Subject:
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Its Own Worst Enemy (was Re: Support for Creationism )
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 25 Jan 2001 22:58:22 GMT
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Viewed:
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831 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Tim Culberson writes:
> There are a heck of a lot less evidences to discredit the above theories
> compared to Evolution. (here's 20 to start with:
snipped from http://www.creationscience.com/quest.shtml)20 Questions for
Evolutionists for the purposes of review and discussion. No challenge to
the copyright status of this work is implied or should be inferred.
> Where has macro evolution ever been observed? What's the mechanism for
> getting new complexity such as new vital organs? How, for example, could a
> caterpillar evolve into a butterfly?
It does not evolve into a butterfly; the organism has the same DNA
throughout life and is the same organism, just as you are the same organism
who popped out of your mother's uterus. I trust at that time you didn't
have the ability to reproduce or grow facial hair, but you do, presumably,
now. Did you evolve from your infant self?
Macro evolution has never been observed because it takes a lot longer than
we've been aware of the process. Darwin's theories aren't even 2 centuries
old, and you're asking us to observe processes that take place over
millennia. Why have Cain never been observed?
> Where are the billions of transitional fossils that should be there if your
> theory is right? Billions! Not a handful of questionable transitions. Why
> don't we see a reasonably smooth continuum among all living creatures, or in
> the fossil record, or both?
You've refuted this yourself. The process by which fossils are formed is
rare and specific. Let's do an experiment: I have a puzzle with X number
of pieces. I won't tell you how many, nor what the completed puzzle will
look like, and then I'm going to scatter the pieces around the globe. Now,
find all the pieces and put the whole puzzle together. If you can't
complete the puzzle, does that mean no puzzle exists? Of course not.
> Who are the evolutionary ancestors of the insects? The evolutionary tree
> that's in the textbook: where's its trunk and where are its branches?
For one thing, there *are* fossilized insect species no longer extant on
the earth. Second, the "evolutionary tree" is a metaphor rather than an
ironclad descriptive term. For what it's worth, the trunk is RNA, and its
branches are everywhere.
> What evidence is there that information, such as that in DNA, could ever
> assemble itself? What about the 4000 books of coded information that are in a
> tiny part of each of your 100 trillion cells? If astronomers received an
> intelligent radio signal from some distant galaxy, most people would conclude
> that it came from an intelligent source. Why then doesn't the vast
> information sequence in the DNA molecule of just a bacteria also imply an
> intelligent source?
Because it is only an information sequence by inference; it isn't a code
until we decide to try to decode it. Read "On Beyond Living" by Rich Doyle
for an elaborate deconstruction of this topic.
> How could organs as complicated as the eye or the ear or the brain of even a
> tiny bird ever come about by chance or natural processes? How could a
> bacterial motor evolve?
Not in one shot, certainly. The complex structures you cite arise through
evolution from simpler systems, and it has been demonstrated that while half
a wing isn't necessarily helpful, that same structure could serve as a great
balancing aid or radiator of waste heat.
> If the solar system evolved, why do three planets spin backwards? Why do at
> least 6 moons revolve backwards?
What does that prove? Why did God make some of them backwards (and
backwards in reference to what?) Do you suggest that God is dyslexic?
> Why do we have comets if the solar system is billions of years old?
Because they come from the Oort Cloud, among other places. What is the
point of this question?
> Why do so many of the earth's ancient cultures have flood legends?
Because they lived in coastal regions or near rivers. The Euphrates,
prior to modern damming, routinely flooded. A better question might be why
the Noachian flood myth coincides so nicely with earlier mythologies.
> Where did matter come from? What about space, time, energy, and even the laws
> of physics?
This question is beyond the purview of current physics, though new
theories regarding the behavior of quantum foam seem promising. Where did
God come from? The question is the same, and my answer would be no more
circular than yours.
> How did the first living cell begin? That's a greater miracle than for a
> bacteria to evolve to a man. How did that first cell reproduce?
The first cell wasn't the first life, more than likely. As Jennifer Clark
has ably pointed out, this question, as so many of your other questions, has
nothing whatsoever to do with evolution.
> Just before life appeared, did the atmosphere have oxygen or did it not have
> oxygen?
Is that evolution you're talking about?
> Why aren't meteorites found in supposedly old rocks?
Huh? What does that prove about evolution?
> If it takes intelligence to make an arrowhead, why doesn't it take vastly more
> intelligence to create a human? Do you really believe that hydrogen will turn
> into people if you wait long enough?
Not in one leap, this question isn't about evolution.
> Which came first, DNA or the proteins needed by DNA--which can only be >produced by DNA?
RNA. And these also didn't develop in one shot, but as a long sequence of
events. Further, this yet again isn't a question about evolution.
> Can you name one reasonable hypothesis on how the moon got there--any
> hypothesis that is consistent with all the data? Why aren't students told the
> scientific reasons for rejecting all the evolutionary theories for the moon's
> origin?
Do you even know what evolution is? And what do you mean by "all the data?"
> Why won't qualified evolutionists enter into a written, scientific debate ?
They do, constantly. Stephen Gould, for instance, has written books about
evolution for more than three decades, and he has many times debated
creationists in the public forum. Perhaps the question should be rephrased.
> Would you like to explain the origin of any of the following twenty-one
> features of the earth:
**snip of a list of things that have nothing whatsoever to do with evolution**
Basically, you've deftly illustrated the deep-rooted failure by
creationists to understand evolutionary theory and what it attempts to
describe. Your questions (by which I mean those questions that you offer as
a refutation) have nothing to do with evolution, so the answers to those
questions have no bearing on this debate.
It's truly amazing to me that you allege to refute evolutionary theory
while demonstrating at each possible opportunity that you have no idea of
what it entails, or even of what science entails.
Dave!
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