Evolutionists: How did legs evolve?

[The Barbarian]

No, He did not say that.

Well, let's take a look...

Genesis 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so done.

So you're wrong. The earth did indeed produce the first living things, as God says. Scripture does not become wrong just because you keep saying it.

 

[The Barbarian]

If cyanobacteria have not changed in 3.8 billion years, then why not study them as examples of original genes?

We don't know that they haven't. How would you do that? E. coli look the same as when we first found them, but they have evolved a great deal, just in the hundred plus years we've been watching them. While we can learn a lot from their fossils, their genomes are likely to remain a mystery.

 

[Right Divider]

Well, let's take a look...

Genesis 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so done.

So you're wrong. The earth did indeed produce the first living things, as God says. Scripture does not become wrong just because you keep saying it.

You are clearly forcing your ideas upon the scripture.

Gen 1:24-25 (AKJV/PCE)​

(1:24) ¶ And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. (1:25) And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. ​

God MADE then on the earth. It was NOT the earth producing life from non-life.

Gen 1:6-8 (AKJV/PCE)​

(1:6) ¶ And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. (1:7) And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which [were] under the firmament from the waters which [were] above the firmament: and it was so. (1:8) And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.
​

Just like God MADE the firmament, etc. etc. etc.

Note the SAME pattern of language in BOTH of these cases.

 

[iouae]

We don't know that they haven't. How would you do that? E. coli look the same as when we first found them, but they have evolved a great deal, just in the hundred plus years we've been watching them. While we can learn a lot from their fossils, their genomes are likely to remain a mystery.

Barbarian, I don't know why you are so afraid that we might have the original genotype ever created still here today. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then its a duck. Likewise todays cyanobacteria have everything it takes to be a cyanobacterium. Of course some genes have changed over time, but not significantly enough to change it from being a cyanobacterium.

3.5 billion years ago God seeded the seas with possibly one of these photosynthetic bacteria. And over the next 3 billion years they quietly raised earth's oxygen levels as has been proved from the change in rocks. For instance it caused the iron in the sea to oxidise and precipitate out into red rocks.

And when oxygen levels were high enough in the atmosphere, God proceeded to the next stage, the Ediacarans.

But the cyanobacteria around today are descendants of that original created one, thus proving that physical life is potentially immortal. The original one just kept dividing in two to form every cyanobacterium on earth today, still producing oxygen.

And as another very interesting thought. That original cyanobacterium by not changing in 3.5 billion years is a good example of NOT evolving.

 

[The Barbarian]

(1:24) ¶ And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. (1:25) And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that [it was] good. [/INDENT]

Yes. Notice that God didn't directly make life, but used pre-existing natural things to do it. So the earth produced life, as God intended.

It was NOT the earth producing life from non-life.

Not unless you think earth is alive. God does most things here by natural means.

Life was made by things God already created, according to Genesis.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian, I don't know why you are so afraid that we might have the original genotype ever created still here today.

It would be an amazing discovery. But wishing won't make it so.

If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, then its a duck.

Duck genomes have changed a lot over time, too. You'd be very hard put to find the original duck genome, because it likely doesn't exist now.

Likewise todays cyanobacteria have everything it takes to be a cyanobacterium. Of course some genes have changed over time, but not significantly enough to change it from being a cyanobacterium.

Primates have changed over time, too, but not significantly enough to change them from being primates. Nevertheless, the changes are significant.

3.5 billion years ago God seeded the seas with possibly one of these photosynthetic bacteria.

Actually, he used the oceans to do make them from non-living matter.

And over the next 3 billion years they quietly raised earth's oxygen levels as has been proved from the change in rocks. For instance it caused the iron in the sea to oxidise and precipitate out into red rocks.

Yes, the banded iron formations show a cycle of growth, oxygen poisoning, and then growth again. It took a long time before organisms were able to survive the presence of elemental oxygen.

And when oxygen levels were high enough in the atmosphere, God proceeded to the next stage, the Ediacarans.

All this was front-loaded in creation,which continued from the initial creation, as He says.

But the cyanobacteria around today are descendants of that original created one, thus proving that physical life is potentially immortal. The original one just kept dividing in two to form every cyanobacterium on earth today, still producing oxygen.

Yes. Eukaryotes (mostly marine phytoplankton) now produce most of the oxygen, but for a long time, it was the blue-green bacteria.

 

[Right Divider]

Yes. Notice that God didn't directly make life, but used pre-existing natural things to do it. So the earth produced life, as God intended.

Not unless you think earth is alive. God does most things here by natural means.

Life was made by things God already created, according to Genesis.

That is your bogus "interpretation" Genesis.

So you must also think that the 6 days are not 6 days.

 

[Clete]

I was hoping that perhaps the common ground might be that many creationists accept the idea of limited evolution within a "kind." Perhaps we could look at that, if you accept that idea. If not, I think we're at an impasse.

But again, I thank you for your honesty and willingness to listen.

I'm so glad you said this at the end of your post because my response was going to amount to pointing out that were are just repeating ourselves and talking past one another.

As for some form of limited evolution. No. I mean, if I mow my grass and lop the top off of all the long Dandelion flowers, before long, all I'll have in my yard is short Dandelions. That is variation within a kind but is not evolution. If I breed a Rottweiler with a Boxer, I get a "Boxweiler" but that isn't evolution either.

Evolution does not happen - period.

Clete

 

[Clete]

This is just not true — you have just assumed that it is. Where do you get the idea that DNA encodes a perfect set of instructions? Or the idea that the system that exists today is not more efficient than the early products of evolution? Or that a smaller subset of systems that is less complex couldn't function?

An organism that has different DNA is a different organism.
DNA that does not get copied perfectly, kills the organism.
An organism that cannot reproduce itself isn't alive in the first place.
Therefore, even the very first single celled organism had to have some mechanism for reproducing itself, including it's DNA.

I'm not guessing or wishing that were true. That's the way organisms reproduce.

If you assume, as you have done here, that all of the DNA reproduction system must exist exactly as it is now to work, then I would have to agree with you that it could not have come to be by natural processes. But how can you exclude so casually the possibility of simpler systems that would allow the reproduction of RNA or DNA without the modern complexity/speed/efficiency?

Because none exist and there is no evidence to suggest that they ever have existed nor is there any proposed method, even conceptually speaking, as to how DNA, even in the most "primitive" life forms in existence, could even come into existence to begin with never mind do so with the instructions included on how to reproduce itself.

DNA with the ability to reproduce itself, by whatever means, is too complex to happen by accident. I don't care what the process is or whether it's simpler or more complex than the way it happens today. The fact that it happens is itself irreducibly complex sufficient to falsify evolution.

Clete

 

[The Barbarian]

An organism that has different DNA is a different organism.
DNA that does not get copied perfectly, kills the organism.

All of us have a dozen or so mutations that were not present in either of our parents. DNA that always copies perfectly means no adaptation at all, and absolutely identical descendants. What's interesting is, the error rates are different in different organisms, and they appear to be close to the optimum for adaptability vs. stability for each of them.

The optimal mutation rate of organisms may be determined by a trade-off between costs of a high mutation rate,[17] such as deleterious mutations, and the metabolic costs of maintaining systems to reduce the mutation rate (such as increasing the expression of DNA repair enzymes.[18] or, as reviewed by Bernstein et al.[19] having increased energy use for repair, coding for additional gene products and/or having slower replication). Secondly, higher mutation rates increase the rate of beneficial mutations, and evolution may prevent a lowering of the mutation rate in order to maintain optimal rates of adaptation.[20] Finally, natural selection may fail to optimize the mutation rate because of the relatively minor benefits of lowering the mutation rate, and thus the observed mutation rate is the product of neutral processes.[21][22]

Studies have shown that treating RNA viruses such as poliovirus with ribavirin produce results consistent with the idea that the viruses mutated too frequently to maintain the integrity of the information in their genomes.[23] This is termed error catastrophe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate

Therefore, even the very first single celled organism had to have some mechanism for reproducing itself, including it's DNA.

It was almost certainly not DNA; probably RNA. There's considerable evidence for that, including the fact that RNA can be self-catalyzing.

But if you suppose, as Darwin did, that God just created the first living things by a miracle, it wouldn't matter to evolutionary theory.

Because none exist and there is no evidence to suggest that they ever have existed nor is there any proposed method, even conceptually speaking, as to how DNA, even in the most "primitive" life forms in existence, could even come into existence to begin with never mind do so with the instructions included on how to reproduce itself.

No one knows for sure yet, but there is evidence for it. But as I said, even if one doesn't think God made the earth to be able to bring forth living things, it would still not be a problem for evolution, which makes no claim as to the way life began.

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian notes what God says in Genesis:
Yes. Notice that God didn't directly make life, but used pre-existing natural things to do it. So the earth produced life, as God intended.
Genesis 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so done.

That is your bogus "interpretation" Genesis.

It's what God says. Take it up with Him.

So you must also think that the 6 days are not 6 days.

Actually, the word used in Genesis is "Yom", which can mean "day", "always", "in that time", and so on. Since forcing it to mean "literal 24 hour day" would require having mornings and evenings with no Sun to have them, most Christians have always recognized that they are not meant to be literal days.

The notion that they are literal days, is a modern revision to Genesis.

 

[Clete]

All of us have a dozen or so mutations that were not present in either of our parents. DNA that always copies perfectly means no adaptation at all, and absolutely identical descendants. What's interesting is, the error rates are different in different organisms, and they appear to be close to the optimum for adaptability vs. stability for each of them.

Irrelevant.

The copy fidelity is quite exquisitely accurate actually. The vast majority of errors that do happen are corrected through ANOTHER wildly complex mechanism that could not possibly have evolved. The tiny errors that make it through this process are permanent but are either insignificant (i.e. invisible to evolution) or deadly. There is no such mutation that could possibly account for Eusthenopteron producing an Acanthostega. Instead, what you get is a deformed Eusthenopteron that other Eusthenopterons would either not want, or not be able, to reproduce with.

The optimal mutation rate of organisms may be determined by a trade-off between costs of a high mutation rate,[17] such as deleterious mutations, and the metabolic costs of maintaining systems to reduce the mutation rate (such as increasing the expression of DNA repair enzymes.[18] or, as reviewed by Bernstein et al.[19] having increased energy use for repair, coding for additional gene products and/or having slower replication). Secondly, higher mutation rates increase the rate of beneficial mutations, and evolution may prevent a lowering of the mutation rate in order to maintain optimal rates of adaptation.[20] Finally, natural selection may fail to optimize the mutation rate because of the relatively minor benefits of lowering the mutation rate, and thus the observed mutation rate is the product of neutral processes.[21][22]

Studies have shown that treating RNA viruses such as poliovirus with ribavirin produce results consistent with the idea that the viruses mutated too frequently to maintain the integrity of the information in their genomes.[23] This is termed error catastrophe.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation_rate

It was almost certainly not DNA; probably RNA. There's considerable evidence for that, including the fact that RNA can be self-catalyzing.

The duplication of RNA is also done by proteins within the cell. It's the same problem.

There have been some man made strands of RNA that reproduce themselves but there is no evidence that they ever existed in nature and even if they did, there is no theory, idea or conjecture that postulates any reasonable method by which a biological machine designed to take over the reproduction process could possibly come to exist by accidental random mutations within an RNA molecule, never mind produce DNA molecules with reproductive instructions encoded in it.

This is a totally insurmountable problem for evolutionary theory. It simply does falsify it. There is no doubt or question about it. The more the issues involved are understood, the more crushing the problem becomes. Human beings have tried for decades to build a self-replicating machine and have failed until only recently and even the one time its been done, the machine has no practical function except to reproduce itself and can only do so under strict laboratory conditions. The point being that it is unbelievable difficult to do and there is no way in Hell that it could be accomplished via the random mutations of RNA molecules that somehow magically turned into or independently produced DNA molecules that have the reproduction instructions included in the proto-type model!

Face it. It's hopeless. Evolution is a fantasy. It isn't real. It didn't happen because it can't happen.


Clete

 

[The Barbarian]

The duplication of RNA is also done by proteins within the cell. It's the same problem.

Actually, all nucleic acids are duplicated by other nucleic acids. m-RNA is duplicated by DNA. Even the transcription of RNA into proteins is done by tRNA in a ribosome. As you suggest, it would probably be more efficient to use proteins for that purpose, but as in the cytochrome C case, the system is so basic that it appears a more efficient pathway cannot evolve.

The fact remains that DNA replication is error-prone. If you had a system that messed up several dozen times per run, I don't think you'd call it error-free. Yet that's what DNA does. There are various correction mechanisms, but none of them are such that they couldn't evolve. Indeed, some are clearly evolved from others.

CHEMICAL REVIEWS
Catalytic Promiscuity and the Divergent Evolution of DNA Repair Enzymes
Patrick J. O'Brien
Department of Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-0606
Abstract
This review discusses the known evolutionary relationships among DNA repair enzymes and between DNA repair enzymes and other cellular enzymes, focusing on the divergence of enzymatic function. Discussions include: overview of catalytic promiscuity and the evolutionary diversification of enzymes; chemical landscape for DNA damage and repair; overview of DNA repair pathways; examples of DNA repair enzymes that exhibit catalytic promiscuity; mechanistically diverse DNA repair enzyme superfamilies; and changes in substrate and reaction specificity of DNA repair enzymes.

 

[6days]

What kind of light was this, and how did it differ from light on the other 6 days?

Iouae... your 'arguments' against scripture are getting silly. God doesn't tell what kind of light. Genesis simply tells us He created light and divided it into a period of light and day... and called it one day.
Here it is again... Gen.1:4 "Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day."
It seems you think God can't create light without the sun?
Rev. 21:23 "The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp."

 

[6days]

Notice that God didn't directly make life, but used pre-existing natural things to do it. So the earth produced life, as God intended.Genesis 1:24 And God said: Let the earth bring forth the living creature in its kind, cattle and creeping things, and beasts of the earth, according to their kinds. And it was so done.

Verse 25 ... God MADE... "God made all sorts of wild animals, livestock, and small animals, each able to produce offspring of the same kind."
And, He did it during the sixth day verse 31 And evening passed and morning came, marking the sixth day.

Also... As has been pointed out to you numerous times, from Genesis 1 "God said, “Let the waters swarm with fish and other life. Let the skies be filled with birds of every kind.” 21 So God created great sea creatures and every living thing that scurries and swarms in the water, and every sort of bird—each producing offspring of the same kind."

God made life directly... He gave us His Word on it.

Actually, the word used in Genesis is "Yom", which can mean "day", "always", "in that time", and so on.

Yes... Yom can mean a variety of thing, the same as the word 'day' can. The meaning is always understood by context. The word YOM in Genesis 1 has a context that prevents anything other than a single period of day and night. In fact... to prevent confusion, the word is defined. Genesis 1:4 "Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day."

James Barr, Professor of Hebrew Bible at Vanderbilt University, former Regius Professor of Hebrew at Oxford. "Probably, so far as I know, there is no professor of Hebrew or Old Testament at any world-class university who does not believe that the writer(s) of Genesis 1-11 intended to convey to their readers the ideas that (a) creation took place in a series of six days which were the same as the days of 24 hours we now experience; .. Or, to put it negatively, the apologetic arguments which suppose the "days" of creation to be long eras of time, the figures of years not to be chronological, and the flood to be a merely local Mesopotamian flood, are not taken seriously by any such professors, as far as I know.".

Dr Peter Barnes, A theologian and lecturer in church history at the Presbyterian Theological Centre in Sydney. “…if God wanted us to understand the creation week as a literal week, He could hardly have made the point any clearer…. The theological argument is also compelling. According to the Bible, there was no death until there was sin. The creation is cursed only after Adam sinned (cf. Genesis 3; Romans 5:12–21; 8:19–25). This implies that all the fossils of dead animals must date from after Adam’s fall. If there was blood and violence in the creation before Adam sinned, the theological structure of the biblical message would appear to suffer considerable dislocation"

The notion that they are literal days, is a modern revision to Genesis.

Your dishonesty has been noted before on that topic (And others). The early church fathers argued for a normal solar day Theophilus, Methodius, Epiphanius, Cyril and more. (From about 150AD to 400AD). Quotes and references were provided previously.
Historian, Prof.Dr Benno Zuiddam Says “God created this world in a very short period of time, under ten thousand years ago. Whether you read Irenaeus in the 2nd*century, Basil in the 4th, Augustine in the 5th, Thomas Aquinas in the 13th, the Reformers of the 16th*century, or Pope Pius X in the 19th, they all teach this. They all believed in a good creation and God’s curse striking the earth—and the whole creation—after the disobedience of a literal Adam and Eve.”

 

[iouae]

When I look at a tree of life for the Cambrian, I see a creation event. From the very beginning, 12 animal phyla highlighted in white came into existence.

The evolutionary tree of animals in the context of the Cambrian Explosion. Dotted lines represent the probable range of particular groups of animals. Solid lines represent fossil evidence. Extinct groups (taxa) are represented by a circled cross. Cones represent the approximate origin and diversification of the modern phyla (the crown groups). The basic body plan of major groups of animals (today's phyla) had already evolved by the time of the Burgess Shale. (Modified after Xiao and Laflamme, Peterson et al and Dunn et al.).

The basic body plans of the organisms we see today had been thought up from the beginning.

I was taught in biology that the Protozoa gave rise to the sponges and Coelenterates, gave rise to the Platyhelminthes, gave rise to the Annelida, gave rise to the Arthropoda, gave rise to the Chordata in the order fish, frogs, reptiles, birds mammals.

I remember being taught all the evolutionary steps it would take for the one to turn into the other.

All lies. They all arose at the same time give or take some statistical/fossil error.

God had thought out these body types from the start.

When I was being taught evolution, we were not taught palaeontology so we had no idea of the time it took for one phylum to evolve into the other. Turns out they arose simultaneously give or take statistical/fossil error.

I wish the biology professors and doctors at universities would just teach the facts, meaning "this animal has that structure" instead of having to pad it with just so stories and fables that "this giraffe got its long neck by stretching to reach high hanging fruit, and he was the best at reaching it, so he won the race to reach the top of the tree" type of story.

The fact we have a creature so complex as the Trilobite right from the start, and even a Chordate makes my biology teachers all liars. Even as I listened to their stories I knew they were lying. The fossil record has only confirmed that.

 

[iouae]

Iouae... your 'arguments' against scripture are getting silly. God doesn't tell what kind of light. Genesis simply tells us He created light and divided it into a period of light and day... and called it one day.
Here it is again... Gen.1:4 "Then he separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light “day” and the darkness “night.” And evening passed and morning came, marking the first day."
It seems you think God can't create light without the sun?
Rev. 21:23 "The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp."

Can you at least tell me this... After day 4, did the evening and the morning light seem the same as the light from days 1-3? Reading the account, each day simply says "the evening and the morning was the ... day" so one gets the impression that evenings and mornings of the whole week were similar.

What I am really asking is, from day 4 on, the light creating the evening and morning, is that sunlight, or the mystery light which was there from day 1? From day 4 we had the sun supposedly created. Did this change the evening and the morning light?

 

[The Barbarian]

Barbarian observes:
The notion that they are literal days, is a modern revision to Genesis.

6days writes:

Your dishonesty has been noted before on that topic (And others).

You're still resentful that you were caught lying about what Dr. Wise called transitional forms. Let that go. Making up more stories won't make it go away. As you were shown, St. Augustine wrote that the "days" could not have been literal days. His article was widely read, and not one theologian publicly disagreed with him.

I notice that Benno doesn't bother to cite anything these people actually wrote. Can you guess why? Would you like me to show you what Augustine wrote again? As you know, he spent years trying to make Genesis into a literal history, and finally admitted that it couldn't be so.

 

[The Barbarian]

When I look at a tree of life for the Cambrian, I see a creation event.

An ongoing creation event. As you know, the living things in the Cambrian had antecedents in the Precambrian.

From the very beginning, 12 animal phyla highlighted in white came into existence.

In the very beginning, we only had bacteria an archae, prokaryotes. In the late Ediacaran, we see the "small shelly fauna", including mollusks, worms, and what appears to be a very primitive trilobite. Other phyla evolved somewhat later.

The basic body plans of the organisms we see today had been thought up from the beginning.

That's not what the evidence shows.

I was taught in biology that the Protozoa gave rise to the sponges and Coelenterates,

Cells of sponges are very like choanoflagellates, and interestingly, sponges that are disaggregated into single cells will spontaneously reaggregate. They are a transitional form between protists and the other animal phyla.

But it's even more finely transitional than that. There are colonial choanoflagellates, that are like tiny sponges without the supporting matrix:

I wish the biology professors and doctors at universities would just teach the facts, meaning "this animal has that structure" instead of having to pad it with just so stories and fables that "this giraffe got its long neck by stretching to reach high hanging fruit, and he was the best at reaching it, so he won the race to reach the top of the tree" type of story.

That's not what evolutionary theory says. You're thinking of Lamarckism, not Darwinian theory. The fact is, giraffes don't browse the tops of trees. It appears that long necks were initially allometric, a consequence of increasing size, and only later become adaptive for fighting or vision. Would you like to learn about that?

The fact we have a creature so complex as the Trilobite right from the start,

Right from the start, we only had single-celled prokaryotes. Over a billion years passed until we had anything resembling a trilobite (first one was in the Ediacaran).

and even a Chordate makes my biology teachers all liars.

We don't see the first chordates until the Cambrian, so it's likely behind the mollusks and arthropods. Animals that appear to be primitive mollusks and arthropods are found in the Ediacaran.

Would you like me to show you about that?

 

[The Barbarian]

Kimberella:

A soft extensible body, covered by a shell. It moved forward, apparently eating mats of simpler organisms.

Resembles a primitive slug.