RE: rapid evolution

Glenn Morton (GRMorton@gnn.com)
Tue, 25 Jun 1996 06:08:51

Lynn J. Fancher wrote:

>You wrote:
>>
>>"Mutations are rare and almost always harmful, and yet great
>>numbers of favorable mutations must accumulate to produce a new
>>kind. Thus mutation by itself is clearly incapable of overcoming
>>entropy - in fact it is a prime example of the entropy principle in
>>operation!"~Henry M. Morris, The Troubled Waters of Evolution, (San
>>Diego: Creation-Life Publishers, 1974), p. 138
>>
>Couldn't you find a real scientist to offer an opinion? This is wrong
>in almost every sense.

Man, you can't read. :-) I didn't want a real scientist at all. Stephen
Jones asked me:

>Perhaps Glenn can give examples where "Christian apologists" claim
>that "millions" of "mutations" are needed "in order to change from
>one species to another"?

Morris is a Christian apologist and thus I used him as an example. Of
course what he says is wrong. That was the point. Stephen's question was
the first thing in my reply. How did you miss this?

> First, mutations happen all the time. Second,
>most mutations are silent or neutral, causing no change in the survival
>potential of their carriers. Third, while of those which do cause a
>change, most are harmful, a percentage actually improve the survival
>potential of the possesser. Fourth, "fitness" is highly situational--
>what is detrimental in one environment may be beneficial in another.
>Fifth, natural selection is all we need to take care of those "less
>fit" individuals. I can't help it if nature isn't always very nice--
>that's just the way it is.
>
>BTW, Morris never has understood entropy.
>

Agreed. I didn't say that he did understand entropy, fitness, geology or
anything else.

><<snip of more nonsense>>
>>
>> "If neo-Darwinism were true, somewhere there should be a
>>universe of transitional intermediates, as Darwin said there had to
>>be. Where is it?" Phillip Johnson, "Darwinism: Science or
>>Naturalistic Philosophy?" Origins Research, Fall/Winter 1994, p. 6
>>
>Actually, there are dozens and dozens of intermediates in the fossil
>record; there are even some living "transitional forms." You can
>recognize a transitional form when you see it by the fact that it is
>difficult to classify. Our rules of taxonomy demand that we put
>everything _somewhere_, and we have no category for "in between." If
>we did, we'd have to put Archaeopteryx there, of course, along with
>Australopithecus afarensis, Homo erectus, all those Mesonychid-whale
>intermediates, that whole beautiful sequence of reptile-mammal
>intermediates, all those fish-amphibian intermediates, etc. Since we
>don't have this category, we had to put them somewhere, but a name
>cannot change the reality of the fossil. Just because we classify
>Archaeopteryx as a bird (because of the feathers) does not remove all
>of those pure dinosaur features. Gish himself has said that the
>discovery of even one intermediate form would destroy creationism. He
>was right, and it has.
>

Apparently you are so ready to jump on a creationist that you didn't even
read what I wrote and missed the entire context of my post. I believe in
evolution.

>>And Gish wrote:
>>"The number of transitional forms that would have lived and died
>>during the vast time spean required for the billions times
>>billions. If evolution is true, museums should have an immense
>>storehouse of the fossil transistional forms. Yet, not one has
>>ever been found!"~Duane T. Gish, Creation Scientists Answer their
>Critics,
>>(El Cajon: Institute for Creation Research, 1993), p. 126-127
>>
>Oh, another terrific source. You know, if you want evidence for the
>reality of miracles, Gish is about the best I know. He's the only
>person I know who actually earned a doctorate in biochemistry without
>learning anything.
>

I might be able to suggest a good remedial reading class for you. :-)

>***
>
>This is too painful. Have fun, folks.
>
I agree this is painful for you. :-)

glenn

Foundation,Fall and Flood
http://members.gnn.com/GRMorton/dmd.htm