1. The Grand Canyon was formed over millions of years. The material from that lengthy erosion isn’t just going to stay there. That’s silly. Also, when you tried to use the Grand Canyon as proof of the flood, you didn’t say there wasn’t enough material; you said there was NO DELTA. I showed you there was, and now you are finessing your previous comment.

2. You keep saying things like “Multiple historical “proofs” of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution have been proven to be frauds” but you don’t show any evidence or instances. I believe I dealt with Piltdown man in a previous post, and if you read my post, I give you numerous opportunities to refute specific points I made supporting evolution and dislodging your contentions. I even did a bit of brush up on people like Behe and pointed out that he now grudgingly admits there could be an evolutionary path for the eye and deal specifically with a lot of what you IDers claim are the Holy Grails proving your point and you ignore my comments.

3. You’re trying to define and hinge the veracity of the theory of evolution on some pre-constructed irrelevant questions you’ve contrived, such as: “how many mutations would be required to change from the simplest life form to the next simplest life form”. It’s a moot and stupid question. How does that prove anything? Evolution was billions of years in the making and with 3 billion base pairs, there isn’t enough computing power in the world to process that data. Heck, we have trouble with predictive global weather patterns because of the computing power needed. I’d like to know how the number of mutations it takes to make a human being is germane. If it’s 147,990,859,454,387,422 and not 147,990,859,454,387 what does that prove? Your question is just silly. I’ve seen people on this thread say it’s statistically impossible and I have repeatedly asked for references for that and been met with resounding silence which brings me to …

4) I have specifically addressed and successfully countered many of the vagaries on your side of the discussion in an attempt to move it to a more scientific realm and away from baseless accusations, to which no one, including you, have countered with rebuttals of substance or fact. Your inane comment that somehow the delta of the Colorado River doesn’t contain enough materials to prove erosion (and you don’t even phrase it that way), isn’t scientific and doesn’t prove your contention and I even mentioned the Valles Marineris as a bonus.

Again, you’re just making baseless assumptions (of what you think a delta would/should look like), and because it doesn’t fit your fantasy you shake your head but you don’t PROVE anything, you have no scientific background and don’t care for it, apparently. How can you possibly be expected to be taken seriously on this board, never mind in the academic/scientific world, when your best argument isn’t an example but a feeling or a thought and not something measurable, observable or experimental in nature.

I say the eye isn’t an example of IC, talk about Behe’s admission, about how we see, about simplified examples of our eyes in other creatures and no one discusses that. I mention that we have a lot of unused genetic material and no one responds. I mention how other species clot without having the same biological composition we do and there’s silence. Instead you answer me with a silly question that’s not even pertinent. I thought you wanted a debate about ideas and were interested in the other side; didn’t realise you’d keep your fingers in your ears and repeat the same similar questions and baseless accusations over and over again, regardless.

It’s too bad you just recite the mantra, I guess hoping it will make it true. It doesn’t. Again, I also don’t have to prove anything; evolution has been worked on, discussed, dissected, refined for over a hundred years; it’s seen tens of thousands of eyes and nowadays a handful of people have some qualms about it, so we should just toss it based on their unscientific say so? Unbelievable.

Talk about science being a religion; ID has become the latest sect.

It is incumbent on anyone who wants to put forward a theory as “science” to follow the scientific method to test that theory and provide evidence of that theory.

The fact is that supporters of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution do not follow the scientific method to test the theory and provide evidence of the theory. They attempt to squash any competing theory of our origins, whether that be Biblical Creationism or the more general theory of Intelligent Design.

When asked how the first life came to be, supporters of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution do not have a scientific answer.

When asked how many mutations would be required to change from the simplest life form to the next simplest life form, supporters of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution do not have a scientific answer.

Multiple historical “proofs” of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution have been proven to be frauds.

Yet the supporters of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution accept it as “fact” in exactly the same way that supporters of the Al Gorian Theory of Anthropogenic Global Warming accept it as “fact”. Both are equally Junk Science. Yet the supporters of the Darwinian Theory of Evolution think that we should all accept it as fact, and “it’s incumbent on challengers to offer alternatives supported by empirical evidence”. How about offering some hard science to prove your theory?

Until you do, expect this debate to continue and spread. Today’s students don’t like being told what to think without any evidence to back it up. The competing theories of our origins will be openly debated, and students will make up their own minds. The debate isn’t over, it’s just beginning…

Sincerely,
Red Pill

P.S. Re: The Colorado River Delta, what you showed, in comparison to the volume of material missing from the Grand Canyon, is pitiful, really.

I’ve got a about 3 billion years to play around with, so take your time. If you were so sure of your position, you should be able to do something better than “I know I am but what are you?”

Since you think you know the answers and feel they prove your point, why don’t you answer? You and others keep bandying around phrases like ‘it’s impossible’ but I don’t see any numbers, any data, NOTHING. You’re attempting to narrow this discussion not to any germane issue but by creating arbitrary questions that don’t disprove evolution but they’re the only straws you can grasp at.

Where is your evidence that positive mutations are rare? As I’ve stated, it happens EVERY DAY when viruses defy our medicine. It only takes one positive one for an organism to be more adapted to their environment. Show me the numbers.

Similarly, since people say it’s statistically impossible, show me how its impossible for advanced creatures (us) to have developed over BILLIONS of years and all the possible attendant mutations.

I don’t have to prove anything as I’ve stated; it’s incumbent on challengers to offer alternatives supported by empirical evidence and you can’t. Funny how everyone was bandying about the Colorado River Delta and when I disprove it with evidence and photos, you blithely ignore it and try to deflect attention to me, as if I haven’t provided readers with a veritable cornucopia of food for thought. Pitiful, really.

1) What are the two simplest life forms known to man?

2) How many mutations would be required to change from the simplest life form to the next simplest life form?

3) What is the probability of all of those positive mutations happening, given that positive mutations are very rare?

You criticise c-14 dating because several things have to be ‘true’ (including decay rates) in order for it to work, but you don’t prove any of them AREN’T true, then you post a link to where someone makes an assumption about how quickly the sun has burned through its fuel, with NO SCIENTIFIC STUDY cited!

Instead of waving things around why don’t you start publishing links and studies. Better yet, why don’t you answer some of the questions I posed in my thread above, or don’t they have a web site that answers my challenges up yet?

…at some point those “copies” are eventually going to become noticeably different from the original… especially after a billion years or so have passed… detrimental mutations happen all the time, it’s just that the beneficial ones have the greater tendency to be passed on and kept within the gene pool.
Watcher on April 27, 2008 at 3:24 AM

What about the scientific evidence that a billion years haven’t passed?

Well you’ve got to give Ben Stein credit; he doesn’t kick sand in the face of weaklings. He goes right up to the biggest, most muscle-bound, meanest SOB on the beach, kicks sand in his face and then insults his girlfriend for good measure. Stein’s n…

Here’s some homework for you:

1) Report back on what are the two simplest life forms known to man.

2) Report back on how many mutations would be required to change from the simplest life form to the next simplest life form.

3) Report back on the probability of all of those positive mutations happening, given that positive mutations are very rare, without any life-threatening negative mutations happening along the way.

As chance would have it, I’m actually not a microbiologist… I can’t give you specific numbers on how many mutations it would take to jump from one form of life to another. I do know that when you are dealing with an organism that does nothing but eat and churn out as many copies of itself as it can, at some point those “copies” are eventually going to become noticeably different from the original… especially after a billion years or so have passed.

Before you start handing out homework, it would be nice if you would stop spamming the thread long enough to actually read my last response to you. You keep insisting on trying to create a false choice between no mutations at all and a series of only good mutations… I already agreed with you that detrimental mutations happen all the time, it’s just that the beneficial ones have the greater tendency to be passed on and kept within the gene pool.

Red Pill on April 26, 2008 at 9:54 PM

In essence, we (ID supporters) tolerate them (Darwinists), but they don’t tolerate us.

Yet they call us “Agents of Intolerance”.

A truthful witness gives honest testimony,
but a false witness tells lies.
Proverbs 12:17

They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
Romans 1:25

Watcher on April 26, 2008 at 3:22 PM

Here’s some homework for you:

1) Report back on what are the two simplest life forms known to man.

2) Report back on how many mutations would be required to change from the simplest life form to the next simplest life form.

3) Report back on the probability of all of those positive mutations happening, given that positive mutations are very rare, without any life-threatening negative mutations happening along the way.

However, the people in power over today’s Scientific community are Anti- free and open debate of Intelligent Design vs. Darwinian Evolution.

A species never yields seed of a different species.

That’s a straw man… we’re not talking about sudden changes like a cat giving birth to a dog, we’re talking about slight differences that would be occurring over many thousands or even millions of generations to produce major changes over time.

Genetic mutations are overwhelmingly detrimental.

That may be so, but the differences that prove themselves to be the most useful (or the least detrimental) will have a greater tendency to survive and be passed on. Saying that mutation is mostly bad doesn’t mean that it can’t ever lead to anything good.

By the way, nice to see you posting on-topic again.

A Darwinist would claim you could begat it all the way back to a squirrel, and beyond. But that’s a different thread :-)

dedalus on April 25, 2008 at 5:24 PM

I challenge you to show me a single example of one species begetting another species that is able to reproduce.

Everything in creation yields seed according to its kind. Apple trees yield apples containing apple seeds which yield more apple trees…
Humans yield sperm and egg cells, which when joined together yield more humans.

A species never yields seed of a different species.

Genetic mutations are overwhelmingly detrimental.

I’d like to see an analysis of the DNA of the two simplest animal life forms known to man, and compare how many positive mutations would have to happen for the simplest life form to “evolve” into the next higher life form.

For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
Matthew 24:24

Paul Recounts His Conversion

“While thus occupied, as I journeyed to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.’

Acts 26:12-18

We receive many positive and supportive emails. Readers and visitors continue to send us stories of deconversion, a new understanding of reason and science, and a positive change of direction in their lives.

-Richard Dawkins

We receive many positive and supportive emails. Readers and visitors continue to send us stories of deconversion, a new understanding of reason and science, and a positive change of direction in their lives.

-Richard Dawkins

“Deconversion” = leading people away from the true God to the god of this earth (Satan).

How about a conversion instead of a deconversion?

Paul Recounts His Conversion

“While thus occupied, as I journeyed to Damascus with authority and commission from the chief priests, at midday, O king, along the road I saw a light from heaven, brighter than the sun, shining around me and those who journeyed with me. And when we all had fallen to the ground, I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But rise and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to make you a minister and a witness both of the things which you have seen and of the things which I will yet reveal to you. I will deliver you from the Jewish people, as well as from the Gentiles, to whom I now send you, to open their eyes, in order to turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who are sanctified by faith in Me.’

Acts 26:12-18

Could it be that Dawkins is one of the people to whom the following verse applies?

For false christs and false prophets will rise and show great signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect.
Matthew 24:24

To ID believers, what would convince you? What fossil proof would change your mind? … So what would alter that perception?

I think you should review those experiments again. The conditions were very artificial, in a way designed to strongly favor the probability of forming amino acids. That’s a reasonable enough approach if you’re just investigating whether a thing is conceivable.

That is your opinion; I tend to disagree. My understanding was Miller’s original experiment was to test what effect repeated electrical discharge would have on the earth’s early atmosphere, and the amino acids in the ‘mimicked’ ocean appeared. He wasn’t trying to stack the deck; your argument on what specifically was the problem is vague to me. He did prove that amino acids could form in a condition believed to be akin to those present on early Earth.

This reminds me of a problem I have with a lot of ID proponents; they wave so much stuff away and try to exclude it without much of a basis, but tend to have the opposite reaction when they’re under the gun. Take everyone’s deconstruction of Darwin’s racism and using that as an excuse to defenestrate anything he proposed; when someone, however, points out that apacalyp’s link goes to a You Tube video and remarks that the person in it is a convicted felon, the ‘you’re attacking the man!’ type of posts were plentiful. Don’t you think that’s a bit hypocritical?

But it is so far removed from proving that life could have evolved from non-life, that it’s absolutely foolish to ignore the established science that says spontaneous generation doesn’t happen based on this experiment.

The point of evolution isn’t how did life begin millions of years ago but given life, how did it come about as it is today? The early earth was violent, with asteroids hitting it, the atmosphere forming; it was very active. Unless any of us were there and can attest, we don’t exactly know everything that happened, but we can certainly work things backwards by taking the Earth now, examining other heavenly bodies in our solar system, observing extra-solar events and making sense of it. Miller took data, devised a mock up of what the early Earth would have probably looked like as a result of his observations, and found amino acids form and they are key to life.

Look, we are only really getting the computing power now to process all the weather data we get and attempt to make fairly reasonable models, but even then they are sometimes incorrect. That doesn’t stop us from trying to predict the weather and hone the process, does it? Newtonian mechanics wasn’t demolished by Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, he extended our understanding.

Science has undergone many such refinements, but when something is proven to be false as the old scientific theory of spontaneous generation was (organisms miraculously developing in a closed environment; the discovery of bacteria showed them this was wrong), it is put in the dustbin. Adaptation hasn’t proven to be wrong, and that is a key component of evolution, isn’t it? Viruses responding to medicines, the giraffe, orchids with scents that attract specific pollinators (like the carrion fly), bugs that use camouflage, native inhabitants of equatorial regions having more melanin; there are lots of things in our environment that continue to support adaptation. I feel this argument by the ID group is a bit disingenuous; to my knowledge Darwin never said (and I admit, I have not read every scrap of text Darwin composed), that 3.2 billion years ago, during a rather violent and raging storm, a lightning strike in the area we now call Fiji resulted in the first amino acids being formed.

Evolution explains why seemingly similar creatures, separated by distance, seemed to have slightly different characteristics that appear particularly in tune with their environment. It explains why there is such a variety in seemingly shared traits, why most life on this planet shares a huge portion of their DNA. I know IDers say that an SUV and VW bug both have tyres, radios, doors, etc. but they look different; however, this is a completely invalid comparison. Try to find a car with 3 billion parts (base pairs), or 120,000 features (genes), with a majority of them currently not being used and then refine your comparison.

Which is indeed the evolutionist’s dilemma. For all the talk about ID not being a “true science,” evolution is full of things that are believed to be true not because science indicates it’s true, but because the theory of evolution requires it.

Such as…? What specifically does evolution require you to believe that is proven, scientifically, demonstrably, through experimentation, to be absolutely false? There are lots of things in science taken on ‘faith’; we haven’t found a graviton, yet we believe in gravity because of observation. Newton’s original theory has been expanded now to include the movements of planets, not just an apple falling from a tree, and the math works, there is nothing to directly contradict any of its assumptions, so we accept it. But since the universe is a big sandbox that no one can ever hope to replicate and therefore beyond a shadow of a doubt prove gravity’s effects, should we take your argument one step further and say we shouldn’t believe gravity affects planets? Since we can’t ever ‘mock it up’, should we throw that educated assumption away too?

We don’t know everything about ANYTHING in our world, and we certainly don’t avoid using the knowledge we have, hoping that it will further our understanding. Why are you trying to hold evolution to a standard of completion and thoroughness we don’t have anywhere, especially NOT ID. We don’t wait for the picture to be perfect and complete before we move or devise hypotheses. We don’t know everything about the human body, but that doesn’t stop us from making educated assumptions about it and using experimental treatments and each time we try something, we move ahead, incrementally.

Even today we still take an observation, form a conclusion and test it out. Hypothermia is an interesting thing. Physicians realised that someone whose core body temperature had been significantly lowered appeared to survive longer than normally expected in certain environments or situations. Why? Observation and research made us realise that lower temperature slows metabolism, which means that biologic activity slows – less oxygen requirements, etc – which means the subject was able to survive. Lowering a patients body temperature is now used as a technique during very delicate procedures like brain surgery, where there may be a need to restrict or reduce the flow of blood to a vital area and therefore limit the oxygen available.

This is the perfect example. There is absolutely no proof that life arose that way, yet we have all kinds of evolutionists deriding creationism as pseudo-science, and ID as closet creationism, because they tell us that evolution is a proven fact. How can it be a proven fact if no one can prove life arose from non-life spontaneously?

See above. Evolution doesn’t claim to explain the moment life began on the Earth.

I take umbrage …Why is suddenly the Bible now not only religion, but science, physics, paleontology…?

The reason evolution gets so tied to atheism? One reason you allude to: basically all atheists are evolutionists. But also, many of the most vehement supporters of evolution are atheists, so it’s inevitable that atheism gets associated with evolution.

Your point that this is not necessarily so is quite true, but please bear in mind that the association in people’s minds comes from an association that very much exists in the real world. Don’t just blame opponents of evolution for the association.

I don’t, but I can certainly blame people on this thread for casting aspersions on others because they’re atheists, rather than dealing with the issue. Many of us on this thread have said we believe in God, and just as you don’t want to be thought of as religious nutjobs, so all evolutionists don’t want to be lumped in as part of some super-secret cabal to dethrone God.

Good point about the dogs, by the way. I know people bring them up because they are familiar, and a good example of the kind of variation possible in a species. They’re not the best analogy for evolution, though, since the variations were specifically bred into them rather than having occurred randomly.

True, and I did mention they were bred for certain characterisics. It does speak, however, to the adaptability of the species of the planet and how easily, over a short period of time, you can ‘customise’ a species.

Speaking of no evidence:
There is no evidence fossils could be made in 4000 years.

Fossilization does not require great amounts of time: just favorable conditions. I’ll bet you there’s a lot more evidence for rapid fossilization than there is for life occurring spontaneously. Why is the complete lack of evidence for spontaneous generation of life no big issue, but the relative rarity of modern fossilization a big obstacle?

Many IDers claim that the flood could have caused immediate fossilisation of all the remains of creatures at one time. I’d like to see the experimentation that backs this up. Saying ‘probably’ and ‘I’ll bet’ is NOT scientific observation.

Saying an eye is complex ergo it couldn’t have evolved isn’t experimental evidence. Just as many on this thread say evolution isn’t reproducible, how are you going to test this? Also, you can’t prove a negative; you can’t prove God doesn’t exist, for example, so how are you going to prove an eye couldn’t be the result of evolution?

I’m told that evolution is the scientific theory, so I’m sure you wouldn’t be raising this question unless evolution producing eyes had been proven in a valid scientific experiment: say, a double-blind test in a laboratory. Otherwise, I could just turn the question around and ask, “Can you prove the eye evolved?”

Since you’re questioning accepted science, the burden of proof is on you. There is a lot of ‘could’ in ID; nothing concrete. As I’ve said many times, there are gaps in understanding in various parts of science and portions of the theory of evolution is one of them and that is why it’s not a LAW. So you need to prove that something that evolution claims is wrong, or your argument isn’t valid.

Evolution doesn’t need to have every single question everyone will ever pose answered in order for it to be a theory, but if you want to have it thrown out, because there is a great deal of supporting science in other disciplines and observations, YOU need to prove that something it says isn’t true. That is how a theory is ‘disproven’ not by saying ‘could’. I could sit here all day and say ‘this could be true’ or ‘that could be true’ but that doesn’t MAKE them true.

Of course, we know it’s never been observed or reproduced. But since believing all life developed from simpler organisms, evolutionists believe the eye evolved because they have to in order to believe in … evolution.
I’m afraid the reasoning is just that circular.

Why is there such variety in eyes across species? Fish in the deepest oceans can’t see because there is no sunlight that reaches those depths, but other senses are more developed. Why all the variety? I know a woman, who can only see in black and white and is highly light sensitive; her problem is genetic. However, she managed to go to school, has a child and is a successful massage therapist, yet her eyes are defective and incomplete.

In order to truly believe ID, it seems we have to completely give up on dating techniques …. What will you guys let science keep, or is it all dustbin material?

… all dating methods produce their age estimates based on a beginning substance that decays into an ending substance at a certain rate. However, the implicit assumptions in these processes are a) that there is none of the ending substance in the item being dated to begin with, b) that the decay rate has remained constant over time, and c) that there has been no other process that also produced that ending substance. Only if all these assumptions hold true, and if the rate was measured accurately or not, will the radiographic dating be valid.

Right. So prove one of those assumptions is false. This is specious; of course things have to be true in order for them to not be false.

If high amounts of carbon (for example) are regularly introduced into specimens, then statistically, you should see large numbers of results that make no sense, and huge irregularities in dating items you know were from a similar time period. Also, there are several methods used for testing artefacts and if your above posit was true and dating was so unreliable, there would be scores of conflicts in date range from technique to technique.

This means that either a.) periodically a substance used for dating is introduced, but not in significant enough quantities to alter the results b.) the substance is introduced in a significant amount but the occurrence is not regular enough to significantly alter findings or c.) said used substance isn’t introduced at all, and datings are generally correct.

Can you show me specific examples where we know a piece of pottery or a tool appears significantly older or younger than we are CERTAIN it is? Then find me enough examples so that it becomes statistically important that we need to throw all dating down the drain.

Evolution depends on too many things that have not been proven, but must be accepted in order to accept evolution over all. Two of the most egregious examples are the requirement to believe in spontaneous generation of life in spite of NO evidence it has ever happened, and questionable evidence that it might even have been possible.

You seem to contradict yourself in the above statement; you’re saying there have been experiments that show its possible, but you don’t like them, but prior to that you say there’s no evidence.

The summary of the ID argument seems to be this; that there are some topics related to evolution that haven’t been proven to your satisfaction and you’re not content that life could have begun in a primordial soup and developed over billions of years to a highly specialised form of life.

ID has the bigger problem; as I’ve mentioned in my previous post, not only do IDers require that we throw out evolution, and all dating mechanisms, but a huge corpus of other scientific knowledge in order to believe it. So we have to ignore botany, because researchers using tree ring sampling and painstaking reconstruction techniques of living and dead bristlecone pines, scientists have built up a tree ring sequence that goes back 6400 years. We have to toss out paleontology and anthropology, because they claim that the earth and fossils are older than the 6000 year Biblical cut off. We have to toss out cosmology and astronomy, even though there is a huge amount of mathematical evidence that explains how galaxies are formed, how stars can be long lived or short lived depending on their composition. We have to throw out physics because how can we see the Andromeda galaxy, which is 2 million light years away if the universe isn’t that old? The speed of light must be incorrect.

Teach ID in religion class…. ID is a recent product, why should it be on the same plane as evolution?

The study of genetics is more of a complication for evolution than a support, since it makes clear that no adaptations to the environment are inherited by younger generations unless the genes are modified to support it. Which means evolution can only proceed by genetic mutation. However, genetic mutations are both rare, and overwhelmingly harmful.

Tack that on to the fact that some body parts or organs are irreducibly complex, and it’s clear that those things can only evolve when all required genetic mutations come together.

That’s not true; a virus that adapts and is able to survive a treatment meant to kill it would beg to differ. Viruses regularly co-op host cells and use it’s genetic material to replicate more copies of said virus. You can modify or insert genetic code; it’s not set in stone. The fact that there is ‘legacy’ DNA and that the amount of DNA doesn’t correspond to an organism’s complexity, (the so called ‘C-value paradox’), should give IDers pause. There is an enormous amount of DNA that is not used in every organism and unbelievable as it may seem, tulips, onions and wheat have more DNA per cell than humans do.

Behe has even admitted that there could be evolutionary lineages for the eye. Several species, such as the nautilus, have a primitive precursor to our eye. I know Behe has problems with our photoreceptor cells but in many ways our eyes are far less complex than many people think. Our eyes are not very high resolution and in fact, our brain does an amazing amount of processing and pattern matching to give us the images we ‘see’. There are 12 different snapshots that the eye takes; one such snapshot, concerns itself with edges of an object, and so on (for a fascinating book on how our scientific knowledge is leading up towards a technological ‘singularity’, I recommend Kurzweil’s book, “The Singularity is Near”). I reject the notion that an eye is irreducibly complex. Similarly, I reject that blood clotting is an example of IC (various animals, including the whale, also a mammal, lack a key factor but their blood still clots).

With regard to Biblical references, two of the things I love the most about it are the parables and inherent wisdom in Christ’s teachings. Does anyone SERIOUSLY think, however, that you need to take a log out of your eye before you take a speck out of another’s, literally?

Saying that some people believe the Bible literally seems to be meant as a put-down. I would imagine there are very few people who literally take every word literally. When Jesus said, “I am the Bread of Life,” I don’t think you’ll find anyone who thinks you must take Jesus out of the oven and spread a little butter on Him.

No, thanks for the funny visual. =) Apacalyps seems intent on taking everything literally (despite the fact that the Bible never mentions a 24 hour day, he says the Bible is absolutely clear on this point).

It seems to me rather foolish to cut short such questions, as if it’s more important to preserve the theory of evolution unchanged rather than actually answer those questions.

I don’t think we’re cutting short the discussion. Science is all about evidence; directly or supporting from other areas (such as math), and ID doesn’t contain any of that. Also, a simple search on Alta Vista shows that despite it’s youth, a simple search for ‘irreducible complexity’ results in 1.4 million hits and ‘intelligent design’ 90.6 million hits; it is being discussed and bandied about. Asking questions alone doesn’t disqualify a scientific theory.

Perhaps the relationship between ID and creationism is similar to the relationship between evolution and atheism?

Perhaps, but that still doesn’t explain why many people on this thread extend this discussion to the 6000 year old earth. That age was calculated by a priest (?) hundreds of years ago, if I’m not mistaken. It’s not Biblical, is it? It’s been a long time since I’ve read all of the Old Testament, so tell me if this isn’t so (I’m reading the Gospels currently, not as enamoured with the Old Testament).

Yes, evolution is a theory. Unfortunately, many evolutionists forget that…

That alone isn’t sufficient an excuse to ‘punish’ evolution because some believers get pushy.

But when we talk about a complex structure developing by evolution, there is no DNA for a species that does not yet exist. It seems unreasonable to think the evolution would have occurred without some corollary to DNA that directs the process of evolution.

See my point earlier about ‘species’ being a man-created classification system; you’re putting too much emphasis on the word.

The gaping hole in the theory of evolution is not really the origin of life or the origin of “irreducibly complex” structures. The gaping hole is its dependence on random mutations over incredibly long periods of time. The origin of life and the origin of “irreducibly complex” structures just highlights two cases where random mutations are clearly inadequate.

I’ve discussed the problem with irreducible complexity earlier, but we can see changes in humans in just the pass few hundred years (we’ve gotten taller), and eye colour (blue and green eyes are a mutation of brown).

No takers on the delta of the Colorado River, which many of you said proved, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the Biblical version of the flood was real? Since the Valles Marineris on Mars is larger and deeper than the Grand Canyon, what caused it? A Martian flood?

Something else to think about; one of the whale’s closest DNA relatives is… the hippopotamus.

BTW, Red Pill, I think you were banned not because Allah is an atheist and you’re a Christian, but because you spammed a thread. I don’t think religion has anything to do with it.