Hi again Butter, I have a lot of questions to ask before I respond in the form of a rebuttal.

To clarify, I'm only claiming that the changing of one species to another is impossible.

That because it hasn't happened within the span of recorded history (the changing of one species to another), It's this fact that I claim the theory of evolution of lacking substantiated evidence.

And in the thread begun by me, I made the claim that If evolution were true, morality, science, human intelligence/rationality would be impossible (you'll have to visit my thread to read the evidence I've provided).

http://www.rationalresponders.com/forum/17332?page=2

can you provide an example of a mutation that was copied and has thrived for many generations?

what are some of the outwardly physical consequences of these mutations for humans over the thousands or hundreds of years (or animals for that matter)?

would this be like taking a half german shepard / doberman and  breeding it with a pure bred german shepard, next taking one of the more german shepard looking offspring and breeding with another pure bred german shepard, repeating this process untill all the doberman genes are less frequent or non existent? If this is not a good example, can you provide an example of a species that we have observed this in? (the example you provided is too theoretical)

I don't follow how natural selection produces new genes? I remember the example of the light colors moths that blended in well on certain trees thus produced a natural camouflage, until the industrial revolution came about and darkened those tress, causing them to stand out more to birds and other insect feeders, but consequently caused the darker moths to survive better, thus increasing their population while causing the light colored moth's population to dwindle. But what would have caused the black colored moths to produce new genes? If anything doesn't natural selection tell us nothing more than why certain species of animals are thriving or dwindling in their population?

can you provide a living example of two species that were once a common specie?

I heard examples of trees that were fossilized but cut through two or more of the geological columns. Can you shed light on this? Also wouldn't a worldwide flood like the one explained in the scriptures best explain why we have this geological stratum in the first place? Also doesn't it take natural disasters like volcanic eruptions and landslides (caused by flooding for example) to create fossils? I can't imagine decomposing animals can result in fossils (they have to be buried at least naturally or otherwise right)???

Also I'm asking these questions for clarification and apologize if you've answered some of questions at the bottom of your post like not seeing these changes today because of the changes being too small, etc.

Taco Bell cannot be lost. They were the only surviving restaurant from the great restaurant wars. Did you not learn this lesson from Demolition Man?

That evolution is impossible is a much different claim than that it lacks positive evidence. Why is it impossible?

Anyways, by accepting "microevolution" or "adaptation," Creationists have effectively already acknowledged the entire mechanism; at this point, it seems like they simply refuse to believe that evolution occurs beyond a certain point because it clashes with their Creation stories. Creationists imply that there is some kind of threshold that cannot be passed, distinguishing between change within a species and change between species (scientists rarely use the micro/macro terms), but there is no threshold; there is no invisible line. There is only speciation, which is still a significant gray area. The entire genome is subject to change; ergo, organisms change. Thus, in order for the micro but not macro argument to be really effective, you have to propose some reason for which organisms cannot change beyond a certain point. I've never heard a Creationist address this problem.

With most organisms that we are familiar with, mammals etc, evolution is indeed too slow for us to observe speciation. However, it think it has been observed in bacteria, etc. Maybe I'll dig up some links.    

Although, talkorigins, by itself, probably contains more than enough information and evidence on evolution for any non-scientist.

Honestly, I've read most of that thread before, and I am simply at a loss as to how your worldview can be set up in such a way that would cause this to happen. I understand why you would claim that morality is meaningless, indeed most Creationists would make the same claim, but the rest of it just baffles me.  

There's got to be at least thousands of well-documented examples. There an extremely interesting presentation on a "selfish gene" at a museum near my school, but my memory is vague.  

I just did a google search.

http://www.exploratorium.edu/exhibits/mutant_flies/mutant_flies.html

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/307/5717/1928?ck=nck

I'm not completely sure what you're trying to ask here.

Our bodies aren't as hairy? We have ginormous cerebral cortexes?

Ah, I remember another interesting case involving the black plague. I'll look for a source for that too.

Something like that.

Oh man, I have no idea.

Natural selection doesn't produce new genes. It selects from the ones that are already present.

DNA is made up of only four bases: adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine. Adenine always pairs with thymine and and guanine always pairs with cytosine. These are connected to sugar and phosphate molecules. The entire thing is a nucleotide. Nucleotides form two long strings, which weave around each other in the famous double-helix configuration. A gene is a just a segment of DNA, so I'm not really sure what you mean by, "produces new genes."

http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/basics/dna

The moths don't "try" to become black.  

Regardless of the environment, there is always variation. Due several pseudo-random and non-random mechanisms, some moths will always be darker and some will always be lighter. Think of it like a bell curve. Natural selection is nothing more than the inevitable result of interaction between organisms and environments. The darker moths survive simply because they they are darker, and thus, they pass on their genes. However, evolution doesn't suddenly stop. There will always be darker moths and lighters moths. If it is beneficial to become even darker, then darkest of the dark moths will have the best chance of surviving.

Lions and tigers. The canidae family (dogs). Horses and zebras. Dolphins and whales. Etc.

Well, technically, according to common descent, we all came from the same primordial soup, so we were all the same species at some time.

I heard that those trees were actually in only one layer. Do you have a link?

The different layers in the geological column are dated to vastly different time periods. A global flood also wouldn't create this kind of layering. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sD_7rxYoZY

They just have to be well-preserved and stand the test of time, regardless of how it happens. That's why fossilization is extremely rare. 

Speciation is when one species evolves into two or more groups that are no longer able to interbreed.

Microevolution is considered to be change in a species. Macroevolution is considered to be change between species. I think macroevolution to be just enough microevolution for speciation to occur.

Adaptation is what the word suggests. Adapting to the environment.

Surely, there's no disagreement here.

Well, actually, to be honest, I'm getting rather tired of digging up specific examples for everything.

I think there one involving the Bubonic plague. I wonder if I can find it.

Well, some, like the domestication of the dog, are fairly well-documented. Often, these species can still interbreed, but with difficulty. The offspring might be sterile. Obviously, you have the similarities in DNA, and if you can find a fossil of an ancestor, that's a huge plus. There's a lot of detail here that I really don't know how to explain.  

Pretty much.

The number of genes vary widely. Many organisms have junk DNA and genes that are turned off. People often assume that humans have the most genes, but this is incorrect. Humans have 46 chromosomes. Chimpanzees have 48.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_number_of_chromosomes_of_various_organisms

Possibly.

I did a search and ran into talkorigins again.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/polystrate/trees.html

Yes, it's important. I was just trying to make a different point.

Oh, I don't know.

A flood moves everything around. I don't know if that counts as "stirring."

I'm pretty sure it doesn't only occur in water. All kinds of debris can be slowly deposited over time.

Also, he was attempting to show that the flood wouldn't create the geological column.

The biggest evidence on this entire subject, for me, is still the matter of various dating methods, most notably, radiometric dating. Materials in deeper layers are dated to much older time periods than layers closer to the surface. We also observe an increasing complexity in the traits of organisms, as well as how certain types of organisms are limited to specific time periods. For example, let's say I'm trying to establish that birds evolved from small dinosaurs. Finding fossils of organisms that exhibit numerous undoubtable lizard-like and bird-like traits (like microraptor) is already fairly compelling, but if you can establish a timeline of intermediates, such that you get:

Dinosaur >> fossil >> fossil >> fossil >> bird.

I don't see how Creationists can account for these things. 

I do most humbly apologise for butting in, but if you're looking for clear and concise refutations of creationist arguments, why not simply do a search on scienceblogs ? As far as I know, they're all there. Unless you have some new ones ?

I’m just trying to discover if there is any undeniable evidence to prove the truthfulness of evolution that is either observationally verifiable or verifiably inferred by one’s observation since that is in part if not all the evolutionist theory of knowledge. The claim of atheists is often that the evidence to support evolution is derived by “real” “scientific” methods. So far in my encounters with everyone in this site, all the evidence has been nothing but theory built upon theory of the physical evidence upon more theory of the physical evidence. That shouldn’t be very convincing to anyone. In the end it just shows me that atheists make assumptions and presume things and believe things that are not observationally verified, or observationally inferred, or experienced. (Note: my objection is on the philosophical level) What you presume is not what actually is.

I don’t have a problem with atheists making presumptions (all people do – I would argue that it’s impossible not to) but when the presumptions do not comport with what actually is empirically, then you have a huge problem.

Don’t worry though, my questioning is almost done if not done already.

A mutation is a permanent change in the DNA sequence in the genetic material passed on by an organism to its offspring, regardless of its ultimate effects. There can be both increases and decreases in the number of genes on each strand of DNA and the number of strands in each cell.

It may or may not cause some significant change in the organism. All changes in the physical structure of an organism which persist from generation to generation are ultimately due to changes in its DNA. Since this includes changes to the brain and nervous system, this includes changes in instinctual behavior and general mental capacity.

Natural selection refers to the inevitable process by which those changes which improve the chances of the organism surviving to reproduce will be passed on to more offspring than those which don't. This is simple common sense. IOW, changes which lead to more surviving offspring will proliferate. That's it. Simple.

There is nothing to stop the changes continuing indefinitely, as long as each change does not reduce the number of offspring in the next generation, so there is nothing to stop the changes accumulating to the point that they are quite unrecognizable compared to their ancestors. 

If the environment doesn't change, the organism will often reach a point where it is well adapted, so it is unlikely that any of the small changes that can occur from one generation to the next will lead to significant improvement in reproductive success, so it may virtually stop evolving. 

If the environment is such that a wide range of broadly similar body patterns are all equally well adapted, random slow changes can still occur. and this is called 'genetic drift'.

Separation into different species typically occurs when there is some degree of isolation between different groups of what is originally one species, which reduces the amount of interbreeding. They may have spread to different islands or valleys, for example. Or different ponds, for small aquatic organisms. Darwin observed this in the finches on different islands in the Galapagos Islands, which is one of the things which first got him thinking.

If there is some measurable difference in the separate environments, adaptation may well lead to them changing in different directions. If the underlying DNA changes reduce the chance of successful inter-breeding, they will eventually be identifiable as separate species.

That is the basic process of evolution.

We know mutations occur. Genetic studies have shown many different mechanisms which lead to all kinds of changes in DNA: errors in copying individual amino acids, increases and decreases and rearrangements of the individual genes, splitting and joining of strands, and movement of genes from one strand to another.

There is no built-in limit on how much change can accumulate, no micro/macro evolution threshold. Any given set of genetic material can ultimately change into any other, by any of a large number of possible sequences of steps. No organism has any record of some ancestral or standard DNA pattern for the 'species' which it is not allowed to move too far away from, which is what would be required to stop the generation-to-generation changes eventually adding up to what could be seen as 'macro evolution'. Each mutation just happens one step at a time. 

There is no evidence of any mechanism checking the changes against some fixed reference for that species.

The onus is on someone denying evolution to present evidence for the existence of such mechanisms, which would be needed to block the observed processes from leading to the evolutionary changes we see evidence for from the fossil record AND genetic studies.

 So... um... are you familiar with the concept of a ring species, and can you reconcile the obvious problem this observable phenomenon presents for antievolutionists?

Oh, Hamby.

Hold on... if you've agreed that offspring aren't precise copies of their parents, that is to say there is variation in each generation... and you've accepted that the selection/proliferation of these variations can result in ""speciation"" I'm not sure what you're continued problem is exactly.

Up until this point in the examination of the evidence, you appear to be in agreement with the conclusions, but then you have arbitrarily claimed a "built in limit".  Are you really claiming this due to this being your honest interpretation of the evidence, or are you doing this to shoehorn reality into a biblical account?  Either way, it is you that have claimed this limitation, and thus it is you that has the burden of proof.  To suggest otherwise would be ridiculous as this would also mean Butterbattle would have to prove the "assumption" that there exists no superdimensional computer programmer that pauses this game and manually overides the built in limitations of the genetic code for each living thing to generate a speciation, he'd have to prove the "assumption" that there exists no intermediate species between archaeopteryx and the penguin that looks like a 3 ton unicorn with 3 oarfish for a tail that can breath ultraviolet coloured fire.  In other words they aren't assumptions, there's just no evidence for them, so they don't require disproof, like the other infinity of things that don't have evidence for them.

What exactly do you see as the difference between a small amount of variation within a species from one generation to the next, and a large amount of variation from one generation to a thousand or several million/billion generations later?  None of it supposes anything different to the kind of variation you appear to accept, it's all just expressions of A, C, T and G.

How significant do you think the timescale of recorded human history is in regards to an evolutionary timescale?  It's as if you would like to see a Velociraptor egg hatch a chicken, or have one generation be as arbitrary amount of "unlikiness" to the generation before to satisfy your short-sightedness.  Unfortunately, something like this happening on a species-wide scale would be one of those kinds of events that would disprove evolution, not confirm it.  Humans have remained humans during the whole course of recorded human history... what a groundbreaking statement.  Further to this point, the term you use "like" (as in "dog like&quot is too vague to be useful, give something falsifiable.  Of course they are still "dog like", they're DOGS!  They are starting to look pretty different though, with people simulating natural selection: http://www.petosphere.com/pics/talldogsmalldog.gif

Humans are the ones that came up with the classification system to divide the living world up into different species/phylum/kingdom, etc, and only very recently.  It shouldn't be surprising that most biological life, and particularly animals, currently fit quite neatly into these classifications.  Even so, there are some animals that had to have classifications created pretty much exclusively for them, like Monotremes.

My apologies if you have found the tone of this post overly disrespectful to yourself, but sometimes it's just too irksome to sit by quietly while people deny the keystone of modern biological science, the theory that makes a ridiculously large number of falsifiable predictions that are tested regularly.  I'm almost certain you would have benefited from evolutionary theory in terms of medicine.  Even if you've been in unparalleled good health your whole life, you must have eaten something that was available to you due to another example of humans simulating natural selection, yet you still deny it...

Let me see, you assumed the evolutionary timescale to prove that the age of the earth is millions if not billions of years to make your argument meaningful and "plausible". How convenient.

So the proof is that dogs remain dogs and don't turn into some other four legged animal, gulls remain gulls, horses remain horses, and cats remain cats, etc

Does that mean that I will not be able to identify what it is. That when I see it, I'll say something like "My God, man what is that???" Will they look like the dog in "The Fly 2" with Eric Stolz that became deformed (molecularly deformed) when he passed through the transport pods?

Yes, how do you like that. Humans are able to fine similarities in animals. Now who would have thought that? As if God was obligated to create every "specie" to have "absolute" distinction from one another.

Can you provide me the examples, I'm sure you can. I don't doubt it. But I have to mention how you again assume that because you see these changes on a very minute (insignificant) scale in the span of six thousands years or so and somehow this logically concludes that single cell organisms evolved into you and I? Does evolution have to be about how life evolved from non life?

In light of what I said immediately above, try to also answer my objection (the humans being mindless if evolution is true objection - I mean as an evolutionist you do only believe that what's physical is all there is right?). Don't worry I include things like light rays, uv rays, and gravity to be physical since you can measure it's effects and reproduce them to some extent. But do try to respond to my objection. Carefully read it through in my previous posts. I've provided it twice.

I beg your pardon, I didn't realise we also had a disagreement about the age of the earth, but my post didn't reference using fossils to date geological strata, and geological strata to date fossils, you must be thinking of somebody else.  You have ignored the point that it is you that introduced this claim of a limitation, and shirked your responsibility of the burden of proof.

Obviously not, as dealt with by my velociraptor egg hatching a chicken example, which you have ignored.  This has nothing to do with the theory of evolution you are supposedly arguing against, this is some strawman theory of evolution of your own convenient concoction.  Massive mutations in the genome like shown "The Fly 2" are unlikely to result in viable animals (there's far more ways to be dead than to be alive), and are unlikely to be competitive.  Even if there is a HUGE amount of mutations like that, somehow resulting in an extremely well adapted organism, what will it breed with?  As you've already agreed, there's only so many differences that organisms can have before they are incompatible for breeding with the original population.

Irrelevant, it still doesn't change the fact that humans defined this classification system and the observations of these similarities is consistent with common decent.  If there were no similarities between animals, perhaps that could be an argument for discreet creation of your "kinds" or "like" organisms.  Unfortunately for you, there are, so my point stands.

Yearly flu vaccines and banana's available from your local supermarket.  Like I said in my previous post, and you ignored, you're the one that has claimed a barrier of some kind, the burden of proof is on you.  Also ignored from my previous post was the question of what you see as being different between a small number of mutations in one generation, and a large number of mutations over the course of thousands, millions, billions, etc generations.

Your objection in regards to what basically amounts to "do we have free will" is irrelevant to what we are discussing.  Start another thread about that if you want, it is a red herring here.

It's totally relevant man, so you're saying you can invent a theory that supposedly answers the observed changes in nature only to have it contradict and prove impossible human intelligence?

also it's more than free will, it means all the scientific advancements made by man are either random chance happenings or matter's purpose.

It means our arguing here is totally irrelevant because I can't help thinking what I think and you can't help thinking what you think.

It means, what the heck is everything else??? morality? rationality? logic (required for deductive reasoning)? science (I think I repeated myself)?

I was being sarcastic by the way

Let's see the scientist who "invented" this system of classification was a Christian scientist who loved God and saw his God's awesome work in His creation.

Those who are trying to rationalized away the obvious signs of intelligent design are using it to further their agenda.

My answer was relevant. It was painfully and obviously relevant.

Yet banana's are still bananas and the flu is still the flu.

Begging the question. When you can reconcile billions of years of the evolutionary theory with human intelligence, then you'll have me convinced (maybe).

We're talking about gulls and lizards and bacteria and humans.  

I'm curious whether or not you're aware of the fact that the word "species" is more or less useless beyond basic classification now.  Evolutionary biologists no longer think in terms of species because the concept itself was invented before evolution was discovered.  

I'm also curious whether or not you know how scientists determine cladistic relationships between organisms.  If you do, it's puzzling to me that you don't understand that "interbreeding" is a matter of degree, not kind.  That is, a tiger and a lion are most certainly in different clades, but they can, in fact, interbreed.  Ligers are the (usually sterile) product of this breeding arrangement.

There are almost certainly members of some populations of heron gulls that could breed with lesser black backs from a nearby population.  That's the whole point of understanding a ring species.  These are two species that could very well experience a complete speciation event in the future.  That is, for some reason or another, the chain of continuous interbreeding will be broken and the two species will, over geologic time, separate genetically to the point where all possibility of interbreeding will be gone.  At present, however, they are literally in the act of speciation.  I guess you don't realize this because you don't understand that the observable phenomenon of the gull/heron ring is the exact fulfilment of the prediction of evolutionary biology.  That is, from the theory of evolution, the prediction of how speciation occurs was made.  When scientists discovered the continuous line from black backs to herons (and other ring species, as well), they noted that the genes from these various populations were behaving exactly as predicted by the theory of evolution.

That's how science works.

The reason you don't see ring species from lizards to birds is twofold:  First, the common ancestor to lizards and birds was blown to smithereens by an asteroid 65 million years ago, and is extinct.  Once two species become incapable of interbreeding, the simple prediction is that they will move farther and farther away from each other in both morphology and genetic similarity.  For lizards and birds to get as far apart as they are, it took 65 million years, during which time, there have been thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of significant geological and ecological events which caused the extinction of intermediate species.  Natural selection makes far more mistakes than it has successes.  Estimates are that over 99% of "emerging species" go extinct before they can make an impact on the fossil record.

That's why it's so lucky that we have supercomputers and genes.  By examining the genome of various organisms, we can easily recreate the "tree of life" simply by noting genetic distance.  The "gaps" in the current menagerie of life are simply the evidence of extinct "intermediates."

Bob I hate the fact that atheist's always put forth the fallacious argument that if you reject this "scientific" method you have to reject all "scientific" methods. Let's be honest and admit that radiometric dating is unreliable for the most part. You have to make 2 or more assumptions when analyzing the results, so depending on where you lean (young earth or old earth) you're going to receive varying results (huge variances). As for geology, the methods often used by evolutionists are biased also using the debatable methods of radiometric dating to date the fossils found in particular layers in the earth and turning around to use the layers to date the fossils found in it (that's unintelligible circular reasoning). Explain why there exists variances in radiometric dating for us Bob. How in most cases when we know the actual age of some geological mass, radiometric dating gets it wrong. If it's wrong on things we know the age of, what about it gives us confidence that it's reliable when dating the age of earth we don't know about?

And I pointed out that it is relevant for the fact that evolutionary theory can't account for and proves impossible human intelligent, deductive reasoning, and all the rest, what's the point of all of it when this is true? You're employing the very thing that your theory destroys to prove the validity of macro evolution that relies on the assumption ("proven" by debatable dating methods) that the earth is billions of years old.

The burden of proof is actually on you. You have proposed that macro evolution is valid. I've taken a skeptics position and asked where is the proof. Your "proof" relies on evidence that requires a theory (evolution) that depends on assumptions (old earth) (all things physical) which together can't account for human intelligence, deductive reasoning, and all the rest (including morality and science). The old earth assumption itself is based on debatable dating methods and the assumption that all things are physical is impossible to know given your epistemology (that only things that are observationally verifiable or inferred by verifiable observation can be meaningful or valid); you're short sighted in a manner of speaking.

I see horses remain horse, I see gulls remain gulls, I see cats remain cats, and I see dogs remain dogs. Past recorded human history has experienced the same thing. What we haven't seen is horses, gulls, cats, and dogs be anything else than what they've always been.

You can use all the fancy terminology you want Bob, Christian scientists can do the same, they don't need to adopt or believe in evolution (what is evolutionary biology anyway - regular biology that is studied by evolutionists?) to find cures for recent strains of bacteria or viruses.

WOW! that was quite sneaky of you wasn't it Hamby. Asteroid impacted the earth 65 million years ago??? Not only do you sneak in the 65 million years but conveniently use this story to destroy all the supposed evidence ("intermediary forms&quot that could prove your theory.

what is this sham science that I'm reading? Didn't I say that earlier in this thread that evolution is nothing but theory that is based upon assumptions based on questionable/unreliable evidence/reason based upon more questionable assumptions, etc.

Real physical science is what can be proven with practical and/or observationally verifiable results.

What I see is blind superstitious speculation. Speculation that renders human intelligence impossible.

What's so "lucky" is that we have intelligence and a rational mind that the theory of evolution cannot account for but actually destroys if it's true.

______________________________________________________

Bob you sound like a some scientist, you should spend you life working to change a fruit fly or some bacteria into a rodent or an insect respectively. You should be able to speed up the process in a controlled lab environment; make it equivalent to hundred of thousands of years maybe or even more?

 Ok dude.  We're done.  You're not interested in learning or engaging in information exchange.  You're just ranting from ignorance.

If you want to have a discussion about evolution, learn about it from scientists.  If you still don't understand it after studying it, we'll talk.  As long as you're just listening to preachers and hack apologists, I have no time for you.  I've got better things to do than teach Evolution 101 to an unwilling student.

The theory of evolution is based on some of the basic 'mechanisms' or concepts which actually provide the only coherent and plausible path leading from the state as close as conceivable to 'nothing' to the 'higher' levels of complex structure, which in turn can support the kind of subtle and complex processes which manifest as 'things' like consciousness. Any 'explanation' which is not based on this idea of emergence, whereby complexity arises from simplicity, is inherently incapable of accounting for the existence of higher level things like life and mind - it just has to assume such things always existed.

We know that complexity can spontaneously arise from certain kinds of simpler structures, organization from disorder, as when crystals form out of solution, or galaxies out of clouds of hydrogen gas, so there is no logical inconsistency in the concept of emergence.

The inability to conceive that this process of emergence of ever more subtle and complex attributes can continue indefinitely is somewhat analogous to the inability to conceive of how a sequence of simple changes from generation to generation can lead to arbitrarily large changes relative to the starting point.

Mere 'stuff', whether the energy which is the ultimate constituent of subatomic particles, atoms, stars, molecules of DNA, living cells, brain cells, and so on, or the hypothetical 'immaterial' material of which the mind and body of God, or the 'soul', would presumably be made of, is impotent until structured.

Then you should realize that it is the specific structure and process, ie the pattern, both temporal and spatial, which is the essence of higher level entities and manifestations and qualities, not essence as some thing unto itself.  Like the old ideas of 'life-force' which was supposed to be uniquely present in living creatures, rather than life being due to a special structure and organization of 'ordinary' inanimate matter. Or at a simpler level, heat as a unique fluid called 'phlogiston', rather than the energy of motion of particles of matter.

For example, what gives all the chemical elements, from the light gaseous hydrogen to the dense metallic and radioactive uranium, their distinctive individual attributes, is not their fundamental components, but how those components are structured into nucleii of specific numbers of protons and neutrons. This is in contrast to the early concept of four elements - earth, air, fire, and water - which all physical substances were imagined to contain in varying amounts.

Now all physical elements are in turn seen as ultimately composed of differently structured energy. You can't make a chunk of uranium by just stirring up the appropriate numbers of electrons, neutrons, and protons together.

EDIT: Anyway, that's a start to addressing the issues other than evolution, laying out the fundamentals, as I see them.

Looks like you guys had some fun.

AiN, if you don't mind, I would like to reply to specific claims from your posts that I found interesting.

The vast majority of Christian biologists do acknowledge the validity of evolution. Based on this, I would say that Christians certainly don't need to deny evolution either.

I wonder, do you understand what's going on here?

In universities, laboratories, and research sites around the worlds, evolution is considered to be an overwhelmingly established fact and the unifying theory of biology; that's how strong the scientific community holds the evidence for evolution to be. Virtually all biologists accept evolution. When you make these statements to a biologist like DG or Yellow Number Five, from their perspective, it's comparable to mocking physicists that believe in gravity or chemists that believe in the periodic table.

You might think it's ridiculous, but consider the impasse we are in.

"Banana" is just an arbitrary label. Even if the organism undergoes dramatic change, if we call it a banana, then it's a banana.

Here is a wild banana:

You claim that this evidence is staring me in the face, but how do you even know this? You don't think dogs and cats and horses have been domesticated to the point where some pets are barely able to reproduce with their wild ancestors? You claim that evolutionists can't know that organisms evolved because you don't think there's any evidence, but you haven't even studied the evidence. You claim that evolution is impossible, but you don't even understand evolution. You don't have the faintest idea how genetics works or how the various mechanisms in the evolution algorithm are related or how many times researchers have observed speciation or the plethora of reliable dating methods or the richness of the fossil record.

And, furthermore...

...holy shit, your criteria for determining whether speciation has occurred is whether, based on your intuition, they still kind of look the same!? Can you establish a position that's not a complete ad hoc, argument from ignorance?

Seriously, before you take out the speck in someone else's eye, try taking out the log in your own.

the butterfly still looks like a butterfly and not a moth right?

the mice are still mice right and not gerbils?

...

the fruit fly is still a fruit fly right?, etc

Like I've said, How you go from this evidence to conclude that one cell organisms "evolved" into you and me is beyond me dude.

Even if I were to grant you that the earth is billions of years old you still can't explain why you and me aren't mindless complex biochemical "machines" "slaves" to our physical composition in what we "think" and do if evolution is true.

I would still have to conclude based on that and all man's intelligence has accomplished (so much more can be considered in the physical world) that the theory of evolution is still fairy tale because it would make man's intelligence impossible.

Real science is not a patchwork of unrelated and independent discoveries and/or theories that contradict it's own field or other fields of study. It's all interconnected. I'd wish you would understand that.

By all means please provide the evidence I didn't know that I shared the earth with other species of humans. This will be interesting.

There you go again Bob, moving ahead of yourself. Not only making everything physical in your thinking (an unproven assumption - impossible to prove especially given your epistemological position) but claiming to know the "physical" or "even "spiritual" "composition" of God or even the soul. Now would you know that? Did God communicate this to you?

First of all crystals are non living things. I think life itself (even a single cell organism) is more astonishing than that. Why haven't evolutionist biologist made a single cell organism out of raw chemicals?

Has man observed the galaxy form before his eye out of clouds of hydrogen gas or is this another conclusion derived from theory and speculatory assumptions?

The second part of what I quoted you say only further strengthens my argument regarding matter & energy + immutable laws = mindless biochemical "machines"

Now don't misinterpret what I'm saying here. I don't deny the observable evidence that you're providing me (I haven't denied that gulls and some other species of plants and animals observed no longer can breed or can breed only as a new "species&quot. I'm questioning your assumptions and your conclusions based on those assumptions regarding the theory of evolution.

If evolution only speaks about the changes that have been observed, I'm totally down with that. But evolution includes the belief that man evolved from a single cell organism and that is ridiculous to believe simply (but not only) for the fact that you and me think, reason, argue & debate, do science (even in its simplest form), make moral judgments, dream, can understand philosophy and poetry, and our "species" has invented the transistor, the super computer, and the iPhone G3.

And I'll say it again as I've said it before. Making assumptions is not anti science but it is, when its logical conclusions contradict what we observe and can verify in the physical world (in this case human intelligence).

Who am I kidding aside from human intelligence it's just down right silly - single cell organism evolving into a mouse even.

do you mean they see that mutations occur and can even result in animals "splintering" into two groups where the two separate still look almost exactly the same save for color or proportions of existing body parts, etc?

Or do they believe that single cell organisms eventually evolved into you and me?

if it's the former then I'm accusing you of simply playing word games. Just because the phrase "evolutionary biology" has the word evolution in it doesn't mean that the theory of evolution is true.

Is that how you hope to win an argument. Create fallacious conditions such as either accept evolution or reject physics and chemistry? Please butter. Let's be fair and weed out the sham "science" from the group.

for a minute there I thought you were going to show me an apple or orange.

I've already read the reasons and the evidence provided to make me doubt the reliability of radiometric dating methods (in the readings the method is explained, what must be assumed, etc). Please enlighten me with your understanding of the supposed reliability of radiometric dating. Using it to date the fossils and depending on where the fossils are found in the particular layers of the earth to date the earth, which in turn, often using the layers of the earth to date fossils, etc. Do you not see that this all depends on radiometric dating being accurate and reliable? Again explain to me why it's reliable and don't be hesitant to explain the difficulties faced when using them (i.e. the assumptions that must be used, etc).

what is that first picture of? a rat?

man that last one doesn't look like a dog, but if you say it is, I'll have to concede.

Dog, Dog, Cat!

Next thing you'll be telling me is that little people will soon be a separate species of man or that pygmies are actually a different species already.

Hey hambydammit! Is this the example you were referring to?

I did (EDIT: ) NOT claim to know the composition of God, or that everything is 'physical', rather that the distinction between the 'physical' and 'non-physical' substance is artificial - the basic laws of logic should apply to all, at least to anything we can actually hope to discuss coherently;  we can say nothing meaningful whatsoever about any concept which does not conform to basic logic.

My point was that crystallization is a clear example of a simple system in which orderly structures form out of disorder, with no hint of anything magical or supernatural or design involved. The orderly structure is a mathematical consequence of the simple but regular properties of the constituent atoms. Just in case you had any problems with spontaneous emergence of order from disorder, in principle.

Of course a living cell is vastly more complex, and involves reproduction, but many of the processes within the cell involve processes similar to crystallization. I was not making an analogy to cells, more to things like the formation of more complex molecules from simpler chemicals in the early origins of life. It has recently been shown that conditions entirely likely to have been present on early earth can allow early stages of the synthesis of RNA to occur, another significant step in unravelling a very complex sequence of events which left no trace of their intermediate steps.

As for the formation of galaxies, when we study the sky, we find millions of examples of galaxies, which are at all different stages of formation, so by analysing and comparing ones which appear to be of similar structure but either more or less 'condensed' toward what seems to be the form of mature galaxies, astronomers and cosmologists have been able to form a fairly complete picture of the process. 

So the answer is as close to a 'yes' as possible for a process taking millions of years.

Which would be irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. Which was that it is structure which determines 'higher' attributes of an entity, not the elementary bits or material of which it is composed, which is the fundamental missing component in your simple equation.

It would be more accurately phrased as:

matter/energy, behaving at the base level in regular, consistent patterns ('laws') + specific complex structures supporting particular complex processes => living organisms, including those capable of consciousness.

You assume that it is impossible, but I see no fundamental road-blocks in the path from basic nervous systems up to the ever greater complexity of organization required to support the complex processes which manifest those activities. We have mountains of evidence of the intimate association between even 'high-level' aspects of mind, and measurable brain activity. We can trace many aspects of our mentality, such as morality and original inventiveness and problem-solving in simpler but recognizable examples in other species, so the idea that as we evolved ever more complex brains, these capabilities emerged and grew is well justified to anyone well-informed on the subject and not burdened by obsolete assumptions and intuitions.

Hell, we are composed of precisely a collection of cells, which are specialized versions of those single-celled organisms you say we could not have evolved from, more evidence that simple components appropriately organized can display attributes utterly beyond those components individually,

Detecting and rejecting assumptions that contradict verifiable observations are of course a fundamental part of the scientific method. The existence of 'human intelligence' does not contradict any accepted assumptions of science. The conclusions of science do appear to contradict your assumptions, which should be a hint that it is time for you to re-examine them.

To repeat, there is no logical problem with indefinitely increasing emergence of ever higher levels of consciousness, altho there may well be some physical limitations: energy and other constraints will almost certainly cut in before we see 'brains the size of planets'.

Your ideas are somewhat silly, yes...

The genetic evidence for evolution is much more compelling than even the fossil record - it links singe-cells very closely to the cells in animals, with many hints at the evolutionary path by which the latter evolved. We see many examples in nature of intermediate stages between free living singe cells and fully integrated multi-cellular animals, in the form of more or less closely cooperating colonies of cells. So the path from cell to mouse is not really a fundamental problem in any way

Your determination to deny or at least cast doubt on these ideas, from stellar evolution to abiogenesis, to radiometric dating, to the emergence and basis of mind, which all form part of a generally well integrated and cross-checked structure of scientific knowledge, goes way beyond the inherent degree of tentativeness which should apply to all human knowledge once we get beyond "cogito ergo sum".

AiN, I think this site should answer many of your questions.

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/

I may have missed something here, so I apologise if this ground has been covered here.

Seeing as you mentioned them; cats and dogs.  Carnivorans evolved from the miacoids about 55 million years ago, they then split into caniforms and feliforms

So........... big cats, small cats, foxes, wolves, hyenas, dogs.  All once one common species.

M

Actually I think you will find we have addressed all of your 'problems' with evolutionary theory, however you have blindly ignored all of our arguments and evidence. 

I have some question for kirby which I'll post later

________________________________________________________

For Sinphanius and the rest:

I suppose any answer I give in the future should be "go and read it for yourself". First of all you haven't addressed the problem. Read my response again and answer. Respond to (1) and (2) properly. Again you still haven't furnished any evidence of a simple organism transforming over time into something complex. All you have is evidence of gulls splinting into more gulls, more fruit flies into more fruit flies, etc except for the unfortunate circumstance of not being able to produce offspring anymore.

The "proof" is from heavy inference of the physical evidence which  begs many questions and is contradictory to many things we can observe in the universe. The primary thing being human thoughts and actions. The "inference" is from the physical evidence and your theory of billions of years (based on questionable methods and reasoning) and the unprovable assumption of only physical things existing given your own epistemological position.

Explain how radiometric dating is reliable (explain what's involved and input that must be assumed). Also the other dating methods that arise from radiometric dating; the layers of the earth, etc.

And explain why all processes in the universe aren't involuntary given that this should be the case in a materialist universe.