Florida Senate Passes Bill Allowing Evolution To Be Challenged In Schools
Dude, there is no way you would ever convince me that these girls evolved from primordial soup.
Thank you, God, for creating Woman. Thank you very, very much!
Overheard:
“Oh! You mean to tell me that the theory of evolution is just a theory?”
“You mean to tell me that in every fossil museum in the world, amongst the hundreds of thousands of fossils that are registered, recorded, and on display that there is not ONE of a creature in a transitional state?”
“Yep, that’s what I’m telling you.”
“So then evolution really is just a theory that has never actually been proven?”
“That’s right.”
“Know why?”
“Why?”
“Because you can’t prove an untruth…”
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A bill that would let teachers challenge evolution with “scientific information” has passed in the Florida Senate.
Opponents charged in debate Wednesday that it would allow the teaching of intelligent design or other religious theories they say masquerade as science.
The bill would prohibit teachers from being penalized for offering “scientific” alternatives but loosely defines that term.
It passed 21-17 and now goes to the House. That chamber is considering a version of the bill that would not just permit but require teachers to present “critical analysis” of the theory of evolution. The Senate rejected that version of the bill.
(AP)
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Somebody had a REAL good night last night … Or a nice “wake-up” call this a.m. … or both.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:44 amwhat about the evolution of lingerie?
April 24th, 2008 at 8:02 amAnd if you post a picture of 2 Code Pink bitches there is even more evidence that Primordial Soup doesn’t evolve, it just remains Pink Scum that you wouldn’t even want to have to scrape off the bottom of your shoe…
April 24th, 2008 at 8:07 am+1
on that Bashman.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:09 am“..that there is not ONE of a creature in a transitional state?””
Sorry, Bash, but that one’s just plain wrong. ALL creatures are in a transitional state as they carry some number of new mutations in their genetic code, and carry the capacity to pass change on to their children. That’s how genetics works. And trying to demean evolution by calling it “just a theory” doesn’t work, either. If it were “just a hypothesis” then you’d be on to something, but a scientific idea only attains the state of “theory” when it carries a significant weight of proof behind it. Note that gravity is also “just a theory”.
I love reading your posts, but I don’t agree with any of your above commentary. The chicks are good to go, however.
And there’s nothing wrong with challenging a theory; it happens every day. The problem is that the people behind this are going to use “challenging the theory” as a smokescreen for advancing a non-scientific agenda.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:14 amBash…
Enlarge and put the thumbnail photo in the body of the story also, or the smiley face gets it!
April 24th, 2008 at 8:25 amAnd if you post a picture of 2 Code Pink bitches there is even more evidence that Primordial Soup doesn’t evolve, it just remains Pink Scum that you wouldn’t even want to have to scrape off the bottom of your shoe…
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And you came to THAT scientific conclusion without benefit of government funding …
HEH!!
April 24th, 2008 at 8:29 amQ_Mech,
Far be it from me to start a battle on evolution vs. intelligent design on this board since it is not the purpose and I always said for each to believe as they must. Contrary to the popular belief, a large segment of “intelligent design” folks aren’t even religious, some calling themselves believe it or not atheists (I haven’t figured the seeming divide in logic yet). You won’t hear this in the MSM but here’s a little secret I have learned while going to med school.
If you were to take a survey of us medical students, you would find many of us muttering under our breath that we think a large part of the theory (I call it unsound academic speculation for which they have no answer) of evolution to be a crock of shiite.
I could give a million great reasons as to why but I would rather bad mouth unsound principles called Obama, Dim slackers and terrorists.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:05 am@QMech:
No they’re not. Not unless they are cancerous. In nature ALL mutations are rejected by the host. You can observe that rejection. I studied this phenomina while stationed in South America by watching tree-cutting ants and parrots.
Anything not born perfect is soundly rejected by the host species.
There has not now nor never been any transitional species.
Judy the Ape-being…busted in 1998. Heinkles embyros…fraud…Louis Leaky & Family…frauds.
Try and introduce mutation into any species and watch how fast it dies of cancer.
Nothing gets better with time. Humans of all people should know this fact. Death is the inevitable and ABSOLUTE result of time for any species…including mankind.
Not to mention evolution violates the First and Second laws of Thermodynamics.
For me, there is no way that I can believe that Jesus Christ evolved from some primordial ooze.
Whatever chance creates, it almost instantaneously annihilates. Cancer (mutation) is the perfect example.
Creation Science IS science. To say that it is “non-scientific” is pure sophistry. Anyone who’s read “Spiral Galaxies” knows otherwise.
@The rest
April 24th, 2008 at 9:07 amGood for the Florida schools. I doubt that the ACLU and the courts will back them up however. God is not welcome in science anymore. No doubt Pascal and Newton are turning over in their graves at that thought.
Q Mech..there is more proof of creation then evolution. Suggest Ann Colters book “Godless’ for specifics. Also developement is not genetic alternation or evolution…the DNA remains the same.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:12 am@Dan
“According to fossil records, some modern species of plants and animals are found to be almost identical to the species that lived in ancient geological ages. They are existing species of ancient lineages that have remained morphologically (and probably also physiologically) somewhat unchanged for a very long time. Consequently, they are called “living fossils” by laypeople. Examples of “living fossils” include the tuatara, the nautilus, the horseshoe crab, the coelacanth, the ginkgo, the Wollemi pine, and the metasequoia.”
“One example of evolution at work is the case of the hawthorn fly, Rhagoletis pomonella, also known as the apple maggot fly, which appears to be undergoing sympatric speciation.[8] Different populations of hawthorn fly feed on different fruits. A distinct population emerged in North America in the 19th century some time after apples, a non-native species, were introduced. This apple-feeding population normally feeds only on apples and not on the historically preferred fruit of hawthorns. The current hawthorn feeding population does not normally feed on apples. Some evidence, such as the fact that six out of thirteen allozyme loci are different, that hawthorn flies mature later in the season and take longer to mature than apple flies; and that there is little evidence of interbreeding (researchers have documented a 4-6% hybridization rate) suggests that this is occurring. The emergence of the new hawthorn fly is an example of evolution in progress.[9]”
The problem with ID is that it makes a presupposition without the supporting evidence. Evolution has some phsyical evidence. ID has nothing other than speculation. If somebody could ever come up with something better than “I can’t explain it, so something smarter & more powerful obviously made it” then it would be accepted as an actual theory.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:53 amI gotta bump bd.
April 24th, 2008 at 9:58 amIf you look at the explanations for the origin of life, i.e. primordial soup a electric discharge, seeding of the planet by Aliens (this by Dawkins) crystals - ID have as much legitimacy as anything else. The odds of a minimum of 250 proteins sequencing in the perfect order to create a basic cell is 1 in a triliion40. I suggest everyone see “Expelled”, in theaters now for a eye opening and what is the heart of Darwinism - cause it ain’t science.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:07 amummm… its a theory. just like the theory of gravity. does that mean gravity does not exist?
April 24th, 2008 at 10:18 amQ-
There seem to be two types of “science.” There is the scientific method type we can produce by testing a hypothesis with repeatable experiments to prove or disprove it. There is the second group we can’t prove or disprove. Evolution and global warming fit into the second group. But when a theory is so broadly defined that every possible outcome supports it, it seems to me it is not much of a theory or very scientific.
Temps go up…believers say it supports global warming.
Temps go down…ditto
More rain and hurricanes…ditto
Drought…ditto
With evolution, the lack of transitional fossils yields punctuated equilibrium. The embryos, the moths, the Nebraska tooth, Piltdown, Java, Archaeoraptor are all frauds. If evolution is so obvious from the evidence, why must all the evidence be faked? It’s no different than Algore using computer generated shots of ice melting from “the morning after” in his global warming documentary.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:25 amOkay, if we are going to debate, let’s debate. You are right Armand - this debate has little to do with a debate about science and much to do with leftist dogma and a threat of a “theory” being challenged. This is the Scopes Monkey trial turned on its head. We all owe Ben Stein a big thank you as far as I’m concerned.
I’ve got a question for evolutionists, or the proponents, and I won’t even touch on the really difficult questions of zoology, genetics and molecular biology yet because it generally never gets that far.
Most of us have taken basic chemistry, I assume? Please explain to me how the 2nd law of thermodynamics jives with evolution - when case in point, instead of the beginnings of life we should have chaos. Don’t minimize this because you’re going to have a really difficult time explaining it. Crick (DNA) couldn’t and wouldn’t, and though a devout evolutionist said this concept most bothered him.
One of Crick’s biggest mistakes was that he equated Creationism with Intelligent Design - a natural for those who struggle with the supernatural. They are not one and the same.
Creationism is a belief and is of the “religious persuasion” - though I myself do believe in a Creator going by the name of Jesus Christ. How He did it is his business and I doubt I could possibly comprehend. Sorry if that makes some uncomfortable.
Intelligent Design, however, in part postulates a concept called irreducible complexity and in a nutshell it says that without all of the working machinery coming together at exactly the same time, the cell simply does not function. Now you can argue that is not a theory but an argument against and I say okay. But you can’t argue with the logic of stating that natural selection can not explain this.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:38 amA former roommate of mine used to keep his bacteria cultures in the freezer because they would mutate away from the base genome he had already characterized and screw up his experiments if they didn’t. Most changes in DNA are indifferent or harmful to the organism, but some are beneficial and can be very small and subtle. Much of the biochemical machinery in a cell is basically the same between such diverse things as bacteria, trees, and animals. None of them violate either the first or second laws of thermodynamics. Cells take in fuel (sugars, proteins, etc.) and oxygen, do a little work maybe, make a useful enzyme perhaps, and give off heat, CO2 and water - just like my car engine - and *it* certainly doesn’t violate the second law. The fact that a complex structure can exist that accomplishes this also doesn’t prove that it could not have bootstrapped itself from more primitive forms. Complex structures created by energy and heat flowing through systems are not uncommon at all, a thunderstorm for example, and are especially not surprising if the mechanisms of competition and evolution are present with a means to preserve information from prior successful solutions. I have written “genetic” algorithms in FORTRAN that mimic this process in order to optimize solutions to engineering problems, so the basic mechanics *do* work in practice (and I also have to supply energy to it to make it run, which it then rejects as heat to the environment - thus satisfying the second law).
Science is just a methodical self-correcting approach to looking under the hood to see how things work. Philosophy or religion fundamentally supplies the context that you can’t really get from science. Pragmatically, I think a universe without a God isn’t that useful as far as giving meaning to life and providing a moral compass to society that will allow people to flourish and be happy. I can’t really “prove” or “disprove” the existence of God, but neither can the atheists. The only real “proof” is that we exist at all. If God created the universe there is no reason for him to not generally work through the physical laws and principles he designed and installed in the first place. Doing so also makes faith non-compulsive, which kinda seems to be the point.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:39 amand the Neanderthaws (if thats how you spell it) who clearly had a more monkey-like skull?
April 24th, 2008 at 10:39 am@MoE,
Neandermuslims
April 24th, 2008 at 10:52 amI don’t think most biologists would expect natural selection to explain the origins of life. As Lone Wolf points out, at the cellular level, mututations - many of them neutral, but some beneficial - can be observed. New species evolve, in single-cell organisms and in viruses, with astonishing frequency.
I suspect viruses might provide some of the most interesting clues, given that they are sort of semi-living critters that don’t have the same kinds of genetic material.
But I have a real hard time fathoming how anyone can deny that the major life forms on the planet have changed over its existence - you know, dinosaurs eventually replaced by mammals, with hominids appearing only in the last “moments” of earth’s history, given that we’re talking tens of millions of years - a span of time that the human mind can barely get a grip on. Mammals that existed recently but don’t any more, like the mammoth, saber-toothed tiger, giant sloths, and all that cool stuff.
Accepting that life and life forms evolve, and that lowly humans have so much more to learn and have difficulty understanding it, doesn’t mean that I deny G-d’s exisence but rather that I marvel more in His creation.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:39 amTHATS GOOOOOOOOD SOUP!!!!!
April 24th, 2008 at 11:43 amDoes any of it really matter?
Is the world going to be a better place if everyone believes in evolution, or if everyone believes in creationism?
Can anyone ever prove or disprove the other?
I don’t understand this constant battle to villify each other - although it’s usually evolutionists doing the villifying against creationists.
Since they are both just theories that can neither be proven or disproven, why not just let them coexist as equally legitimate schools of thought - openly available, yet neither advocated?
April 24th, 2008 at 11:52 amThis is sad, I didn’t think I’d get silly creationist shit from this site.
Do you honestly believe that God created the world in a week? You do realize you’re interperting Genesis, text written in a pre-scinetiifc era as scientific truth? You do realize that you’re commiting a logical fallacy by shruging off evidence as, “oh, that’s bullshit, I don’t think these fucking hot chicks evolved from some soup!”
April 24th, 2008 at 11:56 amWhat’s sad is that science is no longer science it is Darwin’s way or the highway. Science isn’t all about consensus it’s about letting the data lead to a conclusion rather than making the data conform to a pre-determined conclusion.
Special Creation, Theistic Evolution and Evolution should all be on the debate table. Enough of this duck walking shit that the universities teach.
Maybe the evolutionists are just too afraid that if creation science were to be taught side-by-side with evolution, Darwin would lose.
@indy
As to the fossil record, there is NOTHING that indicates evolution. What IS indicated is that there was a cataclysmic event that froze Mamommoths standing up while feeding on plants. There are fossils of sea creatures on every hill and mountaintop indicating a global flood.
The fossil record also indicated the sudden appearance of advanced life forms and an abscence of life forms in the lower 2/3 of the earth’s crust.
If evolution were true we should expect to find billions of evolutionary ancestors of the Cambrian life-forms in Precambrian rocks.
However, not a single indiputable multicellular fossil has ever been found in precambian rocks.
In short, the fossil record reveals that life appeared abruptly in great diversity, complexity, and abundance without any ancestors from which to evolve. There is no evidence for organic evolution.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:13 pmWow; looks like this thread touched on a nerve. Not surprising, I suppose.
I’m too busy to really get into this, but here’s a bit of skimming…
There’s some confusion here about what evolution is and isn’t. A few points…
- Mutation does not equal cancer. Wings were a mutuation, and so is Downs’ Syndrome. They can be harmful or helpful, and nature decides which is which. Helpful mutations allow an organism adapt to a new niche, but harmful mutations kill it off. Multiply this effect over many, many generations and eons, and you wind up with species adapted to particular niches.
- Evolution does not preclude the existence of God. The two have nothing to do with each other. All evolution means is that there is a mechanism in place to create new organisms, and therefore God doesn’t do his/her work with a magic wand.
- Evolution does not violate natural laws, thermodynamic or otherwise. This is because biological complexity arises from many, many different possibilities, most of which don’t “work out”. The irony here is that “intelligent design”, which specifically selects some particular complexity, DOES violate thermodynamic law. (Note that a “law” is a stronger scientific basis than a “theory”.)
- Complexity does not make a particular species “more advanced” than another. Note that bacteria are still around, even though we have anteaters and humans and what-not. Species evolve to fill particular niches, and come/go/adapt as the niches do. Think of it this way - which is more complex, a bicycle or a 747?
If you said, “a 747″, then why don’t you ride a 747 next time you want to visit your local park? For the same reason you don’t ride a bicycle to Hawaii - each is adapted to a particular purpose; a particular niche. Species work the same way.
And finally… Funny that someone brought up global warming. Evolution and global warming are very similar in that they are scientific topics that, in my view, have been hijacked for non-scientific purposes. Global warming has become a political “belief”, and you see people accept it or reject it accordingly with little regard for the science behind it. Now replace “political” with “religious” and that covers evolution as well.
Kinda a pain in the ass, that.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:14 pmMarc Tanberg, you get my vote
April 24th, 2008 at 12:18 pm“The problem is that the people behind this are going to use “challenging the theory” as a smokescreen for advancing a non-scientific agenda.”
I have that impression
April 24th, 2008 at 12:29 pmDan, I disagree. Pardon me while I fisk…
Special Creation, Theistic Evolution and Evolution should all be on the debate table.
The first two aren’t science. You go to science class to learn science; the others you can pick up elsewhere.
As to the fossil record, there is NOTHING that indicates evolution. What IS indicated is that there was a cataclysmic event that froze Mamommoths standing up while feeding on plants. There are fossils of sea creatures on every hill and mountaintop indicating a global flood.
This is the first time I’ve heard of mammoths freezing while standing up. I don’t believe that is true.
There are fossils on many mountaintops, yes, such as the Himalayas. This is because the mountains were built from uplifted sediment that contains fossils. This doesn’t take as long as you might think - 10’s or 100’s of millions of years, which isn’t much compared to the 4.5 billion year age of the Earth.
Global floods are impossible; there isn’t enough water on our planet to cover the entire globe. Plus, there would be a single layer of sediment found on the entire planet of identical age and roughly similar thickness. This layer does not exist in the geologic record.
The fossil record also indicated the sudden appearance of advanced life forms and an abscence of life forms in the lower 2/3 of the earth’s crust.
Life experienced a dramatic increase in complexity, apparently following a global “snowball” event, apparently in response to the near-extinction of all life (look up “Cambrian Explosion”). You won’t find anything in the lower parts of the Earth’s crust because the temperature quickly rises to high metamorphic facies (nerd-speak for “hot-ass rock”), destroying fossils.
If evolution were true we should expect to find billions of evolutionary ancestors of the Cambrian life-forms in Precambrian rocks.
Precambrian life lacked bones or hard structures, and so were poorly preserved - we don’t know how many species there were. Very few precambrian rocks survive today, as well, because of the same crustal movement processes that built the Himalayas. There may have been billions of ancestors, but we wouldn’t know it.
However, not a single indiputable multicellular fossil has ever been found in precambian rocks.
Not true; the edicarian fossils are found in several places around the world. They were apparently jellyfish-like organisms of many kinds.
In short, the fossil record reveals that life appeared abruptly in great diversity, complexity, and abundance without any ancestors from which to evolve. There is no evidence for organic evolution.
I disagree. The fossil record shows that life has constantly changed, both quickly and over long periods, to adapt to changing niches both environmental and ecological. The earliest forms were simple, and complexity has evolved and grown for several billion years. Evolution is a guiding principle in the development of new species. As far as we know, only humanity has ever transcended it.
Now I REALLY need to get back to work…
April 24th, 2008 at 12:33 pmLaura,
This will probably bore the hell out of everyone and sound like the classroom, but here goes and I ain’t doing this to make trouble cause I like you all. Remember issues of division; issues of discussion. This is the latter.
I don’t think most biologists would expect natural selection to explain the origins of life. As Lone Wolf points out, at the cellular level, mututations - many of them neutral, but some beneficial - can be observed. New species evolve, in single-cell organisms and in viruses, with astonishing frequency.
Quite the contrary, that is exactly what Darwinist argue as indicated by Darwin’s infamous book the Origin of Species…it is the basis for what evolutionists believe. From simple sugars, to amino acids, to RNA/DNA to etc…over an extended period of 2+ billion years. This is a concept that Crick could not explain and stated he was stumped - hence he resorted to the “religious” argument as persuasion. And evolution, contrary to what was stated above, does break to the law of entropy. Because any environment left to itself without work, resorts to a larger degree of randomness (randomness 2nd law, thermodynamics).
I won’t even touch the mathematics required for evolution to have worked it but you have about a gazillion times better chance of winning powerball than even a simple, single strand of RNA forming. If memory serves, the odds of this happening mathematically are approximately 10 ^ 65. I do remember for sure, there are better odds you could find one atom in the universe. Even if the math somehow works over billions of years, then you will be forced to explain both the concepts of cell signaling, transcription and translation by natural selection. I won’t go there, nor will I touch on the differences in ribosomes between bacteria and eukaryotes, the the problem with endo-symbiotic theory and mitochondria…the list is endless.
As Lone Wolf points out, at the cellular level, mututations - many of them neutral, but some beneficial - can be observed. New species evolve, in single-cell organisms and in viruses, with astonishing frequency.
First, most biologists don’t consider viruses as living organisms by definition. They are more accurately referred to as a piece of a cell and require another living mechanism for reproduction and survival.
It is important to note that virtually all mutations are deleterious by nature. For instance, sickle cell anemia is one substituted amino acid and we see the ramifications of that. So if we want to discuss mutations and bacteria, resistance for instance, fine. But here’s the problem and what you don’t generally learn in the classroom. Let’s assume in a culture one bacteria out of thousands becomes resistant to penicillin. All the others die off. In the next generation, the penicillin resistant bacteria with the correct nutrients eventually reproduces to produce thousands on penicillin resistant cells. Now in the next generation, say we remove the penicillin but provide the culture with all essential nutrients. What happens?
Eventually, the bacteria will resort back to its original form. The same thing that happened with Darwin’s finches and their beaks when the weather returned to normal. So in essence what you have de-evolution.
But forgetting all the science, the impossible mathematics, the big bang, and everything else with Darwin’s natural selection - and the fact we supposedly descended from apes, here’s a question to something relevant just crossing the internet yesterday concerning the problem with developing an HIV vaccine.
If we descended from apes as you evolutionists presume and being that are supposedly are closest ancestors, why is that the most conserved gene in our body (or at least one of) known as the major histocompatiblity complex (MHC I and II), doesn’t seem to be compatible with apes as indicated by the failure of xenographs.
However, there are other barnyard mammals with a fairly high degree of success during transplant. Pigs, for instance. Another reason the Muslims are ignorant for hating pigs.
Sorry, couldn’t bypass that last statement.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:37 pmwhy is that the most conserved gene in our body (or at least one of) known as the major histocompatiblity complex (MHC I and II), doesn’t seem to be compatible with apes as indicated by the failure of xenographs.
for the same raison that neanderthalians didn’t interbred with cromagnons, or as said above, where is the missing link ? there have had a few (at least known), but there is no evidence that they survived
the pig thing, is a kind of aversion for the taste of the human meat, that the former tribes in ME might have tasted, when there was canibalism before Zarathoustra enlightened them.
as for seeing in “corpus christi” a remained symbol of the antic beliefs : when you eat a person your supposed to get his spirit
April 24th, 2008 at 12:51 pmFranchie,
When I was a kid, not that many years ago, and I still see this at the zoo in my hometown, we supposedly descended from Neanderthal. That was what we were taught.
Then around somewhere during the late 70s, early 80’s, molecular biology made this quantum leap. Remember? What scientists first thought in the ’40s was going to be nothing but simple protoplasm in a cell was found to be anything but - oops. But here’s the kicker…in our ability to distinguish, map and test mitochondrial DNA, suddenly we find Mr. Neanderthal is simian. Hmmm…I haven’t seen that making the nightly news.
See, the biggest bitch I have with the teaching of evolution is not that it is taught. I want my children to learn about ideas - but I want them to understand there are major holes in the supposed current academic cirriculum from the jumbled mess of a fossil record to the genetics. And I am tired of my voice being silenced. So is Ben Stein and we would both like the truth discussed.
For anyone interested and not aware, there is a very neat study being conducted - one where you can actually volunteer to be a part and I am sure it is covered in abundance via the net. They are tracing ancestrial mitochondrial DNA thru the project. And apparently, we all seemed to derive from one mother. Hmmmm….
April 24th, 2008 at 1:05 pmwe all seemed to derive from one mother… uh then we must be sisters
Well, as far I am concerned, the best attitude is when facing suppositions is scepticism till logic facts become a proof, even a proof has to be questionned
God is a response for the persons that want to be reassured in front of non-explained earth evenments.
I am not saying that is an erroned solution, it’s up to anyone, but should not be mixed with science
April 24th, 2008 at 1:18 pmArgh… I need someone to do all my damned paperwork so I can post in comments instead..!
You’d be correct in your thermodynamics arguments IF evolution of current life occurred all at once. It didn’t - it took billions of years’ worth of baby steps. Some of those steps are preserved in modern biology, such as all the RNA-based enzymes, which may date back to a time when cellular metabolism was RNA-based. Evolution does not violate the second law of thermodynamics because it selects from MANY biochemical possibilities. Again; if something were guiding that selection, then it would be in violation.
Because any environment left to itself without work, resorts to a larger degree of randomness (randomness 2nd law, thermodynamics).
The key part her is “without work”. Work IS done - advantageous changes are selected for, and so the total order of the system increases as work is done on it.
If memory serves, the odds of this happening mathematically are approximately 10 ^ 65.
ALL AT ONCE, yes. The chance of a particular DNA mutation is much, much lower - well within the amount of DNA written in your body every day.
For instance, sickle cell anemia is one substituted amino acid and we see the ramifications of that.
Funny you should bring up sickle cell anaemia - it is a classic case of evolution. It would normally be a harmful mutation and would vanish quickly in a population, but it turns out to give some measure of protection against malaria, which is far more deadly. So you wind up with a population in a malaria-ridden niche that support many people with sickle cell. Take away the driver for sickle cell - malaria - and those with the sickle cell mutation would disappear from the population in generations. People with sickle cell continue to live and pass on their genes in this country because of medicines - which is what I meant in the earlier post about humanity transcending evolution. I digress…
…..Eventually, the bacteria will resort back to its original form.
I think this is the same situation. I don’t know in this specific case, but my suspicion is that the bacteria are in the same boat as sickle cell - the mutation that makes them immune to the drug would be harmful without it. Take away the drug, and you eventually get a mutation back to the original form that out-competes the resistant form. In other words, the microbe evolves to adapt to its conditions; evolution in action.
Another possibility is that the bacteria retain the mutation that was advantageous in the drugged environment, but turn the gene off when it isn’t needed. Most of the genes in our genome aren’t expressed, so this is also a reasonable explanation.
…the major histocompatiblity complex (MHC I and II), doesn’t seem to be compatible with apes…
Dunno about MHC specifically, but in general there’s no guarantee that all biology will be identical even in closely related species. Note that it is extremely rare that species can cross-breed, exactly because of differences like this.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:21 pmQ_Mech
Dan, I disagree. Pardon me while I fisk…
me: Oh why not? My turn to fisk.
Special Creation, Theistic Evolution and Evolution should all be on the debate table.
The first two aren’t science. You go to science class to learn science; the others you can pick up elsewhere.
Me: “You say they aren’t science. But they are as valid of a scientific theory as is evolution is. And all should be taught equally.”
As to the fossil record, there is NOTHING that indicates evolution. What IS indicated is that there was a cataclysmic event that froze Mamommoths standing up while feeding on plants. There are fossils of sea creatures on every hill and mountaintop indicating a global flood.
This is the first time I’ve heard of mammoths freezing while standing up. I don’t believe that is true.
Me: You haven’t heard of this happening? Nor followed fossil finds in the arctic ? Why is this not surprising?
There are fossils on many mountaintops, yes, such as the Himalayas. This is because the mountains were built from uplifted sediment that contains fossils. This doesn’t take as long as you might think - 10’s or 100’s of millions of years, which isn’t much compared to the 4.5 billion year age of the Earth.
Me: LOL. Not lately. Your numbers are way off. When you divide a guess by a guess all you got is a wag. That’s all that millions of years junk is…a wag.
The flood theory also takes into account the rapid formations of mountains. Not in millions of years, but in months.
“Global floods are impossible; there isn’t enough water on our planet to cover the entire globe. Plus, there would be a single layer of sediment found on the entire planet of identical age and roughly similar thickness. This layer does not exist in the geologic record.”
Me: Again…nonsense. If all the water was released from inside the earth and from a pre-flood water canopy,
(People: Global Warming was the norm at one point in this planet’s history) it would be possible to cover the entire earth in water up to several feet above the Himalyas.
“The fossil record also indicated the sudden appearance of advanced life forms and an abscence of life forms in the lower 2/3 of the earth’s crust.
Life experienced a dramatic increase in complexity, apparently following a global “snowball” event, apparently in response to the near-extinction of all life (look up “Cambrian Explosion”). You won’t find anything in the lower parts of the Earth’s crust because the temperature quickly rises to high metamorphic facies (nerd-speak for “hot-ass rock”), destroying fossils.”
me: And at this point your Darwin fossil charts fail. Looking at the Darwin chart and the Creation charts, the Creation chart reflects what is known about the fossil record. Darwin’s chart does not reflect reality at all. And it is a poor guess.
“If evolution were true we should expect to find billions of evolutionary ancestors of the Cambrian life-forms in Precambrian rocks.
Precambrian life lacked bones or hard structures, and so were poorly preserved - we don’t know how many species there were. Very few precambrian rocks survive today, as well, because of the same crustal movement processes that built the Himalayas. There may have been billions of ancestors, but we wouldn’t know it.”
me: Ah yes Darwinian speculation. Again you have no proof. Just another wag.
“However, not a single indiputable multicellular fossil has ever been found in precambian rocks.
Not true; the edicarian fossils are found in several places around the world. They were apparently jellyfish-like organisms of many kinds.
In short, the fossil record reveals that life appeared abruptly in great diversity, complexity, and abundance without any ancestors from which to evolve. There is no evidence for organic evolution.”
Me: No it does not. The fossil record shows no kind of evolution. There are no “indisputable” facts on that topic..
“I disagree. The fossil record shows that life has constantly changed, both quickly and over long periods, to adapt to changing niches both environmental and ecological. The earliest forms were simple, and complexity has evolved and grown for several billion years. Evolution is a guiding principle in the development of new species. As far as we know, only humanity has ever transcended it. ”
me: Once again your wag-ing. There is no proof of evolution anywhere. Not in DNA, not in cell structures…nowhere.
Sitting a monkey down in front of a typewritter and expecting him to randomly type the word “evolution” correctly at least once is more probable than is evolution. You got about one chance in 26 to the 9th power to succeed. Your evolution theory is about as probable as one in 200 factorial of producing just 200 randomly generated parts of a SIMPLE cell. LOL. Complex cells randomly produced? Now that’s really out to lunch.
Evelotion is impossible. It defies all the known laws of science. Its popularity is what it is because as one evolutionist once said,”The idea of a God, somehow interferes with our sexual mores.” That was Huxley in the 1920’s who said that.
Again. I disagree with you. You, cannot convince me that evolution is a fact, simply because it is not. Nice try though.
April 24th, 2008 at 1:24 pmLast note. This is the kind of spirited debate that I’d like to see in the classroom. Let all sides be discussed equally and let the students make up their minds about it.
Forget this circular argument that evolution proves evolution that proves evolution nonsense.
Analysis requires that all possible iterations be analyzied critically and rationally. There is no one explanation for origins. Give each equal weight and a fair hearing.
It’s been fun. Thanks to all who contributed to the debate.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:08 pmJust because the odds of an event is apparently small doesn’t mean it is impossible or that you even calculated the odds correctly. What are the odds that all of the atoms currently contained in the Great Pyramid would end up there from their progenitor supernova? Unfortunately, our logic is quite susceptible to errors - many people have drawn and do draw false conclusions from the same data, as revealed by subsequent experiments. Someone always wins Powerball, even though it is extremely unlikely that any one individual will win, since the sum of the multitude of small probabilities is one. The probability that life will arise given the conditions of the early Earth could also be close to one. Until you recreate those conditions and see how it might happen it could look like it required a miracle, just because you don’t know enough yet to accurately calculate the probabilities. The fact that we are here proves that it happened once somehow, but doesn’t tell you anything about what the overall probability of that was. If we could survey a few thousand nearby planetary systems we would get a better feel for how rare life is, and maybe actually see the process unfolding, but right now we just don’t know. Not knowing doesn’t mean any more than that. Besides, no matter what answer we get from that survey, we still can’t prove whether God exists or not.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:23 pmAnthropologists were debating the relationship of Neandertals to modern humans virtually since the first Neandertal fossils were found, with one camp arguing that they weren’t in the human line at all and another that they were just rather odd-looking humans. It is really unfortunate that your school and the local zoo misrepresented the thinking on this. But science badly taught is not a reason to stop teaching science, or to put science up against non-science as if they were comparable epistemologies.
April 24th, 2008 at 3:04 pmThat wasn’t a debate, spirited or otherwise. I stated the relevant facts and you called it names - “guesses”, “wags”, etc. That’s not debate; color me unimpressed.
April 24th, 2008 at 3:17 pmI can tell you one thing for sure that will not evolve: Humans will be having this same argument until either the second coming, or people start growing wings.
April 24th, 2008 at 6:11 pmQ_Mech,
If you believe I am wrong about the 2nd law of thermodynamics, two points.
(1) Thermodynamics is not a function specific to time - short or long, the frame leads to the same result. The longer the time frame, the greater the randomness. I give you Mr. Gould up at Harvard, the kingpin evolutionist. He struggled with this very concept so much he made up a term to fit the bill called “punctuated equilibrium.”
(2) What was the work and more specifically the mechanism for doing so?
By the way, the MHC Complex I spoke of is only the beginning of evolutions problems with respect to genetics and microbiology. I have only talked about a few of the problems regarding the “theory” and then, only at a high level for fear of you military guys fragging me for boredom.
April 24th, 2008 at 7:43 pmI agree with several mentioned that both should be discussed in class. If evolutions was absolute and the only explanation, why is there a missing link. If you have something before and after this imagined missing link, one should be able to find the missing link. So again it is only a theory with holes and not absolutes.
April 24th, 2008 at 8:59 pmmany of the activist evolutionists are atheists who are tired of being dissed by christians and many of the activist ID’s are christians who are tired of being dissed by atheists.
Cant we all just get aloooong?
April 24th, 2008 at 9:16 pmFranchie thanks for the vote, lingerie melts me.
Goodby Natalie, I agree Ben Steins movie is a must see. I maintain that it’s the mind that evolves upon what it is fed and both Hitler and Muhammad were eating the same stuff.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:11 pmThis is a great discussion, lots of points made well.
There are new species being discovered everyday. 3000 feet below the Gulf of Mexico creatures exist on methane hydrates that have adapted to this toxic condition. On deep sea hydrothermal vents new species have been discovered that live using chemosynthesis. The earth is a giant chemistry set that has created life through the interactions of its many elements. Over the earth’s 5 billion year old history many creatures have come and gone. Extinctions have happened and even humans almost disappeared when Toba erupted 70,000 years ago. I believe in God but to think that plants and animals have not evolved over the immense time span of this planet is not logical.
April 25th, 2008 at 3:51 amThat is not all they teach here in Florida they teach 9 year kids that we will all be dead in ten years from glogal warming if we don’t stop using A/C and stay in the dark to cut electricity use. In Florida no A/C??!! I walked into my karate school last night and one of the kids had turned off all of the lights for the above reason. Her and my other young students are in a panic over it! Thank God my kids don’t go to government run schools!!
April 25th, 2008 at 4:21 amBash, of the two religions, I’ll pick the one with God in it every time!
April 25th, 2008 at 5:21 amAnybody see this interesting article on lizards that developed things like cecal valves in 36 years?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080417112433.htm
April 25th, 2008 at 7:09 amThe really interesting thing, in my opinion, is that evolution is not entirely reactive. It manages to stay ahead of environmental change to some degree by storing changes from previous adaptation. We carry many genes that are simply not active, but probably date to earlier adaptations that are not currently needed. Note that some microbes can change their type of respiration in response to their environment. Kinda cool, actually.
I hate thinking of it in terms of thermodynamics, actually. Thermodynamics is something that works out alright in equation form, but you end up having to torque the crap out of your real-world definitions to understand it. That, and thermo was my only qualifier exam that I had to take more than once.
I prefer to look at biology from a mechanistic viewpoint. There are guiding mechanisms in place, and the entire system functions by adaptation. The Earth’s climate and chemistry change ’cause that’s what they do, and biology tags along behind it adjusting to the production and annhiliation of niches. That’s how we wind up with things like drug-resistant bacteria in your hospital and titanis in Antarctica. (Look up titanis - what a freak!)
One thing’s for certain, the natural world is a lot more interesting than the version presented in Genesis.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:19 am