Evolution and Intelligent Design

[BluePriest]

And your explanation for the heckels drawings? Im not sure ab out now, but as of 2 years ago I know they were still very present in textbooks when its been known for centuries that they are fake. To me, ESPECIALLY if an issue is controversial, it should not continue to have false information shown.

*note, Im sure some things i mention in the next few posts may have been proven otherwise, but im bringing it up to clarify is all.

[Chemist]

Well I suppose thats why I have so little faith in evolution when it comes to crossing phyla. There is too much misinformation during school when it is taught. Information that makes it look like one thing, when in reality it is something totally different. Mutations and natural selection were taught as 2 entirely different things in my school. Sure they would occasionally work together, however, the prime way evolution was taught, we will take darwins finches as just an example, was that things such as beaks growing larger, had nothing to do with mutations, and were just a natural process. And this process was considered to be the main driving force for evolution.
 Unless of course, Im misunderstanding you, and that IS how it works.

Your school must have had bad teachers. What you described is known as Lamarckian evolution, after its proponent Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.[...]

BP could have also misunderstood his biology teacher, for if you look at how the birds have changed in a hundred generations one could say that their beaks have "grown larger", though no single bird has had their beak "grow larger" (beyond normal for its genes) and no single bird "changed". What has changed is the population over time. Evolution shows us how the beak of the average bird in the population has grown, much like statistics could show us how the average person's house in some country has grown over certain years even though actual houses can't grow.

And your explanation for the heckels drawings? Im not sure ab out now, but as of 2 years ago I know they were still very present in textbooks when its been known for centuries that they are fake. To me, ESPECIALLY if an issue is controversial, it should not continue to have false information shown.

*note, Im sure some things i mention in the next few posts may have been proven otherwise, but im bringing it up to clarify is all.

I'm not sure what you mean by fake photos, but sometimes the school system does make stuff up in order to have an easier time presenting material. It's like the simplified / made up stories to explain to children how television works or the "covering the candle placed in water" experiment to show how the air is 21% oxygen... though stuff like that usually gets explained properly in highschool or whenever teachers think you'll understand the actual experiments or explanation involved.

[BluePriest]

This is what I mean by heckles drawings.
And any time I see something about darwins finches, it is used as evidence to support evolution. Not just in school. Evolution feels more like politics than a scientific study, which is also why I dont trust politics most of the time either.

[Daytripper]

Let me say that for a long time it has not been allowed here (Netherlands) to question people about evolution in exams. Not sure if that's still the case. Now what you are showing are remnants from 50 years ago. In my time it was clearly stated those drawings were a misconception... Yes it was especially pointed out in class. Also I don't think those drawings were ever an actual part of (neo)Darwinism.

My biology teacher suffered from the same time lag. We had an old picture of large Dinosaur herbivores living in the water. Isn't that funny, I said? But much to my surprise my teacher still thought they lived in the water. Does that mean it was better not to learn about Dinosaurs at all...?

Theories or class material may be faulty, but it self corrects over time and there is no reason to put it away all together. There are numerous examples of this. School is there to make you THINK. So analyze the data presented to you and if you see a fallacy, try to make it better!

[Chemist]

This is what I mean by heckles drawings.

I don't know those drawings... but if they're false then either the textbook makers don't know that or they don't bother updating their material. I'm not sure which case is worse. But either way it's not like they're putting it there as evidence for evolution because we didn't have anything else. They could fill books with nothing but evidence for evolution. (And yes, people get sentenced in court for a lot less evidence.)

And any time I see something about darwins finches, it is used as evidence to support evolution. Not just in school.

Darwin's finches are evidence in support of evolution. Mutations produced longer beaks and selection favoured them - bang: the average bird's beak length has changed.

Evolution feels more like politics than a scientific study, which is also why I dont trust politics most of the time either.

Evolution isn't about politics, but the evolution/id debate could be. It's religion trying to push its way into schools with what it calls a "theory" even though it's totally unscientific.

[Daytripper]

If you didn't get it, it shows how a simple organism turns into a fish, an amphibic or a reptile, and finally into a mammal that loses the tail and becomes a human baby. In other words, millions of years of evolution in 9 months. I don't know who ever took that seriously but I certainly never did.

[BluePriest]

You really dont know of those drawings chemist? That surprises me. most (not all though)schools across the country have those in their textbooks. And I agree with you. It shouldnt be there. It was shown to support the law of biogenesis.

[Innominate]

You really dont know of those drawings chemist? That surprises me. most (not all though)schools across the country have those in their textbooks. And I agree with you. It shouldnt be there. It was shown to support the law of biogenesis.

Is this America? Because criticising evolutionary theory because the country most biased against evolution misrepresented it is a little disingenuous.

[Daytripper]

Is this America? Because criticising evolutionary theory because the country most biased against evolution misrepresented it is a little disingenuous.

Agreed. Remember some American companies/churches have powerful funders so they can distribute literature that explains how evolution is saltation theory or Lamarckism and therefore incorrect.

We all agree now saltation theory or Lamarkism is incorrect and not the same as evolution theory.

Common misconceptions spreaded by these companies:

''Mutations are all harmful or are not beneficial They cannot add information.''

Simple rebuttal: Mutations are often tiny and usually neutral. If they are harmful then natural selection filters them out. Neutral mutations can help later. For example, a bird needs feathers and wings to fly. If the bird devoloped wings through mutation (and that would NOT happen overnight but over several genera) then that might not be overly useful. Then add the feathers and it works. I don't know which trait was supposed to come first, but we call this pre adaption.

Mutations do add information..  If a simple gene doubles that is a simple way. It can get another function later. Also viruses exchange a lot of DNA, even with bacteria or mammals. A theory is now the placenta was more or less made by a virus. (Just an example, I don't know if it's proven 100 %)

''Mutations happen very fast and turn a simple organism into a mammal overnight or in life.''

That is not what evolution is. This is saltation theory. It probably took about  55 million years to turn a small horse into a big horse. That is ok. Evolution has the time.

 

[BluePriest]

So I feel pretty ridiculous after reading up on a few things I said.

First off, Id like to see peoples comments on this article about mutations. And yes, I know, answers in genesis IS a biased site. I want to know what you think of the science they show though.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/wow/are-mutations-the-engine

Now, the part I feel ridiculous about, is the thing about the early earth, and the water in the air. http://www.answersingenesis.org/articles/2009/09/25/feedback-collapse-canopy-model Yeah, I pretty much was using an outdated argument that isnt even accepted by Christians themselves anymore lol.

[ratcharmer]

Okay, I'll have a look.

First article:

Seems mostly based on movie science. DNA bases are not "types of nitrogen".

The "morse code" analogy is incomplete . . . but not terrible. The problem comes in when they start trying to make comparisons between genes and English sentences, as these aren't really comparable.

The types of mutations they listed are real, but they missed some, such as duplication mutations or uptake of foreign DNA.

In their description of evolution they include random chemicals forming the first original cell. This has been hypothesized, but it is not a true part of the Theory of Evolution.

They also consistently show the human as the most complicated of all genomes. This isn't remotely true. More genes is not the same as a more complicated organism, and we aren't even any more complex on a macro scale, when compared to other animals.

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Second article:

If you can't build a working model of something then you have very little to hypothesize based on, so you can't really call it a model.

Not being able to model a bumblebee flying is outdated. The original model was trying to do it based on a perfectly rigid wing, when bumblebee wings are in fact very bendy.

The response to the sent in question is fairly logical though . . . I'm not certain I would refer to the models discussed as scientific, since they're not based on experimentation but on interpretations of scripture.

I'm typoing a lot right now, which probably means I should look at this again when I'm more awake.

[Daytripper]

I like to say kudos to you bluepriest. It takes courage to admit not everything you were taught was correct. If we keep talking I'll bet most of us are talking about the same thing with only slight differences of opinion. You could see in the other thread no one attacked my model of evolution with some possible help from God. I don't see how it could be any different here.

Ratcharmer is ahead of me in the science department and I will happily admit that. But I will stand by my earlier statement that most mutations are neutral and it must be somewhere in some book I read. And, I didn't see any positive mutations covered. While I understand the simplified comparison between DNA and a sentence I must object. While I know almost nothing about DNA I happen to know something about sentences. Now, if a human reads a sentence he doesn't like, the parcer in the brain spits it out. ''Yuck, I do not want it.'' So if a sentence contained the word ''caa'' instead of ''car'' it could render the whole sentence useless. But nonetheless, the sentence exists, no matter how we interpret it. I read DNA is more of a recipe. If a mutation leads to an altered liver or an altered eye, it is still a liver or an eye nonetheless. Few people are actually born with no liver or no eye due to a mutation, so the analogy is failing there.

I'm sure we could find better sources about mutations later. I'm not the best person to ask. Just let me say a litre of sea water contains about 15 million virus particles. Then you've got your ton of bacteria and micro organisms pitched against each other in an epic battle. The viruses kill off dozens of bacteria all the time while they defend others by exchanging DNA. Now, with these incredible numbers and procreation rates, how many DNA you think is being added? If another extinction wave wiped out all land life and opened up a niche, how long would it take for those bacteria to take over land?

About the second article, I have to say I didn't get it. But it is not relevant to evolution and the geological record doesn't support a global flood. And, if so, how does a global flood explain how sea reptiles and fish became extinct at the same time as the dinosaurs? They drowned?