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"Magic and Make Believe"> Now let's get away from Brown who doesn't really undersstand much of anything and head for some verifiable peer reviewed paperes.

Ted;1513132 wrote: "Magic and Make Believe"> Now let's get away from Brown who doesn't really undersstand much of anything and head for some verifiable peer reviewed paperes.


Scientists confirm Brown's conclusions. For example:



Scott Tremaine, David Stevenson, William R. Ward, Robin M. Canup, Fred Hoyle, Michael J. Drake, Kevin Righter, George W. Wetherill, Richard A. Kerr, Luke Dones, B. Zuckerman, Renu Malhotra, David W. Hughes, M. Mitchell Waldrop, Larry W. Esposito, Shigeru Ida, Jack J. Lissauer, Charles Petit, P. Lamy, L. F. Miranda, Rob Rye, William R. Kuhn, Carl Sagan, Christopher Chyba, Stephen W. Hawking, Don N. Page, Huw Price, Peter Coles, Jayant V. Narlikar, Edward R. Harrison, Govert Schilling, Eric J. Lerner, Francesco Sylos Labini, Marcus Chown, Adam Riess, James Glanz, Mark Sincell, John Travis, Will Saunders, H.C. Arp, Gerard Gilmore, Geoffrey R. Burbidge, Ben Patrusky, Bernard Carr, Robert Irion, Alan H. Guth, Alexander Hellemans, Robert Matthews, M. Hattori, Lennox L. Cowie, Antoinette Songaila, Chandra Wickramasinghe, A. R. King, M. G. Watson, Charles J. Lada, Frank H. Shu, Martin Harwit, Michael Rowan-Robinson, P.J. E. Peebles, Joseph Silk, Margaret J. Geller, John P. Huchra, Larry Azar, J.E. O’Rourke, Peter Forey, J. L. B. Smith, Bryan Sykes, Edward M. Golenberg, Jeremy Cherfas, Scott R. Woodward, Virginia Morell, Hendrick N. Poinar, Rob DeSalle, Raúl J. Cano, Tomas Lindahl, George O. Poinar, Jr., Monica K. Borucki, Joshua Fischman, John Parkes, Russell H. Vreeland, Gerard Muyzer, Robert V. Gentry, Jeffrey S. Wicken, Henry R. Schoolcraft, Thomas H. Benton, Bland J. Finlay, Peter R. Sheldon, Roger Lewin, A. C. Noé, Henry H. Hsieh etc.

The above scientists were quoted from the following peer review science journals:

American journal of science

Astronomical journal

Astrophysics and space science

Astrophysical journal

Bioscience

Geology

Icarus

Journal of Geology

Journal of Theoretical Biology

Nature

New scientist

Physics Today

Physical review

Physical review d

Physical review letters

Science

Space science reviews

One can say just about anything read out of context. They also have to be among the list of scientifically recognized persons in the world wide group of scientists. There are of coursed many wannabees in the world as well. They have to be recognized by the world s recognized scientists. One can even use the Bible to justify war crimes, murder,slavery, and a host of other crimes.

Just looked up Alan Hl. Guth. He is a particole physicict. Taken out of ****text one can say just about anything. Not even a good joke.

Canup[ shows no training in the required field. In fact his is a control management person. Catlow is not in that field of expertise. Pahu You just gave another list without any knowledge of these folks.. This is not good enough. Are you a wannabee? Hellemans is a quantum physicist. Another name listed without any knowledge of the scientist.You are a joke. Geller is an astrophysicist Not the right field of expertise. These people may not even know that Brown exists.

Ted;1513135 wrote: One can say just about anything read out of context. They also have to be among the list of scientifically recognized persons in the world wide group of scientists. There are of coursed many wannabees in the world as well. They have to be recognized by the world s recognized scientists. One can even use the Bible to justify war crimes, murder,slavery, and a host of other crimes.


For example?

Rowan-Robinson is an astrophysicist.

This whole thread is a joke. Your turn now.

Researched "evolution scientists". Got a religious site that clearly said most scientists believe in evolution and old earth. Interesting!!Q!!!!!!

Evolution

Evolution is among the most substantiated concepts in science and is the unifying theory of biological science. Charles Darwin co-originated, with Alfred Russel Wallace, the theory of evolution by natural selection. His masterwork, the 1859 "Origin of Species," offered ample evidence for evolution having occurred, as well as the first strong explanation for its mechanism, natural selection. Modern evolutionary theory incorporates these concepts: species change over time; genetic mutations are responsible for the changes; individuals with beneficial genetic mutations will survive preferentially compared with their competitors, in a process known as natural selection; those successful individuals' more numerous offspring will spread the beneficial genetic constructs throughout the population; when enough genetic changes reproductively isolate a population, that population has become a new species. Here you'll find news and information on evolution and the battle with proponents of so-called creation science.



From live science on the internet.

The Cambrian Explosion 3



Evolution predicts that minor variations should slowly accumulate, eventually becoming major categories of organisms. Instead, the opposite is found. Almost all of today’s plant and animal phyla—including flowering plants (c), vascular plants (d), and vertebrates (e)—appear at the base of the fossil record.

c. “... it is well known that the fossil record tells us nothing about the evolution of flowering plants. Corner, p. 100.

A. K. Ghosh and A. Bose, “Occurrence of Microflora in the Salt Pseudomorph Beds, Salt Range, Punjab, Nature, Vol. 160, 6 December 1947, pp. 796–797.

A. K. Ghosh, J. Sen, and A. Bose, “Evidence Bearing on the Age of the Saline Series in the Salt Range of the Punjab, Geological Magazine, Vol. 88, March–April 1951, pp. 129–133.

J. Coates et al., “Age of the Saline Series in the Punjab Salt Range, Nature, Vol. 155, 3 March 1945, pp. 266–267.

Clifford Burdick, in his doctoral research at the University of Arizona in 1964, made discoveries similar to those cited in the four preceding references. [See Clifford Burdick, “Microflora of the Grand Canyon, Creation Research Society Quarterly, Vol. 3, May 1966, pp. 38–50.] Burdick was denied a doctor’s degree at the University of Arizona because of these discoveries. [See Jerry Bergman, “Clifford Burdick: Unjustly Expelled Twice, Parts I and II, Creation Matters, September/October and July/August 2010.

d. S. Leclercq, “Evidence of Vascular Plants in the Cambrian, Evolution, Vol. 10, No. 2, June 1956, pp. 109–114.

e. John E. Repetski, “A Fish from the Upper Cambrian of North America, Science, Vol. 200, 5 May 1978, pp. 529–531.

“Vertebrates and their progenitors, according to the new studies, evolved in the Cambrian, earlier than paleontologists have traditionally assumed. Richard Monastersky, “Vertebrate Origins: The Fossils Speak Up, Science News, Vol. 149, 3 February 1996, p. 75.

“Also, the animal explosion caught people’s attention when the Chinese confirmed they found a genus now called Yunnanzoon that was present in the very beginning. This genus is considered a chordate, and the phylum Chordata includes fish, mammals and man. An evolutionist would say the ancestor of humans was present then. Looked at more objectively, you could say the most complex animal group, the chordates, were represented at the beginning, and they did not go through a slow gradual evolution to become a chordate. Paul Chien (Chairman, Biology Department, University of San Francisco), “Explosion of Life, www.origins.org/articles/chien_explosionoflife.html, p. 3. Interviewed 30 June 1997.

“At 530 million years, the 3-centimeter-long Haikouichthys appears to be the world’s oldest fish, while another new specimen, Myllokunmingia, has simpler gills and is more primitive. To Conway Morris and others, the presence of these jawless fish in the Early Cambrian suggests that the origin of chordates lies even farther back in time. Erik Stokstad, “Exquisite Chinese Fossils Add New Pages to Book of Life, Science, Vol. 291, 12 January 2001, p. 233.

“The [500] specimens [of fish] may have been buried alive, possibly as a result of a storm-induced burial....The possession of eyes (and probably nasal sacs) is consistent with Haikouichthys being a craniate, indicating that vertebrate evolution was well advanced by the Early Cambrian. D. G. Shu et al., “Head and Backbone of the Early Cambrian Vertebrate Haikouichthys, Nature, Vol. 421, 30 January 2003, pp. 527, 529.

D. G. Shu et al., “Lower Cambrian Vertebrates from South China, Nature, Vol. 402, 4 November 1999, pp. 42–46.

[From “In the Beginning by Walt Brown]

Pahu;1513253 wrote:

The Cambrian Explosion 3



Evolution predicts that minor variations should slowly accumulate, eventually becoming major categories of organisms. Instead, the opposite is found. Almost all of today’s plant and animal phyla—including flowering plants (c), vascular plants (d), and vertebrates (e)—appear at the base of the fossil record.

...




Actually, all Evolution "predicts" is that organisms will change and adapt in response to changes in their environment.

LarsMac;1513254 wrote: Actually, all Evolution "predicts" is that organisms will change and adapt in response to changes in their environment.


You don't expect Pahu to actually have a clue about what he's talking about, do you? He thinks that Evolution is about Dogs turning into Cats, or vice versa & believes that the inability to interbreed them is proof of no existence of Evolution. It's like saying that when Red & Blue are mixed together they make Purple, therefore that is proof that Green doesn't exist. Furthermore, not only does he not understand anything about the subject, he never even argues the point. He merely repeatedly pastes the same old debunked rubbish. Other forums would have (and have done) banned him for flooding.

Hey our son had a cat named dog. Is that helpful??? LOL

Sunday night past there was a national Geographic film on an unknown civilization in Africa. The dating systems put them at least alive 10 000 years ago. Two groups were found. So much for Bishop Usher.

The Cambrian Explosion 4



Many more phyla are found in the Cambrian than exist today (f). Complex species, such as fish (g) worms, corals, trilobites, jellyfish (h) sponges, mollusks, and brachiopods appear suddenly, with no sign anywhere on earth of gradual development from simpler forms. Insects, a class comprising four-fifths of all known animal species (living and extinct), have no known evolutionary ancestors (i). Insects found in supposedly 100-million-year-old amber look like those living today (j). The fossil record does not support evolution (k).

f. “Compared with the 30 or so extant phyla, some people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as many as 100. Roger Lewin, “A Lopsided Look at Evolution, Science, Vol. 241, 15 July 1988, p. 291.

“A simple way of putting it is that currently we have about 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla discovered during that period of time [Cambrian] (including those in China, Canada, and elsewhere) adds up to over 50 phyla. That means more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first fossils [of animal life], than exist now.

“Stephen Jay Gould has referred to this as the reverse cone of diversity. The theory of evolution implies that things get more complex and get more and more diverse from one single origin. But the whole thing turns out to be reversed—we have more diverse groups in the very beginning, and in fact more and more of them die off over time, and we have less and less now. Chien, p. 2.

“It was puzzling for a while because they [evolutionary paleontologists] refused to see that in the beginning there could be more complexity than we have now. What they are seeing are phyla that do not exist now—that’s more than 50 phyla compared to the 38 we have now. Ibid., p. 3.

g. “But whatever ideas authorities may have on the subject, the lung-fishes, like every other major group of fishes that I know, have their origins firmly based in nothing, a matter of hot dispute among the experts, each of whom is firmly convinced that everyone else is wrong...I have often thought of how little I should like to have to prove organic evolution in a court of law. Errol White, “A Little on Lung-Fishes, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, Vol. 177, Presidential Address, January 1966, p. 8.

“The geological record has so far provided no evidence as to the origin of the fishes... J. R. Norman, A History of Fishes, 3rd edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975), p. 343.

“All three subdivisions of the bony fishes first appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time. They are already widely divergent morphologically, and they are heavily armored. How did they originate? What allowed them to diverge so widely? How did they all come to have heavy armor? And why is there no trace of earlier, intermediate forms? Gerald T. Todd, “Evolution of the Lung and the Origin of Bony Fishes—A Causal Relationship? American Zoologist, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1980, p. 757.

h. Cloud and Glaessner, pp. 783–792.

i. “There are no fossils known that show what the primitive ancestral insects looked like...Until fossils of these ancestors are discovered, however, the early history of the insects can only be inferred. Peter Farb, The Insects, Life Nature Library (New York: Time, Inc., 1962), pp. 14–15.

“There is, however, no fossil evidence bearing on the question of insect origin; the oldest insects known show no transition to other arthropods. Frank M. Carpenter, “Fossil Insects, Insects (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 18.

j. “For the most part, an ant living 100 million years ago looks like an ant today. Paul Tafforeau, as quoted by Amy Barth, Discover, July/August 2009, p. 38.

k. “If there has been evolution of life, the absence of the requisite fossils in the rocks older than the Cambrian is puzzling. Marshall Kay and Edwin H. Colbert, Stratigraphy and Life History (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965), p. 103.

[From “In the Beginning by Walt Brown]

Pahu;1513370 wrote:

The Cambrian Explosion 4



Many more phyla are found in the Cambrian than exist today (f). Complex species, such as fish (g) worms, corals, trilobites, jellyfish (h) sponges, mollusks, and brachiopods appear suddenly, with no sign anywhere on earth of gradual development from simpler forms. Insects, a class comprising four-fifths of all known animal species (living and extinct), have no known evolutionary ancestors (i). Insects found in supposedly 100-million-year-old amber look like those living today (j). The fossil record does not support evolution (k).

f. “Compared with the 30 or so extant phyla, some people estimate that the Cambrian explosion may have generated as many as 100. Roger Lewin, “A Lopsided Look at Evolution, Science, Vol. 241, 15 July 1988, p. 291.

“A simple way of putting it is that currently we have about 38 phyla of different groups of animals, but the total number of phyla discovered during that period of time [Cambrian] (including those in China, Canada, and elsewhere) adds up to over 50 phyla. That means more phyla in the very, very beginning, where we found the first fossils [of animal life], than exist now.

“Stephen Jay Gould has referred to this as the reverse cone of diversity. The theory of evolution implies that things get more complex and get more and more diverse from one single origin. But the whole thing turns out to be reversed—we have more diverse groups in the very beginning, and in fact more and more of them die off over time, and we have less and less now. Chien, p. 2.

“It was puzzling for a while because they [evolutionary paleontologists] refused to see that in the beginning there could be more complexity than we have now. What they are seeing are phyla that do not exist now—that’s more than 50 phyla compared to the 38 we have now. Ibid., p. 3.

g. “But whatever ideas authorities may have on the subject, the lung-fishes, like every other major group of fishes that I know, have their origins firmly based in nothing, a matter of hot dispute among the experts, each of whom is firmly convinced that everyone else is wrong...I have often thought of how little I should like to have to prove organic evolution in a court of law. Errol White, “A Little on Lung-Fishes, Proceedings of the Linnean Society of London, Vol. 177, Presidential Address, January 1966, p. 8.

“The geological record has so far provided no evidence as to the origin of the fishes... J. R. Norman, A History of Fishes, 3rd edition (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1975), p. 343.

“All three subdivisions of the bony fishes first appear in the fossil record at approximately the same time. They are already widely divergent morphologically, and they are heavily armored. How did they originate? What allowed them to diverge so widely? How did they all come to have heavy armor? And why is there no trace of earlier, intermediate forms? Gerald T. Todd, “Evolution of the Lung and the Origin of Bony Fishes—A Causal Relationship? American Zoologist, Vol. 20, No. 4, 1980, p. 757.

h. Cloud and Glaessner, pp. 783–792.

i. “There are no fossils known that show what the primitive ancestral insects looked like...Until fossils of these ancestors are discovered, however, the early history of the insects can only be inferred. Peter Farb, The Insects, Life Nature Library (New York: Time, Inc., 1962), pp. 14–15.

“There is, however, no fossil evidence bearing on the question of insect origin; the oldest insects known show no transition to other arthropods. Frank M. Carpenter, “Fossil Insects, Insects (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1952), p. 18.

j. “For the most part, an ant living 100 million years ago looks like an ant today. Paul Tafforeau, as quoted by Amy Barth, Discover, July/August 2009, p. 38.

k. “If there has been evolution of life, the absence of the requisite fossils in the rocks older than the Cambrian is puzzling. Marshall Kay and Edwin H. Colbert, Stratigraphy and Life History (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1965), p. 103.

[From “In the Beginning by Walt Brown]


What you have here is a list of quotes from people who simply don't understand the simplicity of evolution or of Life in general, for that matter.

Evolution does not mean that life will always change for the better.

It just means life forms will change to adapt to the environment, unless the environmental changes are too abrupt to allow such change to take place. Oddly enough, those abrupt environmental changes are the ones from which a majority of the fossils are produced. And it also means that if a life form is able to continue through all the changes in its environment it will continue, relatively unchanged.

Just think about that for a moment.

LarsMac;1513374 wrote: What you have here is a list of quotes from people who simply don't understand the simplicity of evolution or of Life in general, for that matter.

Evolution does not mean that life will always change for the better.

It just means life forms will change to adapt to the environment, unless the environmental changes are too abrupt to allow such change to take place. Oddly enough, those abrupt environmental changes are the ones from which a majority of the fossils are produced. And it also means that if a life form is able to continue through all the changes in its environment it will continue, relatively unchanged.

Just think about that for a moment.


But the fact remains all those changes happened suddenly with no ancestors, which disproves evolution.

Pahu;1513377 wrote: But the fact remains all those changes happened suddenly with no ancestors, which disproves evolution.


There is no such fact.

LarsMac;1513380 wrote: There is no such fact.


Then why do scientists say there is? For example:

Cambrian Explosion Disproves Evolution

Introduction

One of the most remarkable pieces of evidence disproving evolution is the “Cambrian Explosion Most textbooks never mention it, and the ones that do relegate it to a short phrase or paragraph as if it is some insignificant detail. This phenomenon is so pronounced in the fossil record that Scientific American called it “life’s big bang. It is considered one of the biggest challenges to evolutionary theory. Many reputable and highly accomplished scientists at major accredited universities worldwide say it is an insurmountable challenge. Moreover, I believe it is proof that evolution is merely a widely held myth of popular culture.

Cambrian Explosion

“Cambrian explosion refers to the great quantity and diversity of life found in what is called the Cambrian layer of the geologic column. The Cambrian age in the geologic time scale is dated by scientists as being about 530 million years old. What is really interesting is not just what is found in this layer, but what is found in the layers above it, and what is not found in layers under it. The Cambrian layer has virtually every phyla known to man. Yes, all major body plans and enormous varieties of each all coexist in this layer. No evolutionary sequence here, they are all coexistent simultaneously.

Layers Above and Below

Remarkably the layers below the Cambrian have practically nothing with regard to fossilized specimens. The few creatures that are found in pre-Cambrian strata are all soft-bodied organisms like worms. So essentially you have nothing along the lines of organic complexity and diversity pre-Cambrian, and then suddenly everything. But wait, it gets even more interesting. To compound this huge problem the number of species fossilized in the layers above the Cambrian period gradually decrease with each successive layer. Once you reach the most recent layers approximately 98% of every thing that has ever lived is extinct. Have you ever heard that 98% of everything that has ever lived is extinct? This is where that saying came from—hard scientific fact. A reasonable and honest person must conclude from the evidence that the fossil record is diametrically opposite what would be predicted by evolutionary theory. It is noteworthy that these conclusions are derived from a geologic time framework that is put forth by scientists own interpretation of geologic evidence. In fact, the belief that the strata represent different geologic ages is just that, a belief. Nevertheless, it is a belief held among scientists world-wide.

Darwin Knew

Darwin and his contemporaries were aware of this problem with the fossil record some 150 years ago, but they believed that the fossil record had been insufficiently sampled up to that time. Their “belief was that paleontological research in the future would more adequately sample the fossil record and show it to be more in line with evolutionary theory. They were wrong! Exactly the opposite happened. After a century and half of excavating fossils from the strata we have found the problem to be worse, not better. Contrary to the tree of life depicted in the school books, the fossil record depicts exactly the opposite story. The tree of life is an inverted cone, and not a tree at all.

No Correlation

Remember, evolutionary theory states that everything evolved from a common ancestor that climbed out of the primordial soup. This ancient ancestor gradually evolved. Its evolutionary progress branched out into different paths and these different paths led to the creation of increasingly complex and divergent organic forms. The paths continued to branch out resulting in the great diversity of life we have today. Now, if this is true, what would you expect to see in the fossil record? Of course you would expect to see simple organisms in the lowest layers and a gradual increase in diversity and complexity of life as you progress to more recent layers in the geologic time scale. But what do we really find in the fossil record? We find the exact opposite. Not something ambiguous like everything found in each layer. No, you find the exact opposite of what is predicted by evolution. From a correlation perspective you do not find a factor of 1, meaning perfect correlation, or a 0, meaning no correlation, you find a -1, meaning perfectly uncorrelated to the prediction. Now I don’t know about you, but I find this compelling proof that evolution did not happen. This begs the question, how much proof do evolutionary scientists need anyway?

Belief In Spite of Evidence

You must be saying to yourself at this point, “How could that be? How could they speak about this theory with such surety with such strong evidence to the contrary? The answer is simple. They believe the theory in spite of the evidence. That is why many leading creation scientists keep referring to evolution as a philosophy of science or even a religion. This belief is so strong in academic circles that scientists are chided if they even question evolution publicly. Why are they ridiculed? They are ridiculed because the only alternative to evolution is creation. Some like to pretend there are a variety of options in explaining origins. This is simply not so. The options often presented are merely shades of the two primary options, and scientists know this.

Conclusion

If evolution did not take place, if the natural forces at work today did not create the diversity of life we see on our little blue world, then something supernatural must be responsible. True science seeks to understand, no matter what the philosophical or metaphysical ramifications may be. That is why evolution is not science, but rather a philosophy, for it seeks to explain things within only one possible framework, whether or not this framework is true. The facts are that the scientists' own interpretation of the fossil record clearly demonstrates that every species appeared at once suddenly and then gradually died off with the passage of time. The significance of this great body of evidence against evolutionary theory in the fossil record cannot be stressed enough. It is utterly devastating to evolutionary theory completely by itself. But in the final analysis, it is but one of a plethora of scientific facts that refute the 19th century fable that is evolution.

In closing I would like to share with you some of my favorite quotes on the subject by leading evolutionary scientists, and even Darwin himself. By their own words they admit this very important piece of the evolutionary puzzle does not fit, and never will. Enjoy.

“There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks. (Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 348),

“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists—for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick—as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection. (Ibid., p. 344),

“To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer. (Ibid., p. 350),

“The case at present must remain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained. (Ibid., p. 351),

“The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multicellular life. Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time ... The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash. (Stephen Jay Gould, “An Asteroid to Die For, Discover, October 1989, p. 65),

“And we find many of them [Cambrian fossils] already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987, p. 229),

“One of the major unsolved problems of geology and evolution is the occurrence of diversified, multicellular marine invertebrates in Lower Cambrian rocks on all the continents and their absence in rocks of greater age. (I. Axelrod, “Early Cambrian Marine Fauna, Science, Vol. 128, 4 July 1958, p. 7),

“Evolutionary biology’s deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven’t new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years? Why are the ancient body plans so stable? (Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution, Scientific American, Vol. 267, November 1992, p. 84),

“Granted an evolutionary origin of the main groups of animals, and not an act of special creation, the absence of any record whatsoever of a single member of any of the phyla in the Pre-Cambrian rocks remains as inexplicable on orthodox grounds as it was to Darwin. (T. Neville George Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow, “Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective, Science Progress, Vol. 48, No. 189, January 1960, p. 5).

Cambrian Explosion Disproves Evolution | Learn The Bible

Pahu;1513381 wrote: Then why do scientists say there is? For example:

Cambrian Explosion Disproves Evolution

Introduction

One of the most remarkable pieces of evidence disproving evolution is the “Cambrian Explosion Most textbooks never mention it, and the ones that do relegate it to a short phrase or paragraph as if it is some insignificant detail. This phenomenon is so pronounced in the fossil record that Scientific American called it “life’s big bang. It is considered one of the biggest challenges to evolutionary theory. Many reputable and highly accomplished scientists at major accredited universities worldwide say it is an insurmountable challenge. Moreover, I believe it is proof that evolution is merely a widely held myth of popular culture.

Cambrian Explosion

“Cambrian explosion refers to the great quantity and diversity of life found in what is called the Cambrian layer of the geologic column. The Cambrian age in the geologic time scale is dated by scientists as being about 530 million years old. What is really interesting is not just what is found in this layer, but what is found in the layers above it, and what is not found in layers under it. The Cambrian layer has virtually every phyla known to man. Yes, all major body plans and enormous varieties of each all coexist in this layer. No evolutionary sequence here, they are all coexistent simultaneously.

Layers Above and Below

Remarkably the layers below the Cambrian have practically nothing with regard to fossilized specimens. The few creatures that are found in pre-Cambrian strata are all soft-bodied organisms like worms. So essentially you have nothing along the lines of organic complexity and diversity pre-Cambrian, and then suddenly everything. But wait, it gets even more interesting. To compound this huge problem the number of species fossilized in the layers above the Cambrian period gradually decrease with each successive layer. Once you reach the most recent layers approximately 98% of every thing that has ever lived is extinct. Have you ever heard that 98% of everything that has ever lived is extinct? This is where that saying came from—hard scientific fact. A reasonable and honest person must conclude from the evidence that the fossil record is diametrically opposite what would be predicted by evolutionary theory. It is noteworthy that these conclusions are derived from a geologic time framework that is put forth by scientists own interpretation of geologic evidence. In fact, the belief that the strata represent different geologic ages is just that, a belief. Nevertheless, it is a belief held among scientists world-wide.

Darwin Knew

Darwin and his contemporaries were aware of this problem with the fossil record some 150 years ago, but they believed that the fossil record had been insufficiently sampled up to that time. Their “belief was that paleontological research in the future would more adequately sample the fossil record and show it to be more in line with evolutionary theory. They were wrong! Exactly the opposite happened. After a century and half of excavating fossils from the strata we have found the problem to be worse, not better. Contrary to the tree of life depicted in the school books, the fossil record depicts exactly the opposite story. The tree of life is an inverted cone, and not a tree at all.

No Correlation

Remember, evolutionary theory states that everything evolved from a common ancestor that climbed out of the primordial soup. This ancient ancestor gradually evolved. Its evolutionary progress branched out into different paths and these different paths led to the creation of increasingly complex and divergent organic forms. The paths continued to branch out resulting in the great diversity of life we have today. Now, if this is true, what would you expect to see in the fossil record? Of course you would expect to see simple organisms in the lowest layers and a gradual increase in diversity and complexity of life as you progress to more recent layers in the geologic time scale. But what do we really find in the fossil record? We find the exact opposite. Not something ambiguous like everything found in each layer. No, you find the exact opposite of what is predicted by evolution. From a correlation perspective you do not find a factor of 1, meaning perfect correlation, or a 0, meaning no correlation, you find a -1, meaning perfectly uncorrelated to the prediction. Now I don’t know about you, but I find this compelling proof that evolution did not happen. This begs the question, how much proof do evolutionary scientists need anyway?

Belief In Spite of Evidence

You must be saying to yourself at this point, “How could that be? How could they speak about this theory with such surety with such strong evidence to the contrary? The answer is simple. They believe the theory in spite of the evidence. That is why many leading creation scientists keep referring to evolution as a philosophy of science or even a religion. This belief is so strong in academic circles that scientists are chided if they even question evolution publicly. Why are they ridiculed? They are ridiculed because the only alternative to evolution is creation. Some like to pretend there are a variety of options in explaining origins. This is simply not so. The options often presented are merely shades of the two primary options, and scientists know this.

Conclusion

If evolution did not take place, if the natural forces at work today did not create the diversity of life we see on our little blue world, then something supernatural must be responsible. True science seeks to understand, no matter what the philosophical or metaphysical ramifications may be. That is why evolution is not science, but rather a philosophy, for it seeks to explain things within only one possible framework, whether or not this framework is true. The facts are that the scientists' own interpretation of the fossil record clearly demonstrates that every species appeared at once suddenly and then gradually died off with the passage of time. The significance of this great body of evidence against evolutionary theory in the fossil record cannot be stressed enough. It is utterly devastating to evolutionary theory completely by itself. But in the final analysis, it is but one of a plethora of scientific facts that refute the 19th century fable that is evolution.

In closing I would like to share with you some of my favorite quotes on the subject by leading evolutionary scientists, and even Darwin himself. By their own words they admit this very important piece of the evolutionary puzzle does not fit, and never will. Enjoy.

“There is another and allied difficulty, which is much more serious. I allude to the manner in which species belonging to several of the main divisions of the animal kingdom suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks. (Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 348),

“The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists—for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and Sedgwick—as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection. (Ibid., p. 344),

“To the question why we do not find rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earliest periods prior to the Cambrian system, I can give no satisfactory answer. (Ibid., p. 350),

“The case at present must remain inexplicable, and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained. (Ibid., p. 351),

“The most famous such burst, the Cambrian explosion, marks the inception of modern multicellular life. Within just a few million years, nearly every major kind of animal anatomy appears in the fossil record for the first time ... The Precambrian record is now sufficiently good that the old rationale about undiscovered sequences of smoothly transitional forms will no longer wash. (Stephen Jay Gould, “An Asteroid to Die For, Discover, October 1989, p. 65),

“And we find many of them [Cambrian fossils] already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. (Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker London: W.W. Norton & Company, 1987, p. 229),

“One of the major unsolved problems of geology and evolution is the occurrence of diversified, multicellular marine invertebrates in Lower Cambrian rocks on all the continents and their absence in rocks of greater age. (I. Axelrod, “Early Cambrian Marine Fauna, Science, Vol. 128, 4 July 1958, p. 7),

“Evolutionary biology’s deepest paradox concerns this strange discontinuity. Why haven’t new animal body plans continued to crawl out of the evolutionary cauldron during the past hundreds of millions of years? Why are the ancient body plans so stable? (Jeffrey S. Levinton, “The Big Bang of Animal Evolution, Scientific American, Vol. 267, November 1992, p. 84),

“Granted an evolutionary origin of the main groups of animals, and not an act of special creation, the absence of any record whatsoever of a single member of any of the phyla in the Pre-Cambrian rocks remains as inexplicable on orthodox grounds as it was to Darwin. (T. Neville George Professor of Geology at the University of Glasgow, “Fossils in Evolutionary Perspective, Science Progress, Vol. 48, No. 189, January 1960, p. 5).

Cambrian Explosion Disproves Evolution | Learn The Bible


I do not see those writings as saying anything of the sort.

They simply indicate that the evidence is not what they expected.

Evolution is/was never a slow, steady, predictable process. And, it probably never will be.

LarsMac;1513382 wrote: I do not see those writings as saying anything of the sort.

They simply indicate that the evidence is not what they expected.

Evolution is/was never a slow, steady, predictable process. And, it probably never will be.


You are right because evolution does not exist as the Cambrian explosion proves.

Pahu;1513401 wrote: You are right because evolution does not exist as the Cambrian explosion proves.


Still waiting for the science.

LarsMac;1513403 wrote: Still waiting for the science.




The disciplines of science prove creation and disprove evolution. For example:



Exploring the Limitations of the Scientific Method


In this day of iPods, cell phones, the Internet, and other fruits of modern science and technology, most people have at least a passing awareness of the concept of the scientific method. But just what is this process that undergirds such spectacular technological advance and development? If it can give us satellites showing the world's weather in real time, is it possible for this method, under certain circumstances, to fail?

The Method Defined

Frank Wolfs, Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, provides his undergraduate physics students with a good working definition of the scientific method: "the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world."1

Professor Wolfs, as a research scientist himself, points out some of its limitations: "Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, 'Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view.' In summary, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing a hypothesis or a theory."1

Four Essentials of the Scientific Method

Just what are these "standard procedures and criteria" that scientists apply in their attempt to arrive at an accurate and reliable representation of the world in which we live? Most scientists, including Wolfs, boil them down to the four following essentials:1

Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena. (In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a mathematical relationship.)

Use of the hypothesis to predict other phenomena or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters.

If the experiments bear out the hypothesis, it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature. If they do not, the hypothesis must be rejected or modified. As Wolfs explains, "No matter how elegant a theory is, its predictions must agree with experimental results if we are to believe that it is a valid description of nature. In physics, as in every experimental science, 'experiment is supreme' and experimental verification of hypothetical predictions is absolutely necessary."1

Wolfs further notes that this necessity of experiment in the method is tantamount to requiring that a scientific hypothesis be testable. "Theories which cannot be tested, because, for instance, they have no observable ramifications (such as, a particle whose characteristics make it unobservable), do not qualify as scientific theories."1 It is fairly obvious that if a hypothesis cannot be tested, it should more properly be called a conjecture or speculation, in which case the scientific method can say little about it.

When Does the Scientific Method Fail?

Are there circumstances in which the scientific method ought to work, but for which the method does not provide "an accurate representation of the world"--that is, a correct description of the way things really are? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. As Professor Wolfs mentions above, "personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena." If the hypothesis-testing process fails to eliminate most of the personal and cultural biases of the community of investigators, false hypotheses can survive the testing process and then be accepted as correct descriptions of the way the world works. This has happened in the past, and it happens today.

Some of the most glaring examples of this failure of the scientific method today have to do with the issue of origins. There are two fairly obvious reasons for this: 1) many of the crucial processes occurred in the past and are difficult to test in the present; and 2) personal biases are especially strong on topics related to origins because of the wider implications.

Skipping the Test

Perhaps the most prominent example in this category is the hypothesis that mutation and natural selection produce continuous genetic improvement in a population of higher plants or animals. For the past 90 years, scientists in the field of population genetics have developed sophisticated mathematical models to describe and investigate these processes and how they affect the genetic makeup of populations of various categories of organisms. The work of R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright between 1918 and 1932 laid the foundation for the field of population genetics. This work in turn, over a period of about a decade (1936-1947), led to the formulation of what is referred to as the neo-Darwinian synthesis or the modern evolutionary synthesis. This so-called modern synthesis integrated the concept of natural selection with Mendelian genetics to produce the unified theory of evolution that has been accepted by most professional biologists.

But does this theory of evolution, formulated essentially in its present form more than 60 years ago, truly deliver on its claims, especially in light of what we now know of how living systems work at the molecular level? The answer is an unequivocal no! In brief, the proteins that make up living systems require such a precise level of specification to be functional that a search based on random mutation can never succeed.2 It is complete scientific foolishness to claim otherwise. That is why there are no papers in the professional genetics literature that explicitly demonstrate this to be a reasonable possibility.

Perhaps even more surprising, natural selection does not deliver the sort of upward genetic improvement that is generally believed and claimed.3 The reason is that natural selection is "blind" to the vast majority of mutations--it cannot act upon a favorable mutation to accentuate it or a deleterious mutation to eliminate it unless the mutation has a sufficiently large effect on the fitness of the organism in its environment. Because the vast majority of mutations are below the threshold for natural selection to detect, most bad mutations accumulate unhindered by the selection process, resulting in a downward decline in fitness from one generation to the next.4,5 Because bad mutations outnumber favorable ones by such a large factor, their cumulative effect utterly overwhelms that of the few favorable mutations that may arise along the way.

For more than 30 years, professional population geneticists have been aware of the profound difficulties these realities present to the theory of evolution.6,7 These problems were treated as "trade secrets" to be researched within their own ranks but not to be publicized outside in the broader biology community. Thus, the crucial step of hypothesis testing has been "postponed."

Most professional biologists have therefore been misled into believing that the theoretical foundation of the neo-Darwinian synthesis is secure when, in reality, the foundation is a sham. The neo-Darwinian mechanism can readily be shown to produce exactly the opposite consequences to those that are believed and claimed.3,4,5 The reason for this state of affairs is that the scientists involved have allowed their personal biases to interfere with and to shortcircuit the usual hypothesis-testing step of the scientific method.

Geology and Cosmology

A similar state of affairs persists in the geological community, which interprets the primary sedimentary units of most of the fossil-bearing part of the geological record as having been produced by gradualistic rather than catastrophic processes, when the evidence is abundantly in favor of the latter.8

Likewise, in cosmology, to avoid the inference that the earth is near the center of the cosmos, as implied by isotropy of redshift and of cosmic microwave background energy, a highly speculative and difficult-to-test hypothesis has been invoked--namely, the Copernican Principle,9 which posits that the entire cosmos is just like what we observe from the earth, at least at large scales. A result is that gravity perfectly cancels at large scales and keeps the cosmos from being inside a black hole during the early phases of a Big Bang. All Big Bang models depend critically on this hypothesis. The fact that the Copernican Principle up to now has been untestable means, strictly speaking, that Big Bang cosmology cannot be viewed as authentic science since it relies in a critical way on an untestable hypothesis.

Conclusion

In summary, science is a social enterprise. Scientists are human and share the same weaknesses as all members of the human race. The scientific method fails to yield an accurate representation of the world, not because of the method, but because of those who are attempting to apply it. The method fails when scientists themselves, usually collectively, allow their own biases and personal preferences to shortcircuit the hypothesis-testing part of the process.

References

1. Wolfs, F. 1996. Introduction to the scientific method. Physics Laboratory Experiments, Appendix E, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester.

2. Baumgardner, J. 2008 (in press). Language, Complexity, and Design. In Seckback, J. and R. Gordon (eds.), God, Science and Intelligent Design. Singapore: World Scientific.

3. Sanford, J. 2005. Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome. Lima, NY: Elim Publications.

4. Sanford, J., J. Baumgardner, et al. 2007. Using computer simulation to understand mutation accumulation dynamics and genetic load. In Shi, Y. et al. (eds.), ICCS 2007, Part II, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4488. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 386-392.

5. Sanford, J., J. Baumgardner, et al. 2008 (in press). Numerical simulation falsifies evolutionary genetic theory. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism. San Diego, CA: ICR.

6. Kimura, M. 1979. Model of effectively neutral mutations in which selective constraint is incorporated. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 76: 3440-3444.

7. Kondrashov, A. S. 1995. Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? Journal of Theoretical Biology. 175: 583-594.

8. Austin, S. A. 1994. Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe. Santee, CA: ICR.

9. Hawking, S. W. and G. F. R. Ellis. 1973. The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 134.

Exploring the Limitations of the Scientific Method | The Institute for Creation Research

Pahu;1513404 wrote: The disciplines of science prove creation and disprove evolution. For example:



Exploring the Limitations of the Scientific Method


In this day of iPods, cell phones, the Internet, and other fruits of modern science and technology, most people have at least a passing awareness of the concept of the scientific method. But just what is this process that undergirds such spectacular technological advance and development? If it can give us satellites showing the world's weather in real time, is it possible for this method, under certain circumstances, to fail?

The Method Defined

Frank Wolfs, Professor of Physics at the University of Rochester, provides his undergraduate physics students with a good working definition of the scientific method: "the process by which scientists, collectively and over time, endeavor to construct an accurate (that is, reliable, consistent and non-arbitrary) representation of the world."1

Professor Wolfs, as a research scientist himself, points out some of its limitations: "Recognizing that personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena, we aim through the use of standard procedures and criteria to minimize those influences when developing a theory. As a famous scientist once said, 'Smart people (like smart lawyers) can come up with very good explanations for mistaken points of view.' In summary, the scientific method attempts to minimize the influence of bias or prejudice in the experimenter when testing a hypothesis or a theory."1

Four Essentials of the Scientific Method

Just what are these "standard procedures and criteria" that scientists apply in their attempt to arrive at an accurate and reliable representation of the world in which we live? Most scientists, including Wolfs, boil them down to the four following essentials:1

Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

Formulation of a hypothesis to explain the phenomena. (In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a mathematical relationship.)

Use of the hypothesis to predict other phenomena or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations.

Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters.

If the experiments bear out the hypothesis, it may come to be regarded as a theory or law of nature. If they do not, the hypothesis must be rejected or modified. As Wolfs explains, "No matter how elegant a theory is, its predictions must agree with experimental results if we are to believe that it is a valid description of nature. In physics, as in every experimental science, 'experiment is supreme' and experimental verification of hypothetical predictions is absolutely necessary."1

Wolfs further notes that this necessity of experiment in the method is tantamount to requiring that a scientific hypothesis be testable. "Theories which cannot be tested, because, for instance, they have no observable ramifications (such as, a particle whose characteristics make it unobservable), do not qualify as scientific theories."1 It is fairly obvious that if a hypothesis cannot be tested, it should more properly be called a conjecture or speculation, in which case the scientific method can say little about it.

When Does the Scientific Method Fail?

Are there circumstances in which the scientific method ought to work, but for which the method does not provide "an accurate representation of the world"--that is, a correct description of the way things really are? Unfortunately, the answer is yes. As Professor Wolfs mentions above, "personal and cultural beliefs influence both our perceptions and our interpretations of natural phenomena." If the hypothesis-testing process fails to eliminate most of the personal and cultural biases of the community of investigators, false hypotheses can survive the testing process and then be accepted as correct descriptions of the way the world works. This has happened in the past, and it happens today.

Some of the most glaring examples of this failure of the scientific method today have to do with the issue of origins. There are two fairly obvious reasons for this: 1) many of the crucial processes occurred in the past and are difficult to test in the present; and 2) personal biases are especially strong on topics related to origins because of the wider implications.

Skipping the Test

Perhaps the most prominent example in this category is the hypothesis that mutation and natural selection produce continuous genetic improvement in a population of higher plants or animals. For the past 90 years, scientists in the field of population genetics have developed sophisticated mathematical models to describe and investigate these processes and how they affect the genetic makeup of populations of various categories of organisms. The work of R. A. Fisher, J. B. S. Haldane, and Sewall Wright between 1918 and 1932 laid the foundation for the field of population genetics. This work in turn, over a period of about a decade (1936-1947), led to the formulation of what is referred to as the neo-Darwinian synthesis or the modern evolutionary synthesis. This so-called modern synthesis integrated the concept of natural selection with Mendelian genetics to produce the unified theory of evolution that has been accepted by most professional biologists.

But does this theory of evolution, formulated essentially in its present form more than 60 years ago, truly deliver on its claims, especially in light of what we now know of how living systems work at the molecular level? The answer is an unequivocal no! In brief, the proteins that make up living systems require such a precise level of specification to be functional that a search based on random mutation can never succeed.2 It is complete scientific foolishness to claim otherwise. That is why there are no papers in the professional genetics literature that explicitly demonstrate this to be a reasonable possibility.

Perhaps even more surprising, natural selection does not deliver the sort of upward genetic improvement that is generally believed and claimed.3 The reason is that natural selection is "blind" to the vast majority of mutations--it cannot act upon a favorable mutation to accentuate it or a deleterious mutation to eliminate it unless the mutation has a sufficiently large effect on the fitness of the organism in its environment. Because the vast majority of mutations are below the threshold for natural selection to detect, most bad mutations accumulate unhindered by the selection process, resulting in a downward decline in fitness from one generation to the next.4,5 Because bad mutations outnumber favorable ones by such a large factor, their cumulative effect utterly overwhelms that of the few favorable mutations that may arise along the way.

For more than 30 years, professional population geneticists have been aware of the profound difficulties these realities present to the theory of evolution.6,7 These problems were treated as "trade secrets" to be researched within their own ranks but not to be publicized outside in the broader biology community. Thus, the crucial step of hypothesis testing has been "postponed."

Most professional biologists have therefore been misled into believing that the theoretical foundation of the neo-Darwinian synthesis is secure when, in reality, the foundation is a sham. The neo-Darwinian mechanism can readily be shown to produce exactly the opposite consequences to those that are believed and claimed.3,4,5 The reason for this state of affairs is that the scientists involved have allowed their personal biases to interfere with and to shortcircuit the usual hypothesis-testing step of the scientific method.

Geology and Cosmology

A similar state of affairs persists in the geological community, which interprets the primary sedimentary units of most of the fossil-bearing part of the geological record as having been produced by gradualistic rather than catastrophic processes, when the evidence is abundantly in favor of the latter.8

Likewise, in cosmology, to avoid the inference that the earth is near the center of the cosmos, as implied by isotropy of redshift and of cosmic microwave background energy, a highly speculative and difficult-to-test hypothesis has been invoked--namely, the Copernican Principle,9 which posits that the entire cosmos is just like what we observe from the earth, at least at large scales. A result is that gravity perfectly cancels at large scales and keeps the cosmos from being inside a black hole during the early phases of a Big Bang. All Big Bang models depend critically on this hypothesis. The fact that the Copernican Principle up to now has been untestable means, strictly speaking, that Big Bang cosmology cannot be viewed as authentic science since it relies in a critical way on an untestable hypothesis.

Conclusion

In summary, science is a social enterprise. Scientists are human and share the same weaknesses as all members of the human race. The scientific method fails to yield an accurate representation of the world, not because of the method, but because of those who are attempting to apply it. The method fails when scientists themselves, usually collectively, allow their own biases and personal preferences to shortcircuit the hypothesis-testing part of the process.

References

1. Wolfs, F. 1996. Introduction to the scientific method. Physics Laboratory Experiments, Appendix E, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Rochester.

2. Baumgardner, J. 2008 (in press). Language, Complexity, and Design. In Seckback, J. and R. Gordon (eds.), God, Science and Intelligent Design. Singapore: World Scientific.

3. Sanford, J. 2005. Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome. Lima, NY: Elim Publications.

4. Sanford, J., J. Baumgardner, et al. 2007. Using computer simulation to understand mutation accumulation dynamics and genetic load. In Shi, Y. et al. (eds.), ICCS 2007, Part II, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4488. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 386-392.

5. Sanford, J., J. Baumgardner, et al. 2008 (in press). Numerical simulation falsifies evolutionary genetic theory. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Creationism. San Diego, CA: ICR.

6. Kimura, M. 1979. Model of effectively neutral mutations in which selective constraint is incorporated. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 76: 3440-3444.

7. Kondrashov, A. S. 1995. Contamination of the genome by very slightly deleterious mutations: why have we not died 100 times over? Journal of Theoretical Biology. 175: 583-594.

8. Austin, S. A. 1994. Grand Canyon: Monument to Catastrophe. Santee, CA: ICR.

9. Hawking, S. W. and G. F. R. Ellis. 1973. The Large Scale Structure of Space-Time. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 134.

Exploring the Limitations of the Scientific Method | The Institute for Creation Research


[sigh]



Still waiting for the science.

You are the one that brought science into the conversation, after all.

3627 posts, and you've yet to present any.

LarsMac;1513406 wrote: You are the one that brought science into the conversation, after all.

3627 posts, and you've yet to present any.


Try opening your eyes and mind the next time your read.

Pahu;1513407 wrote: Try opening your eyes and mind the nest time your read.


It is not I who has been blinded by religious dogma.

LarsMac;1513408 wrote: It is not I who has been blinded by religious dogma.


Since evolution is your religion, you have definitely been blinded by your religious dogma.

Evolution is not a religion. LOL It is a scientific theory/fact which for the most part is accepted by scholarly people in both science and theology. Any other issue raised by Pahu is "Magic and Make Believe"

Ted;1513420 wrote: Evolution is not a religion. LOL It is a scientific theory/fact which for the most part is accepted by scholarly people in both science and theology. Any other issue raised by Pahu is "Magic and Make Believe"


Evolution IS a religion. It's not based on the evidence. There are many areas where it's not backed by science. They teach it as fact. That's why it's called the Theory of Evolution. Because it's been mainstreamed into the public schools, people think it's fact. It's not. Pahu is right, not you.

Pahu;1513409 wrote: Since evolution is your religion, you have definitely been blinded by your religious dogma.


after all this time, you still have no clue about my religion. A shame, really.

All that I have ever tried to do is get you to actually show so science which you claim disproves your version of Evolution.

Which, by the way, you have failed to do.

LarsMac;1513425 wrote: after all this time, you still have no clue about my religion. A shame, really.

All that I have ever tried to do is get you to actually show so science which you claim disproves your version of Evolution.

Which, by the way, you have failed to do.


He HAS been showing scientific evidence. He's done a great job. I applaud him. Which evidence has he posted that you disagree with and what are your reasons?

xfrodobagginsx;1513426 wrote: He HAS been showing scientific evidence. He's done a great job. I applaud him. Which evidence has he posted that you disagree with and what are your reasons?


He has produced no evidence. Only opinions. Out of context statements expressing opinions are not scientific evidence.

xfrodobagginsx;1513424 wrote: Evolution IS a religion. It's not based on the evidence. There are many areas where it's not backed by science. They teach it as fact. That's why it's called the Theory of Evolution. Because it's been mainstreamed into the public schools, people think it's fact. It's not. Pahu is right, not you.


Evolution is simply an observed process by which living organisms adapt to changes in the environment over time.

It's that simple.

There is nothing to be religious over.

LarsMac;1513428 wrote: He has produced no evidence. Only opinions. Out of context statements expressing opinions are not scientific evidence.


He's given you plenty of scientific evidence and all you do is say...nope...not evidence...Nope...not evidence....you're fooling yourself.

xfrodobagginsx;1513430 wrote: He's given you plenty of scientific evidence and all you do is say...nope...not evidence...Nope...not evidence....you're fooling yourself.


I begin to question your reading comprehension skill set.

LarsMac;1513429 wrote: Evolution is simply an observed process by which living organisms adapt to changes in the environment over time.

It's that simple.

There is nothing to be religious over.


Let's see if you can answer a question:

Do you realize that there is evolution within the species call Lateral Adaptation that is contained within a particular species? Mutations can only change the existing DNA in the species to variations of that same species. Example, Horses always stay horses. Zeebras, Mustangs, Thorough Breads, Clydesdales, ect. Name a single breed of horse that is half horse, and half another type of animal? Mutations (Evolution if you will) gave us the different types of horses, but it can't make a horse turn into a Moose.

Why? The reason why is because in order for a horse to evolve into a different type of animal, it MUST have an INCREASE in genetic information. Problem, this has NEVER been observed to happen even once. It's impossible.

The Evolutionists use examples of Mutations within the species, ect. different types of horses, in order to convince people that animals can evolve into different types of animals. But this is a lie.

Do you at LEAST understand what I am saying here? Whether or not you agree with it, that's fine. Now what have I JUST told you that isn't true?

xfrodobagginsx;1513432 wrote: Let's see if you can answer a question:

Do you realize that there is evolution within the species call Lateral Adaptation that is contained within a particular species? Mutations can only change the existing DNA in the species to variations of that same species. Example, Horses always stay horses. Zeebras, Mustangs, Thorough Breads, Clydesdales, ect. Name a single breed of horse that is half horse, and half another type of animal? Mutations (Evolution if you will) gave us the different types of horses, but it can't make a horse turn into a Moose.

Why? The reason why is because in order for a horse to evolve into a different type of animal, it MUST have an INCREASE in genetic information. Problem, this has NEVER been observed to happen even once. It's impossible.

The Evolutionists use examples of Mutations within the species, ect. different types of horses, in order to convince people that animals can evolve into different types of animals. But this is a lie.

Do you at LEAST understand what I am saying here? Whether or not you agree with it, that's fine. Now what have I JUST told you that isn't true?


You've just tried to describe the Creationist view of Evolution, babbling on about how a horse is horse and cannot be a Moose.

What is not true is that anything in your post has anything to do with Evolution.

Ted;1513420 wrote: Evolution is not a religion. LOL It is a scientific theory/fact which for the most part is accepted by scholarly people in both science and theology. Any other issue raised by Pahu is "Magic and Make Believe"


Evolution is an evidence free belief based on faith. The disciplines of science prove creation and disprove evolution. For example:




'Living Fossils' Point to Recent Creation

According to Genesis 1:21, “God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind. The creation of original, distinct creature kinds confronts the evolutionary teaching that animals can endlessly morph from one form to another. Recent news reports reveal two clear illustrations of sea creatures living and reproducing according to their kinds right from the start.

The stunningly beautiful chambered nautilus features its famous coiled and symmetrical shell. Deep-sea shell hunters overharvest the tentacled predators by setting baited traps, sometimes as deep as 2,000 feet below the surface of southwest Pacific Ocean waters. Fishermen apparently suffer no regulations as they supply a growing market for the alluring nautilus shells.

Marine biologists including University of Washington biologist Peter Ward, concerned about the declining nautilus population, study deep oceans to better understand the creatures’ numbers and distribution. Using a submersible camera, Ward reported a nautilus sighting in July 2015 off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The last time anyone reported the creature in that area was back in 1984.1

The sighting renews hope that perhaps the animal may resist overfishing by somehow setting up shop in less-fished waters. Meanwhile, the always-fascinating nautilus shell reminds researchers of the mystery its fossil counterparts present. The New York Times wrote,

The fossil record dates the ancestors of the nautilus to the late Cambrian period, 500 million years ago. Some grew to be true sea monsters, with gargantuan shells and big tentacles. Over eons, the thousands of species have dwindled to a handful.2

By the way, “the fossil record doesn’t actually date anything—scientists do that. But what are the odds that these creatures could have persisted unchanged for half-a-billion years?

According to this secular story, nautiluses avoided evolving upward—they haven’t gained a single new feature. Their genetic variation actually narrowed as their species variation diminished. It’s a good thing we have not yet fished the chambered nautilus to extinction, since by observing them we can appreciate their fine design and compare them to similar-looking Cambrian fossils that showcase creation according to the nautilus kind.

The same can now be said for the new “earliest sea turtle fossil. Germany’s Senckenberg Research Institute released news of fossil sea turtles unearthed in 2007 by an amateur paleontologist in Columbia. Senckenberg researcher Edwin Cadena and California State University, Fullerton’s James Parham analyzed the remains. They assigned the fossil turtle to the same superfamily (Chelonioidea) that contains living sea turtles—like loggerheads and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles. According to the Senckenberg Research Institute, “The almost completely preserved skeleton from the Cretaceous, with a length of nearly 2 meters, shows all of the characteristic traits of modern marine turtles.3

They also wrote, “Sea turtles descended from terrestrial and freshwater turtles that arose approximately 230 million years ago. But just like the nautilus, sea turtles retain all their core characteristics and thus show no evidence of evolution after “at least 120 million supposed years.4 Shouldn’t this find make the evolutionary story of sea turtle origins even more difficult to believe?

No fossils document turtles’ supposed descent from land to sea, nor any upward change in nautiluses. Instead, these “ancient fossil creatures look like their modern counterparts—just as if they were created to reproduce according to their kinds.

References

1. Montanari, S. ‘Living Fossil’ Spotted In The South Pacific For The First Time In Three Decades. Forbes Science. Posted on forbes.com August 28, 2015, accessed September 3, 2015.

2. Broad, W. 2011. Loving the Chambered Nautilus to Death. The New York Times. Posted on nytimes.com October 24, 2011, accessed September 8, 2015.

3. Oldest Fossil Sea Turtle Discovered—The fossilized turtle is at least 120 million years old. Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum. AlphaGalileo. Posted on alphagalileo.org September 7, 2015, accessed September 8, 2015.

'Living Fossils' Point to Recent Creation | The Institute for Creation Research

LarsMac;1513425 wrote: after all this time, you still have no clue about my religion. A shame, really.

All that I have ever tried to do is get you to actually show so science which you claim disproves your version of Evolution.

Which, by the way, you have failed to do.


The disciplines of science prove creation and disprove evolution. For example:



Flower Fossils 100,000,000 Years Out of Place?


European scientists have now discovered flowering plant fossils in rock layers supposedly 100,000,000 years older than expected.1 This new finding challenges conventional evolutionary assumptions as scientists struggle to account for what they interpret as an enormous time gap.

Publishing in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science, Peter Hochuli and Susanne Feist-Burkhardt described fossil-pollen grains recovered from a drill core in the north of Switzerland.1

They wrote, "In this paper we focus on fossil evidence, presenting the so far oldest angiosperm-like pollen from the Middle Triassic (ca. 243Ma), a record that predates the generally accepted first occurrence of angiosperm pollen by more than 100Ma [million years]."1

The researchers' distinct color photographs show pollen-grain features diagnostic of flowering plants, not gymnosperms like palms or cycads. "The described pollen grains show all the essential features of angiosperm pollen," according to the Frontiers report.2




And instead of the few primitive-looking pollens that evolutionary scientists were expecting to find in lower rock layers, the researchers discovered many fully-formed pollens of different but well-developed types. The study authors wrote of the "sudden appearance" of angiosperm fossils "on most continents as well as the rapid radiation of numerous clades [which] implies a considerable diversification within approximately 3.5Ma or else it represents a wave of immigration from other areas."1 In other words, they had difficulty explaining how such a wide variety of flowering plants suddenly occur in this Triassic layer.

They encountered an equal challenge in trying to decipher why, after this sudden burst of supposed evolutionary creativity, angiosperms disappeared for 100 million years. The study authors wrote, "If we accepted the monosulcate [e.g., angiosperm] pollen from the Middle and Late Triassic as evidence for a pre-Cretaceous origin of crown group [ancestral] angiosperms the lack of fossil records throughout the Jurassic would remain difficult to explain."1

To account for this difficulty, they invoked speculative "stem relatives," writing, "Considering the hundred million year gap in the record as well as morphological differences to the earliest Cretaceous we suggest that these pollen grains most likely represent stem relatives of the angiosperms."1

Yet, are these conclusions based on scientific observation? It's one thing to assert that these fossils must represent evolutionary ancestors of modern plants because they are millions of years older than the accepted age, but it's entirely circular to then assert that the angiosperm fossils must have formed millions of years before the accepted age simply because conventional evolution tells us plants evolved over long ages.

The Bible's record of all the major phases of world history shows no trace of a Triassic deep-time epoch and offers a better explanation for these fossils.

First, the Bible doesn't rely on circular reasoning or speculations but on "eyewitnesses" who wrote "words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and¦the apostles of the Lord and Savior."3,4

Second, Scripture asserts that angiosperms existed alongside all other plants (including gymnosperms) and animals from the very start of creation—reporting instant creation of each plant kind. This exactly fits these fossils' sudden appearance. Third, it describes in detail a worldwide Flood capable of preserving life's traces in fossil forms. And in that context, Triassic flora and fauna do not represent a separate time but distinct ecosystems buried by sediment-laden Flood waters.

Finally, the Bible's timeline shows a creation that is thousands, not billions, of years old, erasing any need to explain why pollen grains buried deep in fossil layers look so similar to living herbs and flowers today.

References

1. Hochuli, P. A. and S. Feist-Burkhardt. 2013. Angiosperm-like pollen and Afropollis from the Middle Triassic (Anisian) of the Germanic Basin (Northern Switzerland). Frontiers in Plant Science. 4 (344): 1-14.

2. See Hochuli and Feist-Burkhardt, Frontiers in Plant Science 4 (344): 1-14. The team compared gymnosperm pollen grains found at the same site to show "a distinct contrast to the exine structure of the columellate, angiosperm-like grains."

3. 2 Peter 1:16.

4. 2 Peter 3:2.

Flower Fossils 100,000,000 Years Out of Place? | The Institute for Creation Research

LarsMac;1513429 wrote: Evolution is simply an observed process by which living organisms adapt to changes in the environment over time.

It's that simple.

There is nothing to be religious over.


Since evolution is an evidence free belief system, it is religion, not science.

LarsMac;1513449 wrote: You've just tried to describe the Creationist view of Evolution, babbling on about how a horse is horse and cannot be a Moose.

What is not true is that anything in your post has anything to do with Evolution.
The disciplines of science prove creation and disprove evolution. For example:




The Mythical Horse Series




The Mythical Horse Series | The Institute for Creation Research

Pahu;1513470 wrote: Evolution is an evidence free belief based on faith. The disciplines of science prove creation and disprove evolution. For example:




'Living Fossils' Point to Recent Creation

According to Genesis 1:21, “God created great sea creatures and every living thing that moves, with which the waters abounded, according to their kind. The creation of original, distinct creature kinds confronts the evolutionary teaching that animals can endlessly morph from one form to another. Recent news reports reveal two clear illustrations of sea creatures living and reproducing according to their kinds right from the start.

The stunningly beautiful chambered nautilus features its famous coiled and symmetrical shell. Deep-sea shell hunters overharvest the tentacled predators by setting baited traps, sometimes as deep as 2,000 feet below the surface of southwest Pacific Ocean waters. Fishermen apparently suffer no regulations as they supply a growing market for the alluring nautilus shells.

Marine biologists including University of Washington biologist Peter Ward, concerned about the declining nautilus population, study deep oceans to better understand the creatures’ numbers and distribution. Using a submersible camera, Ward reported a nautilus sighting in July 2015 off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The last time anyone reported the creature in that area was back in 1984.1

The sighting renews hope that perhaps the animal may resist overfishing by somehow setting up shop in less-fished waters. Meanwhile, the always-fascinating nautilus shell reminds researchers of the mystery its fossil counterparts present. The New York Times wrote,

The fossil record dates the ancestors of the nautilus to the late Cambrian period, 500 million years ago. Some grew to be true sea monsters, with gargantuan shells and big tentacles. Over eons, the thousands of species have dwindled to a handful.2

By the way, “the fossil record doesn’t actually date anything—scientists do that. But what are the odds that these creatures could have persisted unchanged for half-a-billion years?

According to this secular story, nautiluses avoided evolving upward—they haven’t gained a single new feature. Their genetic variation actually narrowed as their species variation diminished. It’s a good thing we have not yet fished the chambered nautilus to extinction, since by observing them we can appreciate their fine design and compare them to similar-looking Cambrian fossils that showcase creation according to the nautilus kind.

The same can now be said for the new “earliest sea turtle fossil. Germany’s Senckenberg Research Institute released news of fossil sea turtles unearthed in 2007 by an amateur paleontologist in Columbia. Senckenberg researcher Edwin Cadena and California State University, Fullerton’s James Parham analyzed the remains. They assigned the fossil turtle to the same superfamily (Chelonioidea) that contains living sea turtles—like loggerheads and Kemp’s ridley sea turtles. According to the Senckenberg Research Institute, “The almost completely preserved skeleton from the Cretaceous, with a length of nearly 2 meters, shows all of the characteristic traits of modern marine turtles.3

They also wrote, “Sea turtles descended from terrestrial and freshwater turtles that arose approximately 230 million years ago. But just like the nautilus, sea turtles retain all their core characteristics and thus show no evidence of evolution after “at least 120 million supposed years.4 Shouldn’t this find make the evolutionary story of sea turtle origins even more difficult to believe?

No fossils document turtles’ supposed descent from land to sea, nor any upward change in nautiluses. Instead, these “ancient fossil creatures look like their modern counterparts—just as if they were created to reproduce according to their kinds.

References

1. Montanari, S. ‘Living Fossil’ Spotted In The South Pacific For The First Time In Three Decades. Forbes Science. Posted on forbes.com August 28, 2015, accessed September 3, 2015.

2. Broad, W. 2011. Loving the Chambered Nautilus to Death. The New York Times. Posted on nytimes.com October 24, 2011, accessed September 8, 2015.

3. Oldest Fossil Sea Turtle Discovered—The fossilized turtle is at least 120 million years old. Senckenberg Research Institute and Natural History Museum. AlphaGalileo. Posted on alphagalileo.org September 7, 2015, accessed September 8, 2015.

'Living Fossils' Point to Recent Creation | The Institute for Creation Research


So, you offer this up as what? proof that some critters have remained the same for a very long time? And that is proof of what, exactly? As stated earlier, evolution simply means organisms will change/mutate over time. If a mutation offers a species an advantage the mutation will become part of the surviving species, if not, it will fade away. Some species have been in continuous existence for thousands, even millions of years, with changes that are barely detectable.

An interesting thought, here.

Since until very recently most species classification were made based primarily on observable properties and traits, we are likely to find a number of reclassifications based upon genetic research. We will likely find some critters who were thought to be the same species that are in fact unique, and some species which we thought were unique and unrelated are in fact variants of the same species.

Meanwhile scientific researchers are constantly making new, and fascinating discoveries that show how little we really know, just yet, and are constantly adding to our knowledge of the universe, while people like you are stuck relying on Bronze Age philosophies to explain their existence.

Pahu;1513472 wrote: Since evolution is an evidence free belief system, it is religion, not science.


Evolution is an observable phenomenon. We see it every day. The phenomenon explains why the Zika Virus, which for many years was basically harmless, has recently developed into a rather scary little critter.

It explains why antibiotics are beginning to lose their effectiveness. It explains a number of rather interesting things that have been observed.

A recent article in National Geographic might be worth a read.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... ion-beaks/

Try opening your mind to the possibilities.

LarsMac;1513475 wrote: Evolution is an observable phenomenon. We see it every day. The phenomenon explains why the Zika Virus, which for many years was basically harmless, has recently developed into a rather scary little critter.

It explains why antibiotics are beginning to lose their effectiveness. It explains a number of rather interesting things that have been observed.

A recent article in National Geographic might be worth a read.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/201 ... ion-beaks/

Try opening your mind to the possibilities.


Where is evidence that evolution is an observable phenomenon? The disciplines of science prove creation and disprove evolution. For example:

Bacteria Antibiotic Resistance



Here is an excerpt from an article responding to a TV series on evolution that deals with bacteria. You can examine the whole article here:

here.

There are too many errors in “Evolution to itemize here, but let’s examine what the producers clearly believe to be their strongest example:

“The development in bacteria of antibiotic resistance. If one wants to demonstrate evolution in action, as the producers claim, bacteria are certainly the best candidates. Some of these microbes reproduce several times an hour, producing thousands and thousands of generations within a single year. “Evolution thus takes us into a tuberculosis-infested Russian jail, and sure enough, the little pests quickly develop resistance to each new drug the doctors introduce. Case closed.

Well, not quite.

All the producers have demonstrated is the quite unexceptional occurrence of what is called micro-evolution, the small changes within species that we see all around us. The most obvious example—one Darwin himself used—is dog breeding. The thousands of different types of dogs extant today were all created, probably from some common wild ancestor, by selective breeding.



The question is, can these relatively small changes within basic species types be extrapolated to macro-evolution—big changes in body types, such as the evolution of birds from reptiles, say, or humans from apes. The fact is, nothing of the sort has ever been observed. Darwinists counter that when dealing with large animals—even fruit flies —there simply isn’t enough time. The breeding cycles are too long. Fair enough. But what about bacteria?

With selective breeding, one should be able to produce new species within a reasonable time. Yet—and this the producers don’t tell us—it has never been done. As British bacteriologist Alan H. Linton recently remarked, despite multitudes of experiments exposing bacteria to caustic acid baths and intense radiation in order to accelerate mutations, in the “150 years of the science of bacteriology, there is no evidence that one species of bacteria has changed into another.

The producers of “Evolution unwittingly give the game away when they remark that the bacteria clearly identifiable as the same as modern TB have been found on a 6,000-year-old Egyptian mummy. Like the Galapagos finch beaks, what we seem to be seeing here is not macro-evolutionary change, but the extraordinary stability of species.

The producers repeat much the same error in a long segment on the HIV virus, which ends with doctors taking their patients off the anti-viral drugs (which appear to do more harm than good) and—voila!—the HIV returns to its original “wild-type. Once again, we have stasis, not evolution.

To read the rest of the article, go here:

http://www.trueorigin.org/pbsevolution01.asp

You continue to confuse and confound the discussion.

Macro- Micro-

Irrelevant. Evolution is a simple process.

Back to the bugs.

Simple process. Bacteria reproduce. it i basically what they do. So now you introduce an antibiotic.

The antibiotic kills of a majority of the bacteria. Some small number, though, for one reason or another are immune to the effects of the antibiotic, and survive to reproduce. Many of the offspring inherit the immunity. Eventually after multiple applications of the antibiotic, on bacteria with the immunity survive.

Evolution in action.

The same possible explanation, over the several Billion years the planet has been around, can quite probably cover a whole lot of the changes in organisms that have taken place.

But no, Dogs did not become cats, and Apes did not become human. (nore did Horses become Moose.)

But many species around today could very easily have mutated from critters that used to be around a long time ago and are no longer around. Meanwhile, other critters have survived over the eons and remained pretty much unchanged, because the environment remained suitable to that organism. (note - edited to clarify)

It's not Rocket Science, after all.

LarsMac;1513491 wrote: You continue to confuse and confound the discussion.

Meanwhile, other critters have survived over the eons and remained pretty much unchanged, because the environment never offered any difficultes to overcome.

It's not Rocket Science, after all.Mutations don't occur because of "difficulties to overcome". They just happen and if there are advantages to the mutation the species thrives, if not, it goes extinct. Think in terms of "opportunities" instead of "difficulties".

Ahso!;1513493 wrote: Mutations don't occur because of "difficulties to overcome". They just happen and if there are advantages to the mutation the species thrives, if not, it goes extinct. Think in terms of "opportunities" instead of "difficulties".


My bad. Poor choice of words.

LarsMac;1513497 wrote: My bad. Poor choice of words.It's a common way of viewing Evolution. Almost everybody does it. I suppose it has a lot to do with our cultural upbringing. We're taught to be problem solvers so we think in those terms. The difference is those who are flexible enough in their thinking to recognize the differences, such as me and you, and those who aren't, such as Pahu. One gains knowledge and therefore truth while the other allows both to pass by unnoticed for the sake of carrying forward belief in antiquated folklore.

Pahu will say that we are the latter, even though he actually knows better in the back of his mind.