Battle Talk ~ Battle Royale VII
- Thread starter Nathon Detroit
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One Eyed Jack
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Re: Berean Todd
Re: Berean Todd
They had iron before the flood.
Tubalcain was of the 7th generation from Adam. Noah came along afterwards.
Re: Berean Todd
They had iron before the flood.
Tubalcain was of the 7th generation from Adam. Noah came along afterwards.
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Re: Re: Berean Todd
Re: Re: Berean Todd
Naturally there was Iron in the ground since the beginning of the earth around 4.55 billion years ago, but no one had it in bulk before the Hittites smelted it in the mid 2nd millennium BC. Prior to that the main metals were copper, bronze, brass, as you say.
Being a wicked atheist I do not accept biblical chronology. Genesis was most likely written down well after 1000 BC, well within the Iron Age proper.
Re: Re: Berean Todd
Naturally there was Iron in the ground since the beginning of the earth around 4.55 billion years ago, but no one had it in bulk before the Hittites smelted it in the mid 2nd millennium BC. Prior to that the main metals were copper, bronze, brass, as you say.
Being a wicked atheist I do not accept biblical chronology. Genesis was most likely written down well after 1000 BC, well within the Iron Age proper.
One Eyed Jack
New member
Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Of course not, but I do.
Genesis was written down during the time of Moses, not the time of David.
Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Of course not, but I do.
Genesis was written down during the time of Moses, not the time of David.
LightSon
New member
quasi-wicked atheist
quasi-wicked atheist
quasi-wicked atheist
Hey come on. I think I have a pretty good sense of humor. Yes. I can see you are a funny guy. :zakath:
Fair enough. How do you determine if an act is "wicked" in your paradigm? Forget about my views for a moment. Have you ever done something that you consider "wicked"?
Oh there is doubt I think. :chuckle: No. you give yourself a little too much credit.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Re: Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Possibly, but not proven. The Iron age had arrived in Moses time anyway, if we assume a date for him of ?1200BC
Re: Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Possibly, but not proven. The Iron age had arrived in Moses time anyway, if we assume a date for him of ?1200BC
LightSon
New member
quasi-wicked atheist
quasi-wicked atheist
I know many Christian men who have been absolutely faithful to their wives.
You’ve been married for 36 years. I commend you. By happenstance you’ve done a good thing, despite the fact that there is nothing in an evolutionary context which would warrant such “moral” behavior. The human benefits you experience have been smuggled in from the Judeo-Christian worldview. You find value in the structure, but want to jettison the author of the structure.
quasi-wicked atheist
Doing the best I can to do just that. Thanks.
True. But neither will science serve as a good tool to bring me to a knowledge of the person that created me.
I love science. I obey the rules just fine. The problem is that you confuse evolutionary guesswork with science, and then proceed to dub it with a mantle of truth. There was no man observing the creation (or formation) of our universe. Hence there is no scientific way to establish what really happened. Evolution is a guess (theory) and nothing more. Evolutionist posturing rings of religious dogma in my ears, and since we are both now in the realm of faith, I’ll continue to put my eggs in the basket of one who has the power to make me live forever. What does your worldview offer me in terms of an afterlife? Christ demonstrated His power over death. This is not something that one can demonstrate scientifically, but it is true nevertheless. This goes to show that science is not the only tool in the box.
This is a valid proposition.
Why? Because I want more than 70 or 80 years of fun and pain. I want it all. I want to live forever. Also, the Bible provides a tenable reason for my existence, both its origin and purpose. Your paradigm may postulate an origin, but it cannot provide a purpose. That you must make up on your own and be satisfied with..
I will reserve comment about how "natural" it is.
I know many Christian men who have been absolutely faithful to their wives.
No. But God did. Of course I expect you will disagree, but Male and female structures and psyches are God’s handiwork, and a beautiful one at that.
You’ve been married for 36 years. I commend you. By happenstance you’ve done a good thing, despite the fact that there is nothing in an evolutionary context which would warrant such “moral” behavior. The human benefits you experience have been smuggled in from the Judeo-Christian worldview. You find value in the structure, but want to jettison the author of the structure.
One Eyed Jack
New member
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Well, you know... you can believe what you want.
More like around 1,400 BC.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Berean Todd
Well, you know... you can believe what you want.
More like around 1,400 BC.
If we use your idea of making sense as the baseline, then yeah, God would be stupid. But how many people have started out on an idea that everybody else thought was stupid and they end up having a great idea ? XEROX invented the ethernet but the higher-ups thought it was a waste of time and gave away the idea. Stupid idea in 1973 was a great idea in 1983.
Or to apply your reasoning to another event, it could be argued that the NAZIs would not have set up camps to exterminate people by gassing them or burning them. It would be a whole lot easier just to line them up and shoot them. With a large calibre weapon you could get a bunch with one round. Quick and cost effective.
Just because we cannot rationalize or understand a person's behavior does not negate their acting that way. So God had his own reasons for the flood. One Eye has his theory of why, and I don't know why.
But this I do know. If Jesus was able to resurrect from the dead, then I think there is a good chance He knows what happened back then. I think it is a pretty easy thing for God to make sure His ideas are accurately transmitted to mankind. So we come to the king pin of Christian doctrine, the event that Bob Enyart cited as the falsifiable evidence for God, and that is the resurrection of Jesus. So you agree that this doctrine is the keystone of the Christian faith ?
Re: quasi-wicked atheist
Re: quasi-wicked atheist
If it offends against natural Law
Re: quasi-wicked atheist
If it offends against natural Law
Re: Re: quasi-wicked atheist
Re: Re: quasi-wicked atheist
We take Natural Law to have arisen from human society,for human society, throughout human evolution. Our morality is Naturalistic.
Re: Re: quasi-wicked atheist
We take Natural Law to have arisen from human society,for human society, throughout human evolution. Our morality is Naturalistic.
Re: Re: Re: quasi-wicked atheist
Re: Re: Re: quasi-wicked atheist
And I have never knowingly done any thing really wicked, according to my paradigm or definition of wickedness. in fact i think I qialify for sainthood.!
Re: Re: Re: quasi-wicked atheist
And I have never knowingly done any thing really wicked, according to my paradigm or definition of wickedness. in fact i think I qialify for sainthood.!
Just so you all know.... Mr. Wicked Atheist has been banned for some mindless statements he made on another thread.
D the Atheist
New member
Sir Knight, do you mean banned forever, or for a cooling off period?
Bob Enyart doesn't know what he's talking about
Bob Enyart doesn't know what he's talking about
Analogous: Being highly skeptical of Bob’s claims of the existence of a god as the intelligent designer of our ecosystem, my initial reaction was to respond with scorn. However, realizing Bob’s sincerity and honest conviction has a role in his position I have elected instead to give his every claim honest consideration with the same respect for sincerity as I would anticipate from Bob were the shoe on the other foot. So, rather than post the usual criticisms I took the time to research each of Bob’s claims that he feels are relevant enough to support his beliefs. Thus I have invested several days of research into the scientific position revolving around Bob’s assertions from both the pro and con perspective, hoping to find a common ground from which I might better understand both Bob’s and my own feelings on this subject.
Bob:: I will show that it is irrational to believe that irreducibly complex higher biological functions [BA10-8] like for example, vision, flight, echolocation, and even a giraffe’s neck, could arise by chance. Science makes awesome progress in describing how things work. The entire cosmos, and especially biological life, is much more complex than what mankind had previously imagined. Remember the honeymoon period of atheism? As long as atheists still agree that complex functioning systems cannot appear by chance in one single step, then the more complexity science discovers, the more difficult it becomes to fathom a chance explanation for origins.
Analogous: Due to my own skepticism I am unable to approach this subject from a completely objective position, however I am able to give each of Bob’s claims fair consideration and investigate their validity among the minds of the learned to determine if Bob’s conclusions are justified or not.
My first challenge was to determine if I am irrational, as Bob claimed, to suspect that natural explanations are attainable for the obvious complexity of life inherent in our ecosystem. Since the question remains inconclusive I can understand some of the reasoning behind a claim of irrationality, when such claim has so much emotional baggage attached. Obviously if a natural explanation exists for these complexities Bob’s God loses somewhat of its appeal as a deity to be worshipped.
Bob’s reference to irreducible complexity arises from work done by a molecular biologist by the name of Michael Behe who authored the book “Darwin’s Black Box”. Michael claims that some equipment found in the simplest life forms is irreducibly complex, meaning all the parts are required for proper functioning. To be sure, Michael’s claims have established some clear parameters for the researcher involved in abiogenesis, hurdles to be cleared. In my research I have discovered that Michael’s claims do not enjoy wide acceptance among his colleagues. Many have raised challenging questions that remain as obstacles to Michael’s conclusions for intelligent design as the only viable explanation. Even among theistic minded researchers Michael has encountered criticism:
http://www.asa3.org/evolution/irred_compl.html
Since a great deal of Bob’s argument revolves around this premise I shall dedicate the majority of my response to addressing Bob’s arguments from this perspective.
The two major objections that plague Behe’s hypothesis are as follows:
1. The examples Behe offers as evidence of irreducible complexity are not irreducible. A number of solutions have been proffered that demonstrate the difficulty in determining irreducibility.
2. Michael’s hypothesis of intelligent design is not testable, falsifiable or verifiable and thus non-scientific. It’s a metaphysical hypothesis that cannot be proven or refuted.
I shall leave Bob to deal with these extremely succinct criticisms. My major objection to both Bob’s and Behe’s assertions of intelligent design are based on other, more cogent observations.
A. Bob’s argument revolves around such complex bio-equipment as eyesight, echolocation, animals with long necks, and animals that fly. Behe’s conclusions are based on such complex bio-equipment as flagellum, lungs and the immune system.
The problem with using these complex bio-mechanisms is that they are far too advanced in complexity for researchers to tackle at the current level of scientific knowledge and comprehension. At the present time researchers are still trying to solve the protein riddle in abiogenesis and are faced with extreme difficulties in resolving the transitions required from the limited data acquired in the fossil record. Soft tissue just does not preserve well even under the best of conditions.
To demand, or ridicule, researchers for their inability to factually explain the processes required to arrive at a natural explanation for these complex bio-equipped organisms is tantamount to sitting a normal four year old down at a table laden with transistors, capacitors, diodes, resistors and other electronic related paraphernalia, and giving that child 24 hours to construct a working radio receiver. It just isn’t going to happen unless that child happens to be a genius in electronics.
But this is one of the primary postulates in Bob’s argument. Because researchers are currently unable to explain these complex biological features from an evolutionary perspective we are therefore to assume it will never be possible to do so and thus inserting an intelligent designer into this gap is the only rational solution.
Let’s look at Bob’s postulates used to support his argument. They are based on the following observations:
1. Complexity
2. Random chance
3. Statistical probabilities
4. Absence of scientific explanation
Let’s deal with each postulate in the order in which they are listed and bring some light of reason back into this forum.
A. Complexity: While I’m not cognizant of how much research Bob has personally conducted in “complexity” theory prior to including it as a postulate in his argument, there exists a rich compendium of research that explicitly details how naturally complex phenomena can arise from humble beginnings. Research in fields like:
(a.) Fractals in math and computer science, random number generators, cellular automata, artificial intelligence, spontaneous evolution, informational algorithms, and far too many more to exhaustively cover here. A good place to start is here: http://www.wolframscience.com/summary/
And here: http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/sak-peptides.html
The concept of complex systems requiring an even more complex orientation has long since been discarded as a viable premise relevant to nature. The observation of natural “self organization” on such diverse levels as quantum physics, molecular biology, chemistry and computer science have exploded this antiquated view and moved well beyond it. So any conclusion based on a postulate that incorporates complexity as a negative factor in mutational and natural selection is highly suspect. Just because research is still in its fledgling stage doesn’t license one to jump ahead to the development of bio-equipment that advantaged organisms in the “natural selection” game of life and declare such development to be physically impossible without an intelligent designer.
B. Random chance: One of Bob’s primary postulates that he relies heavily on in defense of his argument is Random Chance. As there seems to be quite some metaphysical discrepancy among scholars as to what constitutes randomness, determinism and arbitrariness, Bob has really left us with little to work with in this postulate. He appears to be applying a blanket coverage of randomness to all evolutionary functions, which is just completely false. I wouldn’t think that Bob is unaware of the definite properties inherent in matter and how those properties determine reactions on all combinational levels, so I’m really puzzled by his application of this postulate. Theists are notorious for arguing the cause and effect relationship, (which is definitely deterministic), as a cosmological justification for ascribing the existence of the universe to their god. Yet many of them are just as adamant in applying an Armenian dogma to the doctrine of salvation and freewill. Thus they strive for completely contradictory premises to support their arguments. Bob appears to be treading the same path.
A careful inspection of the basics involved in abiogenesis reveals a research effort that focuses primarily on the deterministic attributes of various combinations of the basic elements as described by the periodic table. There are extremely directive forces inherent in all the basic elements of the periodic table. Combinations of those elements further complexify the directive attributes. Add to that the environmental accoutrements of temperature, pressure, toxicity, monomer and polymerization, quantum mechanics, ionization, alkalinity and acidity, just to name a few…and we can readily see how quickly even the simplest combinations can complexify from extremely determinative forces.
How all of these factors determine complex biological evolution is still under investigation. We can definitely see evidence of determinism in mutation as we examine the results of aquatic life near chemical dumps and find oddities of nature like two headed frogs and six legged salamanders. We also can easily trace a natural trial and error sequence up through the various levels and classifications of organisms. For instance, eyesight shows increasing complexity as we move higher up the chain. However, this also doesn’t bode well for Bob’s argument of design due to the inherent flaws in many of those bio-equipped examples Bob used. For example: http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml leads us to wonder just how sound an argument Bob has in claiming his God is the responsible agent.
The fact that many organisms dwelling in areas of little or no light also mitigates against an intelligent designer as the blindness of such creatures is exactly what you’d expect to see from an evolutionary position.
C. Statistical Probabilities: Bob has cited, without reference, some statistical probabilities concerning the odds of non-animate material self generating into living organisms. Without specific reference to the factors incorporated into these computations it is difficult to assess their validity. It has been my experience with such math that the figures are based on strictly random factors representing the knowns and givens. Since there is a plethora of evidence to support a high degree of natural deterministic values inherent in the properties of matter, any such statistics that failed to allot these factors in to the computations will be flawed.
I would note that such probabilities do not rule out abiogenesis or arrive at a 0% probability. Most such figures just conclude a time frame much larger than is conventionally accepted as being consistent with the age of the universe. So basically Bob’s postulate, based on probabilities, is riding on the time factor more than the probability factor.
D. Absence Of Scientific Explanation: One can easily infer from Bob’s argument that the absence of a detailed scientific explanation encourages Bob’s alternate hypothesis of an intelligent designer. Yet Bob has not supplied any counter-argumentation detailing how this intelligent designer accomplished the creation of life. Bob appears content just to let us guess since there is apparently no explanation forthcoming. If Bob’s hypothesis is to have any credence, especially scientific credence, (and he is contesting a scientific paradigm so he is obligated to supply more than just a bald assertion), then Bob should step forward with some sound technical theoretics detailing how we can know his hypothesis is valid. If Bob is arguing from a philosophical basis then even a philosophical explanation is preferable to nothing. If Bob is planning on pointing to Genesis then I shall take him to task on the extreme discrepancies therein.
Finally, since Bob is arguing for complexities, nothing can be more complex than human behavior. If he’s going to assert an intelligent designer, one wonders why his designer made it possible for humans to injure one another. This seems like an extremely incredible over-sight on this God’s part. Surely he could have designed humans to be so adverse to violence against another human being as to be almost impossible to do. If Bob wishes to insert a designer God in the gaps of a very young science he should be prepared to take the flak from both sides of the fence.
Now I’m going to directly respond to some of Bob’s fallacies.
Bob: Vision: Consider vision systems, and the supposedly primitive brains with which evolutionists think eyesight evolved. Science has taught us that vision systems are wildly more complex than unscientific men may have imagined. For example, when photons strike the rods and cones in our eyeballs, the images they illuminate are communicated to our brains using symbols that do not correspond to the image itself.
Analogous: Aside from the glaring absence of support for this assertion Bob leaves us wondering if these symbols are identical in all organisms. It appears he is referring to human sight here but then begins to discuss the eye of a mosquito, leaving the impression that a mosquito’s eye operates identical to a human’s eye.
Bob: Look at my picture to the left of this post (called an Avatar). Yes… that one, showing me in a suit and tie. Now, imagine that a primitive creature, say a mosquito, can use vision to increase his chances of survival, since it would help if he bites my neck rather than my shirt.
Analogous: It would be helpful if Bob would provide some support for this inference that mosquito’s actually recognize the difference between a neck and a shirt. I’ve been bitten through my clothing on a number of occasions, so it apparently doesn’t matter to the mosquito. Bob is inferring a level of intelligence upon a mosquito that just isn’t possible considering the size of its brain.
Bob: Functioning vision systems provide extraordinary survival benefits to organisms. But that handsome picture of me (I’m bragging about the picture quality, not my looks), is not nearly as instructive (or as good looking) if you look at the actual data in the .GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) file that contains that picture. Most readers can right-click on the photo and then from the shortcut menu that pops up, select “Save Picture As…” and save it to your desktop as Bob.txt. Then, most readers can right-click on that file and open it with a text editor like Microsoft Notepad. By doing this, you can see what that picture data looks like to a word processing program like Notepad. That rubbish looks much more like what a bug would see when trying to decipher the information coming to his brain as a visual image. Here’s what I look like when encoded as a stream of data:
Analogous: Bob must share with us his amazing ability to read the brain of a mosquito. Here are the FACTS about mosquitoes: http://science.howstuffworks.com/mosquito
-snip the codes to save on bandwidth-
Bob: Now, how does the supposed evolving bug brain begin to decipher such a data stream to identify in the above symbols, say, my nose? Can you spot my nose in the above image data? You couldn’t spot Jimmy Durante’s nose in those symbols. But the job for the bug is way more complicated. The above gibberish interprets the data in my photo as though it were ASCII and ANSI (computer text) characters. We could view the same information in hexadecimal characters (base 16), or in a binary series of bits (but then we’d have to look at about 4K, or 4,073 bytes, i.e., 32,584 bits of zeros and ones), but at least the above is a single, unchanging, defined set of information. For the bug, the stream of electrochemical signals is continuous, and constantly changes. Get that?
Analogous: Bob is committing the fallacy of equivocation between the operation of a mosquito’s eyes and his very tiny brain. To augment survival the only data a mosquito requires from his sight is the detection of movement. All these more sophisticated data interpretations Bob is attributing to the mosquito are factually incorrect and unsupported assertions. Unless Bob has access to better scientific publications than I do, I am unaware of any study that purports to know what, if anything, goes on inside a mosquito’s brain. If Bob were an honest man he’d admit that he doesn’t know either and is just making ad hoc assertions to compliment his equivocation.
Bob: By the way, an eyelid could close to give the bug time to think about the last image he saw, but would that lid have evolved prior to the brain evolving sufficiently to interpret the data sent to it by the forming eye?
Analogous: Mosquitoes do not have eyelids nor does their brain capacity support the notion of feature mapping that Bob has erroneously asserted.
Bob: And while we’re at it, a broadband optic nerve with sufficient data transfer rates must develop by pure chance.
Analogous: Even though I’ve dealt with this raw assertion above I think it feasible to add that Bob has again made an unsupported assertion. There currently exists quite an array of eye configurations known to researchers, some nothing more than a few tiny nerves sensitive to light. That such bio-equipment arose by pure chance is speculation on Bob’s part because no scientific evidence exists to support Bob’s assertion here. Certainly genetic mutation would have played a role, but to say that it was pure chance is just silly.
Bob: I know the atheists in the Grandstands are particularly obtuse about this, thinking that atheism does not depend upon pure chance to create such new functions. But by atheism, there is no directing force to develop sight in a blind creature. And natural selection could not preserve sight (eyes, nerves, processing, comprehending) until its component parts operated together at least as a rudimentary vision system.
Analogous: Here is another classic example of arguing from ignorance. Bob has no possible way of knowing how nerve endings becoming sensitized to light would impact an organism. Bob is making assertion after assertion as if these are all scientific givens. He seems to have forgotten he’s trying to insert a god into a gap that he keeps explaining as if no gap existed. Biologists simply do not know how simple a configuration it would take to encompass something akin to sight. Some of the information found here might humble Bob’s arrogant assertions down just a notch or two: http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml
Bob: So the bug needs to develop (by chance) a method of interpreting the symbolic vision data stream. But if every atom in the known universe represented a trillion ways per second of interpreting the above data, and we enlarged that universe by a trillion, trillion, trillion times, and let such an inquisitive bug live a trillion years, that poor slob of a bug couldn’t begin to touch the possibilities of chance coming up with the correct way of interpreting that data. The primitive bird brain or bug brain would have no conception that the incoming stream of electrochemical signals could indicate the look on my face.
Analogous: Bob seems to have forgotten that if all life came from the same basic substance then the ability to recognize Bob’s face has arisen…in Bob. But to claim that a mosquito’s sight must come equipped with the ability to enable the mosquito to discern the look on Bob’s face is absurd. The only thing the mosquito is looking for, has been naturally equipped to look for, is blood…just like you theists.
Now if Bob would point us to the source of his quoted statistical probabilities we can proceed to examine the factors used. If they are entirely based on chance…and I’ve found that most such creationist math is…then Bob has bitten from the wrong apple. His eyes will not be opened and he can carry on with his life in Eden.
How does Bob explain the survival of creatures that have no eyesight? Bob is trying to foist upon us the notion that insects with eyes must be able to classify every pixel of data those eyes bring to their brains…else eyes are a definite evidence for design. One wonders if Bob understood all that code he posted above that our computers translate into images? Likely not. Such code is man-made symbolic language. Did man develop such code before computers? Are mosquito brains capable of assigning symbolic language or do eyes really translate light sensitivity into such language? Bob seems to think so and I would gladly agree if he can present one shred of evidence to support this claim. Bob, rather than providing evidence for the existence of a god, is digging himself a hole where he’s going to be spending more time proving the claims he’s trying to use to support his belief, than actually supporting his belief. For instance:
Bob: Flight:. [By the way, this week my son Nathaniel and I worked on a fossil dig run by creationist paleontologists who are excavating a 100-foot long brachiosaurus in Massadona, Colorado near Dinosaur National Monument. Earlier this summer, these friends, at CreationExpeditions.com, helped to dispel a popular evolutionist myth by excavating in the badlands of South Dakota of a 30-foot long Edmontosaurus. For on the weakest of assumptions, many evolutionists have claimed that some dinosaurs evolved into birds, and specifically, some say that the Edmontosaurus perhaps had feathers. Dinosaur skin imprints are extremely rare. So thankfully, Peter and Mark DeRosa, world-class (home-schooled) dinosaur excavators scientifically documented, unearthed, and preserved the skin imprint from much of the Edmontosaurus’ back and one limb, and of course, it had no feathers!]
Analogous: Wherever does Bob get this stuff? The edmontosaurus was much too big to have ever been considered by even the most ignorant paleantologist to be a precursor to birds. Can you provide me a link to the claim that this dinosaur had feathers? Here’s the true story of this 70 million year old relic: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/dinos/Edmontosaurus.shtml
No mention of feathers anywhere. Now the actual hypothesis has been supported by this recent discovery in China:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000A87F9-9FD8-1C5E-B882809EC588ED9F
And this: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000F30B4-43B6-1E2F-8B3B809EC588EEDF
One wonders if Bob hasn’t grown so confident in his fallacy weaving campaign that he has lost all touch with reality. This throws Bob’s credibility into a nose dive that he isn’t likely to recover from. Maybe Bob can implore god to equip him with some wings before he hits bottom?
Bob sails away on the wings of a gnat: Initially developing the requirements for animal flight, including hollowed out bones, feathers, brain avionics, and wings would have nothing to do with need or experience. But atheists just can’t come to terms with this. One of evolution’s basic flaws is ignoring the most basic law of microbiology: genetics. Evolutionists succumb to a vestigial Lamarckian delusion. Atheists secretly hope to discover that genetic science is wrong, and that really the phenotype, not the genotype, directs reproduction. ]: But a jumpy rat does not incline his kids’ DNA toward flight. Atheists are like the true believers of a cult whose dogma ignores our scientific knowledge of genetic reproduction, cloaking their ritual belief in phenotype reproduction in silly myths. But after a million jumps, the DNA of a rodent’s offspring will not benefit from even the slightest nudge in the direction of improved jumping skills. Such skill would have to arise by chance alone, and only then could natural selection preserve it.
Analogous: Bob’s straw man argument about genotype is irrelevant. If an animal has all the reproductive organs in place, it can reproduce. If the dominant genetic strand is a mutated version of a previous phenotype, the mutation will replicate itself in the next generation. Evolution 101. And Bob assumes, without any supporting evidence, that an animal has to automatically know what to do with his mutated bio-equipment. What’s wrong with a mutated animal learning to use its equipment? Ever heard of punctuated equilibrium Bob? That’s where evolutionary cycles occur rapidly and then taper off, such as occurred during the Cambrian Period. If a successive series of mutations leads to an animal with the equipment, sooner or later the animal will learn to use that equipment to his advantage if it’s useable. Feathers are quite handy in keeping a reptile warm and dry. The Ostrich has both wings and feathers but does it use them to fly? Apparently Bob has never studied the habits of birds or he’d know they have to literally kick their young out of the nest and force them to learn to fly. It never seems to occur to theists that mutated equipment doesn’t have to come with encoded operating instructions or even arrive full blown in one swell foop. Flying apparatus can evolve piecemeal and animals can begin by simply gliding, like the flying fish and the flying squirrel. Let’s move on…
Bob: Echolocation: Bats use extraordinarily sophisticated echolocation to find their way out of dark caves, to maneuver around tree branches, and to find their prey. They must emit very loud ultrasounds rapidly varying the frequency, and with extremely sensitive hearing, detect and interpret returning echoes, using the differing pitch to distinguish between larger objects further away and nearer smaller objects, while filtering out competing environmental noises including ultrasonic pulses from other bats. Man’s most advanced sonar to date can distinguish echoes six millionths of a second apart, but bats effortlessly interpret data signals separated by only three millionths of a second, and such sophistication enables, for example, fishing bats to successfully hunt minnows, spotting a fin as fine as a human hair that extends only eight hundredths of an inch above the water.
In the last round, I claimed that “atheism cannot directly explain even one of all the observations ever made, while all those same observations are themselves ready and direct evidence for theism.” Let’s test that claim again. As I write this section on echolocation, I’ve taken a Starbucks break and opened the Rocky Mountain News and coincidentally read that bats can eat 600 mosquitoes per hour! At night! Tiny mosquitoes! Try to read an echo off of a mosquito! In flight! Aside from our dinosaur hunt, our family also went on an excursion to Glenwood Caverns, in which we toured at night an awesome cave that until recently was closed to the public for 80 years. Bats flew over our heads exiting the cave in search for food, mostly tiny mosquitoes. I explained to our children that the bats hearing is so delicate that the loudness of their own signals would cause them to go deaf, but a clever system muffles their ears with each burst of sound. For natural selection to even begin preserving echolocation system components, this higher function must increase the animal’s chances for survival, and that will not happen until the wildly complicated system begins to operate correctly, and even the slightest function out of sync will disable the entire system, and until the conservative forces of natural selection kick in, the only force available to the atheist is random chance mutations. And so, go ahead and attempt to quantify the probability that echolocation will evolve by chance to the point where it begins to improve survival. Remember what that psalmist wrote?
Analogous: One wonders why it never occurred to Bob, while he and his family were in those caverns, why their voices echoed off the walls? Gee, you think a few million years of living in an environment where you’re surrounded by echoes that you might actually adapt to that environment in ways that enable you to find food in dark damp places where mosquitoes and other creatures like to lay their eggs? Echolocation Bob, think about it, it’ll come to you.
I would enjoy an opportunity to meet Bob head on in the ring if he’s up to it. I can assure you this is one atheist he’ll never forget and I’ll be around till the final bell.
Bob Enyart doesn't know what he's talking about
Analogous: Being highly skeptical of Bob’s claims of the existence of a god as the intelligent designer of our ecosystem, my initial reaction was to respond with scorn. However, realizing Bob’s sincerity and honest conviction has a role in his position I have elected instead to give his every claim honest consideration with the same respect for sincerity as I would anticipate from Bob were the shoe on the other foot. So, rather than post the usual criticisms I took the time to research each of Bob’s claims that he feels are relevant enough to support his beliefs. Thus I have invested several days of research into the scientific position revolving around Bob’s assertions from both the pro and con perspective, hoping to find a common ground from which I might better understand both Bob’s and my own feelings on this subject.
Bob:: I will show that it is irrational to believe that irreducibly complex higher biological functions [BA10-8] like for example, vision, flight, echolocation, and even a giraffe’s neck, could arise by chance. Science makes awesome progress in describing how things work. The entire cosmos, and especially biological life, is much more complex than what mankind had previously imagined. Remember the honeymoon period of atheism? As long as atheists still agree that complex functioning systems cannot appear by chance in one single step, then the more complexity science discovers, the more difficult it becomes to fathom a chance explanation for origins.
Analogous: Due to my own skepticism I am unable to approach this subject from a completely objective position, however I am able to give each of Bob’s claims fair consideration and investigate their validity among the minds of the learned to determine if Bob’s conclusions are justified or not.
My first challenge was to determine if I am irrational, as Bob claimed, to suspect that natural explanations are attainable for the obvious complexity of life inherent in our ecosystem. Since the question remains inconclusive I can understand some of the reasoning behind a claim of irrationality, when such claim has so much emotional baggage attached. Obviously if a natural explanation exists for these complexities Bob’s God loses somewhat of its appeal as a deity to be worshipped.
Bob’s reference to irreducible complexity arises from work done by a molecular biologist by the name of Michael Behe who authored the book “Darwin’s Black Box”. Michael claims that some equipment found in the simplest life forms is irreducibly complex, meaning all the parts are required for proper functioning. To be sure, Michael’s claims have established some clear parameters for the researcher involved in abiogenesis, hurdles to be cleared. In my research I have discovered that Michael’s claims do not enjoy wide acceptance among his colleagues. Many have raised challenging questions that remain as obstacles to Michael’s conclusions for intelligent design as the only viable explanation. Even among theistic minded researchers Michael has encountered criticism:
http://www.asa3.org/evolution/irred_compl.html
Since a great deal of Bob’s argument revolves around this premise I shall dedicate the majority of my response to addressing Bob’s arguments from this perspective.
The two major objections that plague Behe’s hypothesis are as follows:
1. The examples Behe offers as evidence of irreducible complexity are not irreducible. A number of solutions have been proffered that demonstrate the difficulty in determining irreducibility.
2. Michael’s hypothesis of intelligent design is not testable, falsifiable or verifiable and thus non-scientific. It’s a metaphysical hypothesis that cannot be proven or refuted.
I shall leave Bob to deal with these extremely succinct criticisms. My major objection to both Bob’s and Behe’s assertions of intelligent design are based on other, more cogent observations.
A. Bob’s argument revolves around such complex bio-equipment as eyesight, echolocation, animals with long necks, and animals that fly. Behe’s conclusions are based on such complex bio-equipment as flagellum, lungs and the immune system.
The problem with using these complex bio-mechanisms is that they are far too advanced in complexity for researchers to tackle at the current level of scientific knowledge and comprehension. At the present time researchers are still trying to solve the protein riddle in abiogenesis and are faced with extreme difficulties in resolving the transitions required from the limited data acquired in the fossil record. Soft tissue just does not preserve well even under the best of conditions.
To demand, or ridicule, researchers for their inability to factually explain the processes required to arrive at a natural explanation for these complex bio-equipped organisms is tantamount to sitting a normal four year old down at a table laden with transistors, capacitors, diodes, resistors and other electronic related paraphernalia, and giving that child 24 hours to construct a working radio receiver. It just isn’t going to happen unless that child happens to be a genius in electronics.
But this is one of the primary postulates in Bob’s argument. Because researchers are currently unable to explain these complex biological features from an evolutionary perspective we are therefore to assume it will never be possible to do so and thus inserting an intelligent designer into this gap is the only rational solution.
Let’s look at Bob’s postulates used to support his argument. They are based on the following observations:
1. Complexity
2. Random chance
3. Statistical probabilities
4. Absence of scientific explanation
Let’s deal with each postulate in the order in which they are listed and bring some light of reason back into this forum.
A. Complexity: While I’m not cognizant of how much research Bob has personally conducted in “complexity” theory prior to including it as a postulate in his argument, there exists a rich compendium of research that explicitly details how naturally complex phenomena can arise from humble beginnings. Research in fields like:
(a.) Fractals in math and computer science, random number generators, cellular automata, artificial intelligence, spontaneous evolution, informational algorithms, and far too many more to exhaustively cover here. A good place to start is here: http://www.wolframscience.com/summary/
And here: http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/People/kauffman/sak-peptides.html
The concept of complex systems requiring an even more complex orientation has long since been discarded as a viable premise relevant to nature. The observation of natural “self organization” on such diverse levels as quantum physics, molecular biology, chemistry and computer science have exploded this antiquated view and moved well beyond it. So any conclusion based on a postulate that incorporates complexity as a negative factor in mutational and natural selection is highly suspect. Just because research is still in its fledgling stage doesn’t license one to jump ahead to the development of bio-equipment that advantaged organisms in the “natural selection” game of life and declare such development to be physically impossible without an intelligent designer.
B. Random chance: One of Bob’s primary postulates that he relies heavily on in defense of his argument is Random Chance. As there seems to be quite some metaphysical discrepancy among scholars as to what constitutes randomness, determinism and arbitrariness, Bob has really left us with little to work with in this postulate. He appears to be applying a blanket coverage of randomness to all evolutionary functions, which is just completely false. I wouldn’t think that Bob is unaware of the definite properties inherent in matter and how those properties determine reactions on all combinational levels, so I’m really puzzled by his application of this postulate. Theists are notorious for arguing the cause and effect relationship, (which is definitely deterministic), as a cosmological justification for ascribing the existence of the universe to their god. Yet many of them are just as adamant in applying an Armenian dogma to the doctrine of salvation and freewill. Thus they strive for completely contradictory premises to support their arguments. Bob appears to be treading the same path.
A careful inspection of the basics involved in abiogenesis reveals a research effort that focuses primarily on the deterministic attributes of various combinations of the basic elements as described by the periodic table. There are extremely directive forces inherent in all the basic elements of the periodic table. Combinations of those elements further complexify the directive attributes. Add to that the environmental accoutrements of temperature, pressure, toxicity, monomer and polymerization, quantum mechanics, ionization, alkalinity and acidity, just to name a few…and we can readily see how quickly even the simplest combinations can complexify from extremely determinative forces.
How all of these factors determine complex biological evolution is still under investigation. We can definitely see evidence of determinism in mutation as we examine the results of aquatic life near chemical dumps and find oddities of nature like two headed frogs and six legged salamanders. We also can easily trace a natural trial and error sequence up through the various levels and classifications of organisms. For instance, eyesight shows increasing complexity as we move higher up the chain. However, this also doesn’t bode well for Bob’s argument of design due to the inherent flaws in many of those bio-equipped examples Bob used. For example: http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml leads us to wonder just how sound an argument Bob has in claiming his God is the responsible agent.
The fact that many organisms dwelling in areas of little or no light also mitigates against an intelligent designer as the blindness of such creatures is exactly what you’d expect to see from an evolutionary position.
C. Statistical Probabilities: Bob has cited, without reference, some statistical probabilities concerning the odds of non-animate material self generating into living organisms. Without specific reference to the factors incorporated into these computations it is difficult to assess their validity. It has been my experience with such math that the figures are based on strictly random factors representing the knowns and givens. Since there is a plethora of evidence to support a high degree of natural deterministic values inherent in the properties of matter, any such statistics that failed to allot these factors in to the computations will be flawed.
I would note that such probabilities do not rule out abiogenesis or arrive at a 0% probability. Most such figures just conclude a time frame much larger than is conventionally accepted as being consistent with the age of the universe. So basically Bob’s postulate, based on probabilities, is riding on the time factor more than the probability factor.
D. Absence Of Scientific Explanation: One can easily infer from Bob’s argument that the absence of a detailed scientific explanation encourages Bob’s alternate hypothesis of an intelligent designer. Yet Bob has not supplied any counter-argumentation detailing how this intelligent designer accomplished the creation of life. Bob appears content just to let us guess since there is apparently no explanation forthcoming. If Bob’s hypothesis is to have any credence, especially scientific credence, (and he is contesting a scientific paradigm so he is obligated to supply more than just a bald assertion), then Bob should step forward with some sound technical theoretics detailing how we can know his hypothesis is valid. If Bob is arguing from a philosophical basis then even a philosophical explanation is preferable to nothing. If Bob is planning on pointing to Genesis then I shall take him to task on the extreme discrepancies therein.
Finally, since Bob is arguing for complexities, nothing can be more complex than human behavior. If he’s going to assert an intelligent designer, one wonders why his designer made it possible for humans to injure one another. This seems like an extremely incredible over-sight on this God’s part. Surely he could have designed humans to be so adverse to violence against another human being as to be almost impossible to do. If Bob wishes to insert a designer God in the gaps of a very young science he should be prepared to take the flak from both sides of the fence.
Now I’m going to directly respond to some of Bob’s fallacies.
Bob: Vision: Consider vision systems, and the supposedly primitive brains with which evolutionists think eyesight evolved. Science has taught us that vision systems are wildly more complex than unscientific men may have imagined. For example, when photons strike the rods and cones in our eyeballs, the images they illuminate are communicated to our brains using symbols that do not correspond to the image itself.
Analogous: Aside from the glaring absence of support for this assertion Bob leaves us wondering if these symbols are identical in all organisms. It appears he is referring to human sight here but then begins to discuss the eye of a mosquito, leaving the impression that a mosquito’s eye operates identical to a human’s eye.
Bob: Look at my picture to the left of this post (called an Avatar). Yes… that one, showing me in a suit and tie. Now, imagine that a primitive creature, say a mosquito, can use vision to increase his chances of survival, since it would help if he bites my neck rather than my shirt.
Analogous: It would be helpful if Bob would provide some support for this inference that mosquito’s actually recognize the difference between a neck and a shirt. I’ve been bitten through my clothing on a number of occasions, so it apparently doesn’t matter to the mosquito. Bob is inferring a level of intelligence upon a mosquito that just isn’t possible considering the size of its brain.
Bob: Functioning vision systems provide extraordinary survival benefits to organisms. But that handsome picture of me (I’m bragging about the picture quality, not my looks), is not nearly as instructive (or as good looking) if you look at the actual data in the .GIF (Graphics Interchange Format) file that contains that picture. Most readers can right-click on the photo and then from the shortcut menu that pops up, select “Save Picture As…” and save it to your desktop as Bob.txt. Then, most readers can right-click on that file and open it with a text editor like Microsoft Notepad. By doing this, you can see what that picture data looks like to a word processing program like Notepad. That rubbish looks much more like what a bug would see when trying to decipher the information coming to his brain as a visual image. Here’s what I look like when encoded as a stream of data:
Analogous: Bob must share with us his amazing ability to read the brain of a mosquito. Here are the FACTS about mosquitoes: http://science.howstuffworks.com/mosquito
-snip the codes to save on bandwidth-
Bob: Now, how does the supposed evolving bug brain begin to decipher such a data stream to identify in the above symbols, say, my nose? Can you spot my nose in the above image data? You couldn’t spot Jimmy Durante’s nose in those symbols. But the job for the bug is way more complicated. The above gibberish interprets the data in my photo as though it were ASCII and ANSI (computer text) characters. We could view the same information in hexadecimal characters (base 16), or in a binary series of bits (but then we’d have to look at about 4K, or 4,073 bytes, i.e., 32,584 bits of zeros and ones), but at least the above is a single, unchanging, defined set of information. For the bug, the stream of electrochemical signals is continuous, and constantly changes. Get that?
Analogous: Bob is committing the fallacy of equivocation between the operation of a mosquito’s eyes and his very tiny brain. To augment survival the only data a mosquito requires from his sight is the detection of movement. All these more sophisticated data interpretations Bob is attributing to the mosquito are factually incorrect and unsupported assertions. Unless Bob has access to better scientific publications than I do, I am unaware of any study that purports to know what, if anything, goes on inside a mosquito’s brain. If Bob were an honest man he’d admit that he doesn’t know either and is just making ad hoc assertions to compliment his equivocation.
Bob: By the way, an eyelid could close to give the bug time to think about the last image he saw, but would that lid have evolved prior to the brain evolving sufficiently to interpret the data sent to it by the forming eye?
Analogous: Mosquitoes do not have eyelids nor does their brain capacity support the notion of feature mapping that Bob has erroneously asserted.
Bob: And while we’re at it, a broadband optic nerve with sufficient data transfer rates must develop by pure chance.
Analogous: Even though I’ve dealt with this raw assertion above I think it feasible to add that Bob has again made an unsupported assertion. There currently exists quite an array of eye configurations known to researchers, some nothing more than a few tiny nerves sensitive to light. That such bio-equipment arose by pure chance is speculation on Bob’s part because no scientific evidence exists to support Bob’s assertion here. Certainly genetic mutation would have played a role, but to say that it was pure chance is just silly.
Bob: I know the atheists in the Grandstands are particularly obtuse about this, thinking that atheism does not depend upon pure chance to create such new functions. But by atheism, there is no directing force to develop sight in a blind creature. And natural selection could not preserve sight (eyes, nerves, processing, comprehending) until its component parts operated together at least as a rudimentary vision system.
Analogous: Here is another classic example of arguing from ignorance. Bob has no possible way of knowing how nerve endings becoming sensitized to light would impact an organism. Bob is making assertion after assertion as if these are all scientific givens. He seems to have forgotten he’s trying to insert a god into a gap that he keeps explaining as if no gap existed. Biologists simply do not know how simple a configuration it would take to encompass something akin to sight. Some of the information found here might humble Bob’s arrogant assertions down just a notch or two: http://www.2think.org/eye.shtml
Bob: So the bug needs to develop (by chance) a method of interpreting the symbolic vision data stream. But if every atom in the known universe represented a trillion ways per second of interpreting the above data, and we enlarged that universe by a trillion, trillion, trillion times, and let such an inquisitive bug live a trillion years, that poor slob of a bug couldn’t begin to touch the possibilities of chance coming up with the correct way of interpreting that data. The primitive bird brain or bug brain would have no conception that the incoming stream of electrochemical signals could indicate the look on my face.
Analogous: Bob seems to have forgotten that if all life came from the same basic substance then the ability to recognize Bob’s face has arisen…in Bob. But to claim that a mosquito’s sight must come equipped with the ability to enable the mosquito to discern the look on Bob’s face is absurd. The only thing the mosquito is looking for, has been naturally equipped to look for, is blood…just like you theists.
Now if Bob would point us to the source of his quoted statistical probabilities we can proceed to examine the factors used. If they are entirely based on chance…and I’ve found that most such creationist math is…then Bob has bitten from the wrong apple. His eyes will not be opened and he can carry on with his life in Eden.
How does Bob explain the survival of creatures that have no eyesight? Bob is trying to foist upon us the notion that insects with eyes must be able to classify every pixel of data those eyes bring to their brains…else eyes are a definite evidence for design. One wonders if Bob understood all that code he posted above that our computers translate into images? Likely not. Such code is man-made symbolic language. Did man develop such code before computers? Are mosquito brains capable of assigning symbolic language or do eyes really translate light sensitivity into such language? Bob seems to think so and I would gladly agree if he can present one shred of evidence to support this claim. Bob, rather than providing evidence for the existence of a god, is digging himself a hole where he’s going to be spending more time proving the claims he’s trying to use to support his belief, than actually supporting his belief. For instance:
Bob: Flight:. [By the way, this week my son Nathaniel and I worked on a fossil dig run by creationist paleontologists who are excavating a 100-foot long brachiosaurus in Massadona, Colorado near Dinosaur National Monument. Earlier this summer, these friends, at CreationExpeditions.com, helped to dispel a popular evolutionist myth by excavating in the badlands of South Dakota of a 30-foot long Edmontosaurus. For on the weakest of assumptions, many evolutionists have claimed that some dinosaurs evolved into birds, and specifically, some say that the Edmontosaurus perhaps had feathers. Dinosaur skin imprints are extremely rare. So thankfully, Peter and Mark DeRosa, world-class (home-schooled) dinosaur excavators scientifically documented, unearthed, and preserved the skin imprint from much of the Edmontosaurus’ back and one limb, and of course, it had no feathers!]
Analogous: Wherever does Bob get this stuff? The edmontosaurus was much too big to have ever been considered by even the most ignorant paleantologist to be a precursor to birds. Can you provide me a link to the claim that this dinosaur had feathers? Here’s the true story of this 70 million year old relic: http://www.enchantedlearning.com/subjects/dinosaurs/dinos/Edmontosaurus.shtml
No mention of feathers anywhere. Now the actual hypothesis has been supported by this recent discovery in China:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000A87F9-9FD8-1C5E-B882809EC588ED9F
And this: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003&articleID=000F30B4-43B6-1E2F-8B3B809EC588EEDF
One wonders if Bob hasn’t grown so confident in his fallacy weaving campaign that he has lost all touch with reality. This throws Bob’s credibility into a nose dive that he isn’t likely to recover from. Maybe Bob can implore god to equip him with some wings before he hits bottom?
Bob sails away on the wings of a gnat: Initially developing the requirements for animal flight, including hollowed out bones, feathers, brain avionics, and wings would have nothing to do with need or experience. But atheists just can’t come to terms with this. One of evolution’s basic flaws is ignoring the most basic law of microbiology: genetics. Evolutionists succumb to a vestigial Lamarckian delusion. Atheists secretly hope to discover that genetic science is wrong, and that really the phenotype, not the genotype, directs reproduction. ]: But a jumpy rat does not incline his kids’ DNA toward flight. Atheists are like the true believers of a cult whose dogma ignores our scientific knowledge of genetic reproduction, cloaking their ritual belief in phenotype reproduction in silly myths. But after a million jumps, the DNA of a rodent’s offspring will not benefit from even the slightest nudge in the direction of improved jumping skills. Such skill would have to arise by chance alone, and only then could natural selection preserve it.
Analogous: Bob’s straw man argument about genotype is irrelevant. If an animal has all the reproductive organs in place, it can reproduce. If the dominant genetic strand is a mutated version of a previous phenotype, the mutation will replicate itself in the next generation. Evolution 101. And Bob assumes, without any supporting evidence, that an animal has to automatically know what to do with his mutated bio-equipment. What’s wrong with a mutated animal learning to use its equipment? Ever heard of punctuated equilibrium Bob? That’s where evolutionary cycles occur rapidly and then taper off, such as occurred during the Cambrian Period. If a successive series of mutations leads to an animal with the equipment, sooner or later the animal will learn to use that equipment to his advantage if it’s useable. Feathers are quite handy in keeping a reptile warm and dry. The Ostrich has both wings and feathers but does it use them to fly? Apparently Bob has never studied the habits of birds or he’d know they have to literally kick their young out of the nest and force them to learn to fly. It never seems to occur to theists that mutated equipment doesn’t have to come with encoded operating instructions or even arrive full blown in one swell foop. Flying apparatus can evolve piecemeal and animals can begin by simply gliding, like the flying fish and the flying squirrel. Let’s move on…
Bob: Echolocation: Bats use extraordinarily sophisticated echolocation to find their way out of dark caves, to maneuver around tree branches, and to find their prey. They must emit very loud ultrasounds rapidly varying the frequency, and with extremely sensitive hearing, detect and interpret returning echoes, using the differing pitch to distinguish between larger objects further away and nearer smaller objects, while filtering out competing environmental noises including ultrasonic pulses from other bats. Man’s most advanced sonar to date can distinguish echoes six millionths of a second apart, but bats effortlessly interpret data signals separated by only three millionths of a second, and such sophistication enables, for example, fishing bats to successfully hunt minnows, spotting a fin as fine as a human hair that extends only eight hundredths of an inch above the water.
In the last round, I claimed that “atheism cannot directly explain even one of all the observations ever made, while all those same observations are themselves ready and direct evidence for theism.” Let’s test that claim again. As I write this section on echolocation, I’ve taken a Starbucks break and opened the Rocky Mountain News and coincidentally read that bats can eat 600 mosquitoes per hour! At night! Tiny mosquitoes! Try to read an echo off of a mosquito! In flight! Aside from our dinosaur hunt, our family also went on an excursion to Glenwood Caverns, in which we toured at night an awesome cave that until recently was closed to the public for 80 years. Bats flew over our heads exiting the cave in search for food, mostly tiny mosquitoes. I explained to our children that the bats hearing is so delicate that the loudness of their own signals would cause them to go deaf, but a clever system muffles their ears with each burst of sound. For natural selection to even begin preserving echolocation system components, this higher function must increase the animal’s chances for survival, and that will not happen until the wildly complicated system begins to operate correctly, and even the slightest function out of sync will disable the entire system, and until the conservative forces of natural selection kick in, the only force available to the atheist is random chance mutations. And so, go ahead and attempt to quantify the probability that echolocation will evolve by chance to the point where it begins to improve survival. Remember what that psalmist wrote?
Analogous: One wonders why it never occurred to Bob, while he and his family were in those caverns, why their voices echoed off the walls? Gee, you think a few million years of living in an environment where you’re surrounded by echoes that you might actually adapt to that environment in ways that enable you to find food in dark damp places where mosquitoes and other creatures like to lay their eggs? Echolocation Bob, think about it, it’ll come to you.
I would enjoy an opportunity to meet Bob head on in the ring if he’s up to it. I can assure you this is one atheist he’ll never forget and I’ll be around till the final bell.
One Eyed Jack
New member
Punctuated Equilibrium is an excuse to explain the lack of transitionals in the fossil record. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a mechanism that works.
attention
New member
Analogous:
Great post. It would be good you made a contribution to the follow-up of the Battle.
Irreducable complexity
Actually all complexity we see in biological systems, has not come there by mere chance. All complexity arrived there at the basis of.... less complex systems!
Take for instance the eye. The evolution of the eye probably started with one or small group of cells that was specialised in determining the difference between light and dark. Adding some other cells that could cause the organism to move, and we already have a simple system of reaction to the environment, which the organism can use to move from dark to light.
Even in plants there is a detection mechanism in the plant cells that detects light from dark. That is why a plant grows towards the light. The mechanism is actually this: the cells that receive less light grow harder then the cells that receive more light, which causes the plant to grow towards the sun light.
Great post. It would be good you made a contribution to the follow-up of the Battle.
Irreducable complexity
Actually all complexity we see in biological systems, has not come there by mere chance. All complexity arrived there at the basis of.... less complex systems!
Take for instance the eye. The evolution of the eye probably started with one or small group of cells that was specialised in determining the difference between light and dark. Adding some other cells that could cause the organism to move, and we already have a simple system of reaction to the environment, which the organism can use to move from dark to light.
Even in plants there is a detection mechanism in the plant cells that detects light from dark. That is why a plant grows towards the light. The mechanism is actually this: the cells that receive less light grow harder then the cells that receive more light, which causes the plant to grow towards the sun light.
Nope...
Nope...
Punctuated Equilibrium is an excuse to explain the lack of transitionals in the fossil record. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a mechanism that works.
Analogous: Uh...punctuated equilibrium is not a mechanism, it's an explanation for periods of sharp increase in speciation and mutation followed by long periods of stasis.
Transitional fossils:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?ar...882809EC588ED9F
And this: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?ch...B3B809EC588EEDF
Nope...
Punctuated Equilibrium is an excuse to explain the lack of transitionals in the fossil record. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a mechanism that works.
Analogous: Uh...punctuated equilibrium is not a mechanism, it's an explanation for periods of sharp increase in speciation and mutation followed by long periods of stasis.
Transitional fossils:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?ar...882809EC588ED9F
And this: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?ch...B3B809EC588EEDF
Yep, yep, yep...
Yep, yep, yep...
Hi attention,
Analogous:
Great post. It would be good you made a contribution to the follow-up of the Battle.
Analogous: Thanx. I sent a PM offering to contribute but haven't heard anything. I need to know what areas I should concentrate on.
Yep, yep, yep...
Hi attention,
Analogous:
Great post. It would be good you made a contribution to the follow-up of the Battle.
Analogous: Thanx. I sent a PM offering to contribute but haven't heard anything. I need to know what areas I should concentrate on.
- Status