Ok, what are these "genetic limits" and how do they make evolution stop?

(You should read up on genetics to find out that genes store information. Hence "knowing when to stop" is exactly the information genes would store, if they could, but they cannot.)

What do you mean "science shouldn't be contradicting history"?

What do you mean "for the billionth time"? That Creationism is about how life started has never been doubted.

And I don't have to explain where life comes from. For all I care G-d has created it.

But Creationism is _also_ about how life develops (or rather, how it doesn't). And that's where evolution comes in with an explanation that is better, is more useful and usable in engineering, works without a supernatural being that cannot be explained, and explains all the fossils.

IQ POSTS:

Well stated.

leauki posts:

Do we have agreement that we've discovered the atoms of organic (living) matter must obey a certain set of pre-programmed rules? That organic matter is so complicated on the atomic level that even a single cell is more complex than all inorganic matter in the galaxy?

We know that in every living organism the information or program for how to reproduce is written in genes which in turn are certain specific combinations of DNA molecules. When these molecular programs gets messed with or changed, there is no gaining of higher genetic information...and that's why it's an impossibility for reptiles to "naturally evolve" into birds or apes to have "naturally evolved" into a human.

Naturalistic Evolution (change beyond "kind" aka macro-evolution) has failed to explain how inorganic matter became organic matter and the divergence of all life from a common ancestor. For that to have occurred, the natural gaining of truly higher genetic information  which was not possessed by one's ancestors would have had to be passed on. Let us not forget that there are obvious self evident philosophical arguments against naturalistic evolution such as the lesser cannot give rise to the greater, and nothing can give what it does not have.

Creationism provides a coherent explanation of what constitutes living matter and how it all came to be which history and true science supports.  Creationism understands that nature isn't its own inherent life force..rather the Creator has impressed complex information into the cells which can reproduce and pass on only certain information to the next generation.

Although not in scientific terms, the Holy Bible unambiguously states that God took inorganic material from the earth and created our bodies and breathed life into our soul. He accomplished the diversity of creation. The Bible tells us that creation went on in time, yom...and in this way we can keep all the important features of evolution (small change within kind) in complete harmony with Genesis. Each new individual creation can be imagined as based upon an existing one.  New original species came into being with complete suddeness and complete with all the features that characterizes them.

Life, in the atomic level, undeniably bears the signs of a Creator, unknowable to us.  

That's where you slip off the rails.  Genetic changes can be either beneficial or detrimental to an organism in a given environment, not 'higher.'

Genetic limits = lack of information.  As Lulapilgrim said, one kind of creature or organism cannot evolve into another (i.e. a reptile will always be a reptile) because the reptile doesn't have the genetic code necessary for the change.  A reptile has no genetic code for hollow bones, wings, etc.  In order for that change to be made, information must be provided.  Assuming there is no supreme God, only random mistakes in gene copying and/or mutations can create this information.  This is where the probabilities I mentioned earlier come in.  The point of the probabilities is to show that this is impossible, or if it is possible, that it would have taken far longer than the currently accepted length of time (2 billion years, I think).

Let's use a mole for an example, a mole which is going to evolve an eye.  In my post on probabilities (page 18), I listed that a partial probability of getting the right combination for an eye at 1 in 2.24 x 10^168.  If evolution were to try 10,000 of these possibilities per second (!!), it would take roughly 7.1 trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion years to get the right one (count them, that's 13 trillions, or 7.1 x 10^156).  Also remember that this isn't even the whole eye.  I think its safe to say that you and I will never see a mole with an eye like ours.

Of course, that extreme age itself also poses problems.  Scientists have been aware for years that the universe has been expanding at a given rate, and that is part of the reason they haven't gone past 2 billion years (to my knowledge).  If the universe had been expanding at its current rate for 7.1 x 10^156 years, think about how much larger it would be compared to expanding for a measly 2 billion.

So when you say that probabilities have nothing to do with evolution, you're just fooling yourself.  I believe that answers your first question, Leauki.  As for your last two, just read a few posts earlier and you'll see what I meant.  I have to ask though, if you don't care about how life came about, then why did you start this topic to try and disprove creationism?

Daiwa, when Lulapilgrim says "higher," it is synonymous with "beneficial."  Organisms with greater natural abilities are generally considered to be superior, or "higher," than those without.

This is where you, too, slip off the rails.  It has already happened.  Facts trump statistical estimates based on false assumptions.

Since the mole evolved in an environment in which an eye offers no survival benefit, I think you're safe there, too.

Evolving an eye takes hundreds of thousands of years. Your probability seems to be for a single point in time. Can you recalculate for a hundred thousand years' worth of generations in each of which the best-working eye will continue while the others die out?

Your explanation about genetic limits is nonsense. Please make up another one. It needs to explain why mutations would stop.

Creationism explains NOTHING.

It merely takes all the perceived probabilities and combines them into one big unlikely thing, the god of malaria.

Creationism is as good an "explanation" as "Smurfs did it".

Oh, of course, I forgot.  It already happened.  How silly of me!

Fine.  If you don't like my probabilites on why evolution would "stop" then look at this link:

http://www.darwinismrefuted.com/origin_of_species_02.html

For the sake of an argument I've been calling those variations within a species 'microevolution', since that is what it is classified as, when in fact it isn't evolution at all.  Hence the quotes around "stop," since you can't stop something that never started.

EDIT: Leauki, my post on probabilities on page 18 explained why I was assuming a single point in time.  Natural selection would immediately discard anything that didn't immediately work, so all the necessary components would have to be present all at once.

I figured it out! (watching some creationist propaganda videos helped too)

Creationists do not beleive in #2. They say it is impossible for a mistake during gene copy to occur and create an antirely new gene. Despite it being easily observed in a lab (and in nature), they claim that all genes already exist and new genes occur, and they are just mixed and matched. (aka, their beloved psudeo science of micro evolution).

Also, they cling to "missing links" (despite those having been found decades ago). And other "irregularities in the theory" from the 1800s that have long since been solved.

You can assume what you want, but in reality time moves forward and evolution makes claims about changes in time. This is why demands for one species "changing into another" are nonsense. Evolution doesn't make the claim that that is possible.

I agree with you that single improbable events cannot be used to prove anything, which is why I reject Creationism, which relies on the improbable entity called a god.

So if you want to make a point about evolution and probability, you will have to take time into account. But I warn you, several generations increase the numbers of possible branches at a far greater rate than you and I expect it. It's difficult for a human to grasp exponential growth, or the concept of deep time.

Hah!  Well, I'm back to where I was before.  This is why in legal documents and debates that they define their terms before they start.  Each side is arguing over a completely different definition of evolution, so this debate will continue indefinitely.  I think I will just opt out, and leave you all to it.  Have fun.

That essay is irrelevant because it speaks about species changing into other species. According to Darwin that doesn't happen. Disproving it doesn't refute evolution.

You need an essay describing why one species cannot become two species, without ever crossing a "species border". Because that's how evolution works.

You don't understand evolution (this is obvious, otherwise you wouldn't talk about probability and changes from one species into another) so it's easy to see where you are coming from. Perhaps biology is too difficult.

Let's use linguistics instead.

English and German are two distinct languages are are not to a useful degree mutually intelligible. Yet they have both emerged from a common ancestor language (about 1500 to 2000 years ago).

Individual languages are the species in the world of linguistics.

And even though English and German are distinct languages there was no point ever in time where one language became another (each generation of speakers understood the language of the previous generation to be the same as theirs).

And there is no limit to changes within languages that would prevent one language from becoming two over time if the population of speakers becomes two distinct populations without much contact.

Do you understand why one language can become two or more languages without one language ever becoming another language?

If so, apply it to animals and plants.

You will see now how there is no point in time at which one species becomes another just as there is no point in time at which one language becomes another.

Now, let's look at probabilities.

German and English (the Germanic words in English) follow regular sound changes. (An English /d/ usually corresponds to a German /t/ and so on.) It would be ridiculously improbable that all speakers of some Germanic language would suddenly decide to change all /d/ into /t/ and follow all the other sound changes. But yet it clearly happened.

Angels? Not so fast. What happened was that speakers in one population started pronouncing specific phonemes in specific cases differently (because it appeared easier to them and because other people did it, the change reinforces itself). If this population becomes dominant (perhaps the other tribes died or adapted to the more powerful tribe), the sound change manifests itself and over a few generations, everyone in a given population pronounces the particular consonant differently.

And while the probability of German changing into English is very low indeed, the probability of people changing individual sounds is much higher, and the probability of some consensus being established by people speaking a language which sound changes to keep is also very high. And over time those probabilities add up and beat the odds we came up with in our original faulty (because it didn't take time into account) calculation.

If German did change into English over night, the linguistics theory of common descent from a proto-Germanic language would be proven wrong, because the theory relies on the assumption that that doesn't happen. Similarly Darwin's theory relies on the assumption that one species does not change into another over night (or at all).

Sometimes, people start writing words down. If we find an old inscription, we have a "fossil" of a "missing link". (For example very old English looks very German.) And sometimes we encounter living fossils. If you look at the spelling of "night", you find a "gh" part that stood for an original /x/ sound (like "ch" in "Loch Ness", actually it's not /x/ but a similar sound based on /g/ as in "good"). And in German the corresponding word "Nacht" actually still features an /x/ sound in its pronunciation.

(Incidentally, a lack of inscriptions does not "prove" that the people in question didn't have a language. It just means they didn't write much or that we simply didn't find anything.)

I recommend you read Richard Dawkins' books. He explains these things very well.

But as I know my Creationists you will probably just ignore everything I have said and come back with another ridiculous claim about evolution being about "species changing into other species" and "probability". Some people don't learn.

Yes, I said that before.

And I admit that you have successfully disproved the parody of Darwinism you seem to have picked up somewhere.

But the real theory of evolution is rather different than the one the Creationist Web sites talk about.

This is utter stupidity, a completely contrived & false assumption based on no evidence whatsoever.  It's truly entertaining watching creationists contort themselves into Gordian knots while failing miserably to come up with something, anything, that might be bought as logical.

Daiwa posts #309

The point is ttrue science and history reveals an abundance of physical evidence for Special Creation......such as the existence of the coded information in our DNA and the fossil record itself. Both indicate specificity and order in design and the laws of nature.

On the other hand, while there's been plenty of theories, no one has given empirical scientific evidence of naturalistic evolution of all life from a common ancestor. That's why the rationale for it has been constantly changing with one theory after another.