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Science is proof that the Theory of Evolution is just as vacuous as the claim of anthrogenic clmate change.
Sorry, but this is complete nonsense. Who has the patience to listen to it? Nobody ever gives a direct answer to anything. Analogies to computers, which are “intelligently designed” amounts to assuming what you are trying to prove.
Do they discuss pandas and people?
You mean the book that was produced to get around the supreme court ruling that creationism couldnt be taught in schools?
That’s what I was alluding to, yes. Do a web search on the names of these people and it will lead you right to that. The case was Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Oh dear, do I have to waste my time on this.
Look, probaility of intelligent, or any, life developing almost zero. Size of the universe almost, if not actually, infinite, therefore probability of intelligent life developing randomly is unity.
Now, the eye has developed several times independently in different species/life forms. The argument from complexity is not recognized by this person.
In fact, I regard existance, let alone my personal life, as miraculous. It does not need an intelligence; to reduce the miracle to a matter of personal whim.
As to biological creation: Why does creation by God have to occur in only 6 days? Surely a creation that is eternally ongoing is much more profound, dare I say “God-like”?
I do not understand why proponents of god are repelled by genetics, which are demonstrable.
If I were a theist, I would embrace God’s eternal creation. Darwin and God are not in conflict.
Now, the eye has developed several times independently in different species/life forms.
It turns out that isn’t true. There are “master genes” that control the development of eyes (more generally, sensory tissue) and they’re universal across species.
The problem with this whole stupid argument is that at this point neither side is arguing the science.
Well, the genetic argument there is a little tricky because we have so much genetic commonality with all single-celled life forms, the eukaryotes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eukaryote; also the prokaryotes apparently. You can’t make this stuff up – yet.
BTW Read the history section in this Wikipedia entry, a Canadian link.
It is also tricky because I really don’t know much about the subject. I wasn’t trying to take sides here either; I was offering the fundamental theists a way out of the creationist hole by allowing that the creation continuously occuring could be the truly mysterious, and miraculous, work of God.
So we have a panel of three egg-heads that blah blah for an hour. Their burden is fill up the hour with egg-head talk and try not to say anything that sounds stupid or is offensive to their colleagues. So we end up with an hour of incoherent speculation about why Darwin was wrong about the origin of the species. The issue before the panel is, essentially: Do the different forms of life come about by random mutation? They all agree that it does not. And I agree with them. The problem is that they cannot succinctly explain their position. Let me put in my 2 cents.
When one is dealing with chance the question is: How many turns at the roulette wheel do we get in order to have an even money chance at achieving a certain outcome? A turn at the metaphorical roulette wheel can be considered an event. An event is when something moves. How many somethings (particles) are there in the universe? 10^80. What is the smallest possible distance that they can move? A Planck Length: 10^-35 m. How fast can they move? Speed of light: 10^9 m/sec. How long have they been doing this? 15 billion years or 10^17 secs. Total number of possible events when every particle in the universe moves at the speed of light over the smallest possible distance since the creation of the universe: 10^141. You can quibble but I’m telling you that this number is over the target.
Now the question is: what constitutes a win? Let’s have a hypothetical typewriter with 31 keys. I know that there are more but 31 is a good working number. Why? Because a random selection of striking a specific key correctly is 31 to 1. The odds of randomly striking two specific keys correctly in a row is 31 x 31 or 1 in a 1000 or 1^2 to 1. The odds of randomly striking 4 keys correctly in a row are 10^4 to 1.The odds of randomly striking 141 keys correctly are, bingo, 10^141 to 1. There’s your even money bet. Now do the DNA double helix.
But, you say, maybe the universe is a lot older and maybe there is some form of energy that is faster than the speed of light and maybe there are a lot more particles in the universe? And so on and so forth. So what? Calculate the odds of writing a book with 50,000 words with 6 keystrokes a word. And then go do the human DNA chain (3 billion base pairs).
“So we have a panel of three . . .”
. . . Discovery Institute shills.
Yes. Terrible.
Exactly. The discovery of the precise mathematics of inheritance ( DNA ) ended forever the chance of numerate people believing in the hypothesis ( there is no theory ) of evolution.
But belief in that hypothesis has provided comfort to secularists, and their control of the media have allowed them to prevent a rational discussion of the facts, including this core scientific fact: no theory is valid until proven experimentally.
Believers in evolution are secular monks of Dark ages thinking, who allow no discussion of evolution out of existential despair.
Dude, it’s the imprecision that allows genetic variation. No change, still in trees.
To blackfox
Err, no. Just no.
The prob calculation that assumes independent bases being added to a dna helix doesn’t apply. This is not a typist writing dna from scratch, but little chunks of dna being recombined in more or less random ways. Evolution does not mean somebody needs to write the OCA2 gene from scratch. It is passive reusing code in various pieces over and over again.
This is a very common misunderstanding on how to apply probability theory, and sadly showing how it is wrong is way more complex than explaining the wrong model like you just did.
I’m sorry guys, but I do believe Google is oppressing you, and I don’t like it, but, seriously, if you push creationism with arguments like this, I can’t help you.
Friend
What I wrote about was not presented as a model of how life began or evolved. It was presented as an example of the odds of life coming into existence randomly. It was not in any way arguing to advance a theory of Creationism. In discussing the role of intelligence in the creation of life we should not make the mistake of thinking that “intelligence” is an either/or phenomenon. Intelligence is simply information processing. This ability to process information had a beginning. From rudimentary beginnings intelligence evolved to what we observe today. Civilisation is not a random thing. It was designed. We know this because intelligence means nothing if it does not mean interfering with the natural order of things in a deliberate way.
Our DNA, in some way as yet unknown, interferes in the evolution of living things. While Darwinism goes some way to explain adaptation it does nothing to explain the origin of the species. I believe the answer to explain “punctuated equilibrium” will be that our supposedly unused DNA stores information from across the species until it reaches a tipping point and then something quite different emerges. This is just a hunch. It means nothing.
Because the laws of chance, which I tried to show, makes Darwinism or any theory of randomness in the creation of life statistically impossible, I believe that life as a product of intelligent design is incontestable. So the only question for me is: Did Intelligence (God?) create the universe or did the universe create intelligence. Personally, I’m in the latter camp.
Fake Science.
Make up a plausible model about evolution. Do some calculations. Compare reality to calculations. When your results don’t match reality claim, Darwin is wrong. There is a God. Everybody applaud my brilliance.
Real science: My model is wrong.
Similar Example: Model of World Trade Center collapse is building fails one floor at a time. Calculations: slow collapse and buildings inevitability build up some sideways motion during collapse. Reality: Buildings collapse quickly and fall into their own basement. Conclusion: “Bush had bombs in the foundation!”
Better Model. Shock waves from the collapse of three floors, one at a time travel down the building and are reflected back up from the rigid foundation. The intensity of the shock wave doubles upon reflection. At the third wave the foundations collapse and the buildings fall in on themselves.
People with bad models embarrass themselves.
Your random model is wrong. It is a red noise problem. Start with one self replicating molecule. Any mutation that dies is gone but one that still replicates competes with the original molecule. If it replicates faster, it takes over. Now a new mutation can take place. Everything is still very close to the original molecule. Successful mutations keep all the previous good molecular structure except for a small changes.
If you want to use the monkeys randomly typing, every time they get the a word right, its locked and the monkeys keep typing until they get the next word. You will have Shakespeare’s Hamlet by next year. All you need is a survival rule that fits Hamlet. This is a poor example as intelligence created Hamlet but it illustrates red noise.
It’s a good thing nobody reads my comments or they would have spotted a math error.
Third paragraph should read:
Now the question is: what constitutes a win? Let’s have a hypothetical typewriter with 31 keys. I know that there are more but 31 is a good working number. Why? Because a random selection of striking a specific key correctly is 31 to 1. The odds of randomly striking two specific keys (one pair) correctly in a row is 31 x 31 or 1 in a 1000 or 1^3 to 1. To get a 1 in 141 chance of winning we need 47 pairs or 94 correct keystrokes. There’s your even money bet. Now do the DNA double helix.
That living things are the product of ID is incontestable. That leaves the fundamental question as: What came first? Did Intelligence (God?) create the universe or did the universe create intelligence. Personally, I’m in the latter camp.
You didn’t read my post. We know the probability of “intelligent” life developing is 1; or are you trying to refute that fact by example 🙂
I listened to this and another more focussed discussion of same on the same podcast.
And while the math seems staggering they woefully understate how many “monkeys” there are out there banging away on typewriters.
I think Gould (rip) is correct – we have evolution interspersed with episodes of revolution. Much as we do in society – with the printing press, various wars and advances in medicine and telecom.
In the known universe there is estimated 1E+90 atoms. There have been 1E+17 seconds since the big bang. The odds of all the right chemicals aligning in right order in a simple life form is 1E+42,000. You do the math.
Where do you get the e + 42000 number?
Simply taking all the chemicals and putting them in the right order. I picked the middle number as I have seen it as low as 1E+40,000 to as high as 1E+45,000. There are a lot o potential misfires any one of which would have resulted in a non living chemical stew.
Don’t need to jump to a simple life form. Just an amino acid.
Life is more than a bunch of amino acids bumping into each other. Robert Heinlein. IOW amino acids are not life or even a simple life form.
But you build a brick wall with bricks – not grains of sand. Once you make amino acids then it’s easy to make RNA and then DNA. That’s why your math doesn’t work.
The problem Gord Tulk that not only do the amino acids need to develop. They need to develop to the stage they are useful to form a life form. Not easy when you consider the myriad of amino acids, foldable proteins etc required. Simply impossible to bring all those parts together at precisely the right time and in the space the size of a single cell. As James Tour points out the chemicals needed are not stable. They reach their ‘sweet spot’ and then continue to change. To use a rough analogy a nut only fits a bolt when it is the right size with the right threads. The bolt and the nut suddenly appear then grow and change thread pattern as they grow. Once they reach a certain size they begin to fall apart unless they are put together. So a bolt forms in southern Germany and a nut forms in Madagascar. They go through their phases. They simply fall apart because they never meet. Or the bolt forms 5 seconds sooner than the nut and the nut simply can not catch up in size and threading. Multiply that by all the amino acids/foldable proteins in a living cell and it soon becomes obvious to the impartial thinker that it simply can not happen. The problem with evolution is it isn’t science. It is religion.
precisely alberta.
pare it down from an acid molecule to a couple atoms of whatever that at some point wind up in a living organism.
I have tried and tried to follow the ‘logic’ that the exalted amino acids thing is the key.
it still comes out of the ‘black box’ the same way for instance the hue and cry about methane being proof of life somewhere.
that ‘logic’ tells us there is/was a manner of life on, oh, say Neptune with all it’s atmospheric methane.
similar to the re-re-re-repeated claims that oil and gas deposits deep in the earth are the result of rotted biomass from 100s of millions of years.
apparently all in the same spot.
conveniently trapped in the rock sose it then STAYS there.
and NOT perchance the result of *geological processes* far better at explaining for example the giganormous QUANTITIES . . . . . . found in the same spot.
etc etc
and then I realize lotsa folks on either side of the argument are prone to ignore certain inconveniences.
and a Q to mr tulk:
WHO is ‘building’ the brick wall?
hmmmm?
bricks just bunching togedder in the right sequence, location, type, size, etc . . . . . . . .
all by random chance too !!!! wheeee !!!!!
Well that’s totally bogus. Only a fraction of the “possible arrangements” are actually possible; and one may even, contraversialy, label “preferred”. It’s called energy levels, man.
For example, your approach includes the possibility of water running up-hill but that is not possible.
I for one consider it miraculous and wonderful that the inanimate universe, rocks, atoms, etc. can become self-conscious, eventually. Not literally, of course. But WE, well some at least, are conscious; and we ARE built of atoms, just as rocks are.
So what is life? Is it like Gord Tulk believes just a bunch of amino acids bumping into each other? Is it some sort of spontaneous combustion that started for no reason and exists for no reason? A Jewish fellow made this observation: In the beginning was nothing. Nothing happened to nothing for a very long time until for no reason whatsoever Nothing exploded and became everything. Much later some bits of everything, for no reason and without plan or pattern, got together and made dinosaurs. Evolution is religion not science. No one is allowed to question its fundamentals or they labeled ‘science deniers’. Such is the cult of scientism and it blue ribbon proof of everything PEER REVIEW.
“For example, your approach includes the possibility of water running up-hill but that is not possible”
That depends on how you look at the question. My first thought when I read this line was to ask how the Bay of Fundy fills up, or how else you would describe a dam filling. Even waves lapping on the short are going up-hill in a futile way that ultimately results in them returning to their previous level (unless overtopping of a bank occurs, then they’re somewhere else where the rules about previous level may not apply).
Only by proscribing a lot of the possibilities does blanket statement become true.
A neat analogy. It’s called “punctuated evolution”; we may be able to study it in real time with the next reversal of the Earth’s magnetic field.
A “ punctuated evolution “ hypothesis only works if there were moments when the rate of spontaneous mutation in genomes was super-charged, and biased so that the radical changes necessary for sight and other complexity were achieved. In other words, moments when a Creator was at work, defining all life.
The period since in your euphemism for Creation is the world we live in, where Mendelian genetics – the manipulation of large blocks of genetic code – is all that nature offers.
Nah it’s not worth it.
Both creationists and evolutionists are wrong. Humanity started when a drunk alien raped a monkey, UnMe is the best proof of that.
I’m here on behalf of drunk aliens and raped monkeys everywhere to vociferously protest such besmirchment.
Unme is obviously a mutant aberration claimed by no one!
Central to the Theory of Evolution is the idea of micro-evolution. That is, a fish doesn’t wake up one morning and says I want to go on land, so I’ll develop lungs to breathe air. No, for a fish to get on land, first it must be born in water, then develop land abilities. Then after a while it can be born on land and crawl. That is, before it develops legs.
Of course we are not talking about one fish, but presumably millions and millions of generations, each of which is so alike the previous generation that you cannot tell the difference, and yet the sum of which is the fish becomes a man.
They keep looking for fossil records of “the missing link”, as though finding that would prove man descended from apes. But there shouldn’t be one “missing link.” The idea of ape to “missing link” to man isn’t any better than the idea of ape to man. It still requires quantum leaps of changes. No, there ought to be millions of “missing links”, each with miniscule differences from the previous generation.
There just ain’t no such fossil records. How do fish eyes become reptilian eyes become mammalian eyes? Their similarity ends with all being optical organs. There ought to be creatures once whose eyes were .499999999 fish and .500000001 reptilian, whose parents had eyes with just the opposite ratio. And so on and so on. There just ain’t.
I think the Ferrari evolved from the ox cart. And in a way it did. But not by sheer accidents of unintentional mutation, but as the result of almost countless hours of “intelligent design.”
I have often wondered why the human race has not experienced radical and myriad micro-evolutions in the last 2,000 years. Other than extending our lifespans, while simultaneously getting fatter and more sedentary … man is the same organism we were 2,000 years ago. Abundant nutrition has made us a bit taller on average and the printing press has facilitated mass education which has elevated the average IQ of the human race … but where are the mutations? Where are the bio-baby-steps leading to a “new” humanoid species?
When you consider the mind numbing super-exponential technological and scientific advances made by mankind in the last 100-200 years … I am left dumbfounded that we have not biologically evolved or mutated in response to these changes. We haven’t really evolved in any way I am aware … despite the RADICAL changes in our environment. We’re still the same species from Biblical Times.
I think of this interms of the Babylonian baby from 5,000 years ago. They were genetically the same as our babies topday, 5,00 years is not long, but come the age of 14, what a difference would there be between the two.
“Put that cuneiform tablet down, kid, and go out and play in the sunshine.”
” We’re still the same species from Biblical Times.”
The Bethlehem LGBT…. Parade must of been interesting.
to the argument against strict evolution I add this:
if, IF evolution depends on countless occurrences of randomness to provide the ‘raw materials’ down which said evolution proceeds, should there not be, for instance, HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of RANDOM variations in the colour schemes of specific wild animals that do NOT cause survival difficulties? hmmmm?
aka how many shades are there of grizzly bear? how many clearly distinct enough differences in the brown colour of a grizzly coat?
hmmmm? only *one* of which is ‘ideal’ and ‘advantageous to the continuing reproduction of THAT line’? hmmmm?
over to you sarcasm/excuse factory evolutionists !!!!!
Micro happens all around us. All micro needs to turn into macro is time. Something creationist propagandists cannot comprehe d
So a dog becoming a whale is just a matter of time kind of like a T Rex becoming a canary. Gottcha. It is now very very clear. Psssst your belief is a religion not science.
What a childish argument.
Not at all. Evolutionists say that birds descended from dinosaurs and whales come from a land based creature about the size of a dog. Evolutionist’s arguments are childish not mine since I simply repeated what they said.
Leftists and atheists consider intelligent design impossible only because they refuse to admit how wise is the God of Israel Who created the heavens and the earth, and how their own stupidity and incompetence is matched only by their greed, vanity and cruelty.
Just because our masters ruin everything they touch doesn’t mean God wasn’t capable of creating something good.
Every healthy newborn baby boy is a creation of our Lord. Our masters are good at killing, but not at creating life—unless you count the genetically-engineered plagues currently under development in communist China’s biological weapons labs.
Despite our vanity and arrogance … we are still unable to add one cubit to our lives. See: Steve Jobs … and the newly dead Koch Bro.
Please get some help.
Why?
The argument re: proteins was interesting. Random mutations do almost always break something, I just didn’t know how large the “junk” space was compared to the “functional” space. 10^-77 is a lot of junk.
The one thing I didn’t see addressed in the video was self-assembling structures. Amino acids, the building blocks of life, are known to self-assemble if you get the precursors in a bottle and zap it with lasers or electricity. Meaning they come from nothing. They “just happen” on their own. In fact they have to happen. Cell membranes also self assemble out of precursors, I recall seeing an experiment where they made all different kinds by putting precursors in water and giving it a stir. So there’s two of the necessary structures for single cell organisms that literally happen on their own. How many more are there?
So it may be that the dice are loaded and “random” mutations aren’t random at all, they follow rules of self-assembly that we don’t know about yet. If that’s true, then the ball is back in Darwin’s court again.
Ah, somebody gets it. Many possibilities are just not possible. You cannot have NaCl3 only NaCl.
Seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it? We have the proof that it works in front of our faces. It works because it -has- to work, like an Archimedes screw. Nanotech research is turning up self assembling structures all the time.
That also means that anybody screwing with CRISPR right now is crazy. They have -no- idea how anything they do will turn out. None.
Try googling the best nanotechnologist in the world. His name is James Tour. He is on the side of ID not evolution. He can explain why much better than I.
Some of the people commenting here did not actually listen to the whole discussion.
I didn’t hear GOD mentioned once and the computer scientist says Darwin’s theory is ‘beautiful’.
Darwin had no access to the complicated math that has unlocked and explained modern genetics.
The math and Darwin’s theory are not in alignment.
Just a comment. Bruin, fossilization is somewhat of a random occurrence. We only get what we get. And we have found a large number of intermediate steps leading to Homo, and even thereafter steps leading to Homo Sapiens. And probably more steps to come, leading to that Omega Man of Teilhard de Chardin. Tiny steps, with random leaps. Who knows where it will end?
What has been found in the fossil record is a bunch of extinct species. We have ZERO transition species that can be positively identified as being transition species.
Joe, you are correct. The tortured arguments used to try and dismiss a Creator get to be way out there and sometimes quite funny.
Therein lies the flaw of your argument. There isnt transition species.. theres just species.
So a species comes into existence then dies out. Does it leave any descendants? If the whooping crane dies out tomorrow what species does it transition to? How about the white rhino?
Large number? What is a large number? Hundreds? Thousands?
According to Darwin you should find millions.
You are talking about the difficulties just finding fossils because it is “somewhat of a random occurrence”. Ha ha. But you expect millions of random occurrences somehow all conspiring to advance from a fish to a man.
And I am not necessarily just talking about fossils. I am talking about how all those millions of micro step creatures live long enough to go from fish to amphibian, but once they get to frog, they say yup our work is done, we can all die without a trace now. And so on and so on.
And somehow that belief is supposed to be scientific?
Well said.
OB:
preCISELY.
the evos IGNORE the fact that so many of the ‘variations’ should STILL be around, not the ‘royally endowed exclusive one’.
so where are they? all dem successful but slightly diff variations?
crickets . . . . .
Darwin never made any predictions for how many fossils you will find in the record.
However he did say that if his theory was not proven in 100 years it likely was false. It has been 160 years and there still is no proof or even strong evidence that evolution is a fact. Strange that every argument that supports evolution supports ID even stronger.
There are a number of videos out that clearly show that abiogenesis/evolution/materialism is nonsense. As the author of Biochemical Predestination points out, In the history of the world there might have been one or two complex proteins spontaneously generate. However even the most simple life form has magnitudes of complex proteins in it and in order for it to exist all those complex proteins had to be in space the size of single cell. Whats more as James Tour the preeminent biochemist in the world points out the chemicals have to be added at exactly the right time and the right proportion at exactly the right stage of development. IOW there is no chance evolution could ever get started.
Great now apply that same logic to creationism
My impressions: This is what Science sounds like when it’s being discussed responsibly, with adherence to the scientific method. If one finds it boring, then perhaps some self-challenge would be beneficial. It’s not television or a Live Concert. They are not professional personalities. These are respected scientists / thinkers who are trying to understand why the Darwin hypothesis doesn’t work when they do the math. They are not rejecting all of Darwin’s ideas, and in fact endorse many of them. And one gets the sense that they would like to figure out where they are wrong and what they are missing, in order to defend it. But the math doesn’t add up, and until it does, the hypothesis is unproven and reject-able on that basis.
Yet lawyers successfully argued all the way to the US Supreme Court that Darwinian evolution shall be taught as … settled science. I assure you that no discussions were held in those Judges deliberations that come even close to this scientific/mathematical discussion of Darwinism. Shame. It’s a shame that lawyers (professional bullshitters) get to … settle the science.
Thank you, Aggie.
The greatest mistake those who criticize evolutionary theory (or “Darwinism” as it is quaintly referred to) make is the failure to recognize that evolution is not completely random. If it were completely random, the probability of even a single-cell organism appearing would be far too unlikely. But there is a catch mechanism that locks in those random changes that happen to be beneficial to life, and that mechanism is natural selection. Think of it as the backwards-pointing teeth of a fish, which allows prey to move towards the throat but not away from it. Often the beneficial change is in the direction of greater complexity.
Bingo ! Natural Selection is the opposite of random. It’s a paradigm of “facts don’t care about your feelings”.
It is decisive, brutally so, and yesterdays selection may not be tomorrows. Today, may always be your last.
Evolution, sometimes, it’s a slow process, other times, incredibly fast.
Consciousness in humans, the awareness of being and nothingness is profound. It generates our cultures, which is a search for understanding the difference between being and nothingness.
It’s a search for meaning within the context of mortality.
I watched the debate last week… They make a good case & admit that intelligent design can’t be fully defined. .. Somethings are missing/not understood…. IMHO Darwin doesn’t factor chance, or luck in his theory….What if the best all died off by accident and the worst (fit) survived…. You get what you get…
BTW: The unit of Time has been defined by Mankind… (One day in Universe Time could have been 1 million man years)
“….What if the best all died off by accident and the worst (fit) survived….”
Then first the oxygen breathers and then the mammals evolve to take over the world. Accidental destruction of the “the best” has happened on a global scale a number of times. “The best” is not an absolute, it is relative to the environment and the extant living organisms. Evolution is not a master plan striving for a goal. It’s a just a process. So long as there is life that lives, reproduces and dies the process continues.
It isn’t like a watch. It’s like a stew.
Check out the Seventy-five theses.
There is no point trying to argue people out of their faith. What good would it do anyway? The arguments are nonsense, but it’s a tall order to get someone to see that who is not willing to make an honest effort to understand why.
The fact that you can take this comment two ways is proof.
“Sorry, but this is complete nonsense. Who has the patience to listen to it?
There is no point trying to argue people out of their faith.The arguments are nonsense”
Please show us where they have gone wrong. The ‘nonsense’.
Aggie’s comment makes sense to me:
“thinkers who are trying to understand why the Darwin hypothesis doesn’t work when they do the math”
I find it hilarious the references of evolution being “unsettled science” “unbelievable” “evolution is nomsense”. Yet we have mounds of evidence that is ignored by these same people. The absolutely incredible fossil record – which contains a sliver of a fraction of all life that had existed on earth – is ignored. Just one example. How about humans having descended from a common ancestor of current day primates? Big issue with that, but no issie with being descended from dirt. Yet these same people have no issue with:
– Humans being descended from a single couple. No issues with the obvious lack of genetic diversity
– bibles claim that people used to live 800 years. We have zero proof.
– two pairs of each animal on earth was collected within weeks and placed on a boat. Clear logisitical issues, genetic diversity issues, not to mention lack of earthly water volume issues. Many other issues too
– Earth being only approx 6000 years old yet theres mounds of evidence to the contrary including the many layers of strata and volcanic layers. We know the stars are many billions of years old or we wouldnt be seeing their light.
– resurrection
– some dude walking on water
On and on and on…
Do you realize that in poo-pooing “Humans being descended from a single couple. No issues with the obvious lack of genetic diversity” you’re making the argument that any single-source of life would mean that all life is hopelessly inbred? Think about it a little, the children/descendants of first sexual combination to make offspring would only have their parents or their siblings with which to make more offspring. Somehow, it worked.
The rest of your list shows what happens when a blinding flash of insight has to go through generations as oral history before being written down. And where did the blinding flash of insight come from? How could the ancient Hebrew tribes have known that right after the Big Bang all was energy and light, until it cooled and spread far enough that light and dark (or matter and void) could be separated from each other, as the first stage in the development of the universe leading to now?
Something which has always intrigued me and which unfortunately wasn’t addressed in the video is the role of entities such as viruses and prions as agents of mutation and transmission of genetic code e.g. phage virus and e coli. Could the cambrian explosion have been the result of a super virus or series of super viruses accelerating the process of mutation? Could what we see in the quotidian sense as, in the majority of instances, being only annoying agents of disease in fact be critical agents of evolutionary change? I found their discussion very interesting, especially the reinforcement of the issue of the numbers not adding up i.e. natural selection could work at the micro level of evolution but not at the macro level. At the macro level, another agent must be invoked.
The thing that bothers everybody about the Cambrian is the body plans. There were animals alive then that don’t match what we have now, and some that do. Insect body plan, notochord body plan, mollusk body plan, but also weird things that don’t fit.
How does one come up with that many different body plans in that short a time? Clearly not by random chance. Therefore there is a factor we don’t know about, that is not included under Darwin.
And by the way. For y’all shouting GOD!!! at me right now, yes, we know. The problem with using God as an explanation is that it stops the investigation. Yes, fine, God did it. But HOW did he do it? What did he do? That’s the question. So you can relax and stop barking.
For those who are in the Christian European tradition I think that asking “why” is as important as “how”. If there is a purpose to/for us, then these now extinct creatures must have had a purpose too.
Further to this, if there is no purpose, then why go on? This is why the formerly Christian nations of Europe no longer have break-even or growth birthrates. If there’s nothing bigger than yourself to work towards, then why bother continuing? Why “waste” all the time and effort to have and properly raise kids when your life can be one long party?
“At the macro level, a other agent must be invoked”
Time.
I enjoyed the discussion enough to watch another similar interview of Berlinsky, that appeared on the side of the YouTube page.
Quite an interesting character…
That’s why the discussion is pointless. It’s impossible to disprove the existence of an omnipotent being because that being could easily be behind whatever process we identify.
We have the “law of fossil succession” which is one of the ways geologists determine the age of rocks. They have other ways too, using certain unstable isotopes that work like carbon dating, but over much longer time scales. This isn’t guesswork, it’s science that matches up to our understanding of the beta decay of certain elements, stuff that can be proven in the lab and applied in the field.
Creationism has no problem with extinction, but what about the new fossils that continually appear over billions of years. If you find a mammal fossil, you know the rock is less than 200 odd million years old, and you can match test this finding with other methods that are known to the point that it’s just engineering now.
There are types of fossils known as “index fossils” that are known to have existed for short times, appeared and disappeared, and if you find them, you precisely date the rock you are examining.
Now the answer is that God is tinkering with His creation over the billions of years. Fine. That can’t be disproven, but it’s faith, nothing more. One thing any philosopher should understand is the extreme difficulty in proving a negative, and asserting that random DNA mutations cannot lead to differentiation at the species level is to assert a negative. It’s the most likely explanation.
BTW, I have nothing against Christianity. I just don’t like college professors teaching lousy logical techniques.