Re: Stereotypes and reputations

Answering posts from Pim, George, Dick, Randy, Glenn and Michael.

Pim:

You say that abrupt appearance of fossil species are not evidence against
evolution; you quote Valentine, an evolutionist, as saying that evolution is
confirmed (that's not surprising); you say that phylogenetic incongruities
are due to incomplete data (which is false by the way); you cite Penny and
say that similarities between the species are highly unlikely to have
occurred by random chance (so what?); you question whether UCEs might have
function (mice with UCE's knocked out did just fine). So what you have are
several erroneous points about the evidence. You might want to go read the
Penny (1982) paper to see how meaningless it really is.

George Murphy:

I don't see how the theological concept of a God who allows extinction leads
to natural selection and evolution. Seems like a big leap there. Don't
bother if the explanation is too lengthy, but that step is not clear to me.

Dick Fischer:

You wrote: "What ices the argument for common descent versus the notion that
a creator pops new species into the environment at will is that evolution
demands that descendants be close in geographical proximity to their
ancestors. A creator has no such limitations . A creator could have
sprinkled lemurs all over the place." Well, evolution seems to make the most
sense given your theological convictions. (ps-evolution does not demand
close proximity for descendants when migration is possible. It has no
problem with early mammal fossils showing up all over the world.).

Randy:

"Is there any indication that common descent could not have occurred?" There
are strong indications; however, common descent can always draw on
unknowable events from the far past and creative reconstructions of how
natural processes could have done this or that. Evolutionists have set forth
falsifiable predictions in the past which, when the falsification came true,
were dropped. Nonetheless, getting to your second question, the implications
of dropping CD may not be as enormous as it may seem. CD is probably not
crucial to evolution. Using separate creations, for instance, could patch
things up.

Glenn:

You wrote: "If you can't respond to simple questions without wandering
around the landscape, conversations will be very difficult." Sorry, I'm
trying to provide more substantial posts rather than mere terse answers.

You asked: "Can you please explain why this continuing total change of fauna
over time occurs? . Why did God require 200 million years for plants to
appear on land? Why did God then require another 100 million before complex
life to appear? What was he waiting for? Why did his genetic tinkerings take
so long? . Why couldn't mankind have appeared on earth in the Late
Paleozoic--240 million years ago? What exactly was God waiting for? When you
do explain this, please explain God's reasoning for this species change as
well."

These are not scientific questions and they are irrelevent to the claim that
there is overwhelming evidence for common descent. You asked about the ID
perspective. Perhaps you are unfamiliar with ID. It is not a theory about
how or why divine intervention works. A common misconception is that ID is
at the evolution level; that is, an explanation for how the species arose,
and by extension, all of natural history.

You wrote: " You can't seem to defend the gaping holes in your arguments
against evolution." What "gaping holes" are you referring to?

You wrote: "You say evolution is false because the data doesn't support it
but when faced with the FACT that all fossil forms have changed, you retreat
and claim that you can't explain anything. How hypocritical of you.
Cryogenic Cornelius slids away on the ice beneath his feet. You can't
explain why the the fossils are different or how that impacts theology, then
shame on you for acting as if the evolutionist is avoiding data. I think
you can dish it out but you can't take it. Cowardly is what I call that.
Sorry, but I find such hypocrisy to be consistent and steady among the
anti-evolutionists. They always go silent and slip away when faced with
actual data."

I did not say I couldn't explain anything. We were talking about the claim
that there is strong evidence for common descent in this thread. You came in
with theological questions which I politely deferred. I of course could have
given you answers to questions such as "Why did God require 200 million
years for plants to appear on land?" And you could have disagreed. It would
be your god against my god. You obviously have strong feelings that a
creationist explanation makes no sense. Fine, I grant you that.

Michael:

The fossil record is not a Darwin-stopper. My point is that the abrupt
appearance of fossil species, whether in the horse-like species, back in the
Cambrian, etc., is a problem for evolution and common descent. "Stopper" is
too strong a word. My overall point is that there are significant evidential
problems for evolution and common descent from variety of areas: fossils,
comparative anatomy, molecules, complexity, small-scale adaptive evolution,
and so forth. You wondered about whether it makes sense for a YEC to
question data in an evolution context which he otherwise would reject.
Interesting, however, I don't see a problem. Seems fair to assume the view
of a theory in order to evaluate it. I have no trouble with the time scale.
My point is that there are substantial evidential problems. Way too many to
ignore.

--Cornelius
Received on Sun Jul 31 19:46:04 2005