the darwinian revolution' (garden city, new york, doubleday, 1959), pp. 320-321. 'since the eye is obviously of no use at all except in its final, complete form, how could natural selection have functioned in those initial stages of its evolution when the variations had no possible survival value? no single variation, indeed no single part, being of any use without every other, and natural selection presuming no knowledge of the ultimate end or purpose of the organ...' in here lies the rub. natural selection shoots itself in the foot when trying to explain the development of subsystems over longer period of time, while that mutation would not contribute to the survivability of the organism. evolution fails. what are your opinions on this. i welcome them. if the complex system we see in living systems are not the result of chance mutation and natural selection, they must be the result of non-chance; i.e., design. Jesus did say that even if the dead rose...some would still not believe. i believe only by our designer's grace we can believe. however, this revelation of truth, helped me (and many others -some of whom are biochemists, neurologists, cosmologists, etc.) accept and embrace the design paradigm. the architecture..........demands........an architect. thank you. |
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Author of: | Punctuated Equilibria |
Response: |
Thanks for the interesting response. There are some problems in what you have asserted, though, ranging from the historical to the theoretical. The modern synthesis incorporates more than just natural selection, which your 5-part summation most likely describes. The visual system is a classic "poser" set by anti-evolutionists. The eye as it appears in humans and other mammals is a complex piece of biological equipment. However, the modern synthesis does not lead to a conclusion that sub-systems of the modern mammalian eye developed willy-nilly and were then integrated together to form a functional unit. It is true that such an assertion would be absurd. Fortunately, actual biologists do not advance such a notion. How then can we reject the assertion blandly forwarded that "evolution fails"? Biologists look at the variation in extant organisms in the area of interest, in this case "light sensitivity". What we find is that light-sensing apparatus runs the gamut from simple to complex, and all of them function well for the organisms possessing them. We note that undifferentiated neural tissue has some degree of light sensitivity, which gives a basis for further speculation in the phylogeny of metazoan animals. (A variety of plants have light sensitivity as well, which must have a different underlying physiology, since they do not have neural tissue.) If we start from the simple function of light detection, all that is needed is a light-sensitive tissue, and neural tissue fits that handily. From there, further sensitivity gains can be had by having the neural tissue used for light sensing closer to the surface of the organism, and the retention of adaptations for heightened light sensitivity. The planarian eye-spots show that light-sensing organs of this simple layout are functional. If the neural tissue is distributed around the interior of a cup, then directional information can be had from the pattern of activation of neurons in the cup. See Daniel Alkon's descriptions of the visual apparatus of Hermissenda for details of this slightly more complex and highly functional light-sensing system. If the light-sensitive neural tissue is spread around the interior of a cup that has a top with a hole in it whose size is controlled by muscular action, one has the basis for image formation on the retina by the principle of the camera obscura. The modern nautiloids show that this level of complexity is very much functional. If in addition to an iris controlled by muscle one adds a transparent cover, one has the basis for a lensed camera eye, such as is seen in the octopus, which again is very much a functional apparatus. If the lens material can itself be deformed by muscular control, one has now described fairly well the complex light sensing organ seen in mammals. A nice discussion of this can be found in Ed Babinski's Cretinism or Evilution? No. 3. Is there a fundamental gap somewhere in the phylogeny of the modern eye seen in mammals? This is a question upon which the fossil record can give us little assistance. From my perspective, I just do not see that there is any evidence of an unbridgeable gap in the development of light-sensing organs. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | Even before
there was a web, I read and participated on talk.origins. A
few years ago I become overwhelmed by the quantity and low
quality of the messages and I stopped reading it. I
recently stumbled on your web site and am enourmously
impressed by the quantity and high quality of information
available here. It is a great resource and I will be
pointing people to it whenerve the subject of creationism
comes up.
Thanks for the good work, and I imagine it is a lot of work. |
Feedback Letter | |
From: | |
Comment: | If we all evolved from monkeys...Why are there still monkeys?? |
Response | |
From: | |
Response: | Just because
something is ancestral doesn't mean it must be extinct.
Evolution isn't a sequence of steps that must be taken,
each one after the other, any more than you are the
ultimate stage of your family, and supplant all of your
ancestors including your parents, grandparents and aunts
and uncles, etc.
We evolved from primates that are more like apes than monkeys in the most recent eras, and like modern monkeys in the more remote past. However, we did not evolve from either modern apes or modern monkeys. Instead, we share common ancestors with them, and they too have evolved since then. |