Evidence for Creationism and Against Evolution

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by Sheeana
Will have to get back to you on that one, Rian as I have a class in... 7 minutes! *Yikes*

Recapitulation is not a word that I am familiar with. Is this the same as the biogenic law?

Recapitulation is the long-discarded idea that "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny" ( sometimes referred to as Haeckel's Law.)

Haeckel noticed that vertebrate embryos pass through a series of similar stages in early development, and argued that there was a good reason for this. As an organism evolves, he reasoned, it does so by tacking on new stages to its process of embryonic development. Therefore, as an organism passes through embryonic development it actually re-traces every stage of its evolutionary ancestry. This idea became known as "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny," which literally means "Development is a replay of Ancestry."

As you read this, you may wonder why evolution should be limited to changes tacked on at the end of the process of development. So did evolutionary biologists, and Haeckel's idea was quickly discarded.
<snip>


This idea has been pushed back into the news recently by the news that Haeckel's drawings of embryonic similarities were not correct. British embryologist Michael Richardson and his colleages published an important paper in the August 1997 issue of Anatomy & Embryology showing that Haeckel had fudged his drawings to make the early stages of embryos appear more alike than they actually are! As it turns out, Haeckel's contemporaries had spotted the fraud during his lifetime, and got him to admit it. However, his drawings nonetheless became the source material for diagrams of comparative embryology in nearly every biology textbook, including ours!

http://www.millerandlevine.com/km/ev...s/Haeckel.html

And of course the authors immediately revised their textbook, because they know that to keep publishing information that has been shown to be false is a grave scientific sin.

[Rían]

GrayM - that's why I was so surprised that Cirdan was so much in support of that idea I had really thought that it was generally not supported anymore. But he had really spoken v. strongly to me that it was true.

[GrayMouser]

For Nebraska Man

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/a_nebraska.html

Piltdown Man

http://home.tiac.net/~cri_a/piltdown/piltdown.html

As for "Archaeoraptor" and National Geographic:

National Geographic is a commercial publication, not a peer-reviewed scientific journal. In their eagerness for a scoop they rushed into print with a claim that was not substantiated. The fraudulent fossil was immediately exposed by paleontologists as soon as they had a chance to see it.

[Rían]

My ONLY point was that I thought it was unfair, as well as innacurate, to limit the charge of fraud to Christians Would you say I'm correct?

Good for the guys that found it was a fraud I wish National Geographic had given the discovery of the fraud as much press as the original promotion of it, though, because I imagine many people that read the original story never found the retraction.

[GrayMouser]

More on Haeckel

Richardson on creationists and Haeckel. Richardson himself has been rather annoyed with the creationist response to his article. Richardson wrote a letter to Science in 1998. His response applies to Wells equally well:
Our work has been used in a nationally televised debate to attack evolutionary theory, and to suggest that evolution cannot explain embryology (2). We strongly disagree with this viewpoint. Data from embryology are fully consistent with Darwinian evolution. Haeckel's famous drawings are a Creationist cause célèbre (3). Early versions show young embryos looking virtually identical in different vertebrate species. On a fundamental level, Haeckel was correct: All vertebrates develop a similar body plan (consisting of notochord, body segments, pharyngeal pouches, and so forth). This shared developmental program reflects shared evolutionary history. It also fits with overwhelming recent evidence that development in different animals is controlled by common genetic mechanisms (4).

Unfortunately, Haeckel was overzealous. When we compared his drawings with real embryos, we found that he showed many details incorrectly. He did not show significant differences between species, even though his theories allowed for embryonic variation. For example, we found variations in embryonic size, external form, and segment number which he did not show (1). This does not negate Darwinian evolution. On the contrary, the mixture of similarities and differences among vertebrate embryos reflects evolutionary change in developmental mechanisms inherited from a common ancestor (5). [...]

These conclusions are supported in part by comparisons of developmental timing in different vertebrates (7). This work indicates a strong correlation between embryonic developmental sequences in humans and other eutherian mammals, but weak correlation between humans and some "lower" vertebrates. Haeckel's inaccuracies damage his credibility, but they do not invalidate the mass of published evidence for Darwinian evolution. Ironically, had Haeckel drawn the embryos accurately, his first two valid points in favor of evolution would have been better demonstrated. (Richardson, 1998)

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/wells/#haeckel-embryo

[Cirdan]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
...that's why I was so surprised that Cirdan was so much in support of that idea I had really thought that it was generally not supported anymore. But he had really spoken v. strongly to me that it was true.

I think I said "why not?" when you asked. Is that strong? Anyway... I've only ever seen it applied to related to similar structures in different species of fossils. At the time we were discussing its usage in this aspect on the talk.origins article for which I posted a link.

[Cirdan]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
My ONLY point was that I thought it was unfair, as well as innacurate, to limit the charge of fraud to Christians Would you say I'm correct?

No. Evolution frauds are usually outed by colleges. Creationists (not all the christians, Rian) tend to quote the frauds ever more repeatedly. I've only noticed this since these Moot threads have provided all these creationist links and book snippets that are very consistently using false and misleading statements. I guess it is possible that none of the authors actually know this...

[Rían]

Originally posted by Cirdan
I think I said "why not?" when you asked. Is that strong?

Cirdan - yes, you said something like that, but you also said: "Ontology recapitulates Phylogeny and there's nothing you can do about it." (post 269458 in the evolution thread)

And that made poor timid me rather scared

In fact, there's a quote in Unfinished Tales about RÃ*an (there's very little written about her) that I think fits me very well : "By hard fate she was born into such days, for she was gentle of heart and loved neither hunting nor war." (the "such days" were the days right before the Nirnaeth Arnoediad - the Battle of Unnumbered Tears)

Believe it or not, I HATE (I repeat - HATE) conflict and when people have different opinions than I do. I'm not a natural debator, nor one by preference/liking by any means.

[Cirdan]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
Cirdan - yes, you said something like that, but you also said: "Ontology recapitulates Phylogeny and there's nothing you can do about it." (post 269458 in the evolution thread)

...and it had a and a "but seriously" after it. I thought it sounded funny because "Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny" sounds so pretentious. Never meant to scare you.

[Rían]

I don't think you (or anyone else) mean to scare me on purpose but for some reason that line just came off as really firm and decided, and that always scares me a bit - I don't know how I come off to others in this thread, but you guys might be surprised at how often you make me feel really timid and shy. But then I try to overcome it and post what I think is right, because I think that's more important than giving in to shyness and being afraid of what other people think. You guys have been really quite encouraging to me by telling me that our differences in opinion don't affect whatever friendship you feel towards me, and I appreciate that. I also appreciate your patience with my slowness in posting. I wish I could post faster, but I just can't.

I think having to deal with so many medical issues with my middle son has made me able to stand up to people more for what I feel is right. (and even with insurance people , I feel it's important to be respectful - but one can be respectful and at the same time call a spade a spade.) It's really ridiculous how many insurance battles I've had to fight. It took months and months just to get him a wheelchair - the insurance people said he was too young to know how to work it (I think he was 3 at the time) - we knew better. It took him about 30 seconds to figure it out when we finally got it, and to be able to fit thru tight doorways and spin around in place.

Yes, that phrase ("Ontogeny recapitulates Phylogeny") is quite a mouthful! Do you think it's true? I promise I won't get sidetracked on that issue (at least at this point! ) if you want to answer. I really want to finish my summary essay first so I can post an overall creationism evidence picture.

I hope things are going as well as they can during this difficult time for you, Cirdan.

[Cirdan]

I do not think that embryotic development shows all the stages of evolution. There is some usefulness in comparing ontology between species as one aspect of correlating relationship and the evolution of similar structures. The development of DNA analysis and genomics is eliminating this type of subjective observation as a qualitative tool.

I know what you mean about insurance companies and the medical industry. I had to yell at my doctor becuase he couldn't figure out what was wrong with me after five years. Only then did he finally run the right tests. I wish you the best with your challenges.

[Lief Erikson]

Ruinel, HOBBIT, you have both posted wondering whether or not any evidence for creationism has been posted. If you want to read my posts on the subject, see page 17, in which I posted a great deal on the Creation story and how it is made scientifically possible. Almost all of those posts (possibly because of the length of them) has gone unanswered.



Meanwhile, I'd like to send one more post to back up further my last week's posts (as yet still largely unanswered) on Exponential Growth.

Ah yes, Ruinel, HOBBIT, the mathematical evidence that humans have to increase in number by exponential growth in order to survive is a strong evidence for Creationism. Merely an evidence, obviously, not a proof, but the Bible does assume the exponential growth rate.

[Lief Erikson]

The following argument I am going to present, I hope will successfully demonstrate further the point I made in previous posts against crops being a sufficient reason for our increase of human growth.

Please though, this is merely a tailing on argument to my more complete ones in previous posts, so if you're going to argue with me, argue not only with this argument but with the ones I posted earlier. They're on page 17, and possibly I might have gone into it a little on page 18, but I'm not sure.

Originally written in "The World Book"
In Mexico, the warm, dry climate produced a way of life similar to that of other deserty areas-with one important difference. THe people began to cultivate certain grasses that became the ancestors of modern corn. From about 5000 B.C. to 2000 B.C., the Mexican Indians improved the quality of corn until it had large ears. Corn, along with beans and squash, became their main source of food. These Indians no longer had to travel in search of food, and they began to settle in villages.

So we have that during the course of 3,000 years, Indians began to settle in villages. By the end of that period, they had very good corn indeed.

This period of growth in the learning about agriculture came after Indians had already existed in North America for a long time. Looking at the mathematical arguments for exponential growth and at how hugely populated the country was with buffalo and other game, it seems completely illogical that their numbers of people remained relatively small for about 15,000 years, however, I'll pass over that point to get on to my stronger argument.

Because I can't know precisely what the growth in the industry of corn was, or whether it went on in spurts, or whether most of it came to be known at the very end this 3,000 year period, I have decided to skip arguing that this huge period should have produced large amounts of people.

Since they seem to have had quite well developed knowledge of agriculture by 2000 B.C., though, I have decided to launch my argument from there.

From the above post, the only thing I assume is that they had at least 1,000 people by 2000 B.C. producing crops. This seems a small number, when you realize that for 3,000 years they've been learning crops. I have tried to keep all of my numbers small, so that they're less disputable.

Originally written in "The World Book"
At least 20 million Indians were living in the Americas when Columbus reached the New World. At least a million lived in North America north of Mexico, and from 15 to 20 million in Latin America.

Between 2000 B.C. and 1492 A.D. (the time when Columbus arrived in America) is the time period I am going to use. As in the above statements, it doesn't seem difficult to imagine that 1,000 people would have been working crops. I have set the amount of exponential growth at 2.4, and each Indian as living 30 years.

I brought these numbers to a mathmetician I know, and asked him, based upon these numbers, how many people you'd expect to see by the time Columbus arrived. He did the math in his head and then checked it quickly on paper, and told me the number you'd expect was one trillion.

A trillion people is an incredible number. Of course, we didn't take into account war, disease, and other possible disasters. I put the age rate pretty low, because I knew that Indians died more quickly then modern people and also partly to take this into account. I also made the exponential growth number, 2.4, rather low considering that these people had crops, so their numbers of growth should be greater.

One thing further you have to note is that exponential growth hasn't taken any major fluctuations in our own graphs, despite the World Wars and despite vast plagues.

So I tried to make my numbers rather small in this equation. Smaller than the real numbers would probably have been. I believe you will probably have to dispute various points in my assumptions, to dispute the mathematical conclusion.

Many nations in the world's population had agriculture by 2,000 B.C. My old World Book source I think demonstrated that around 10,000 B.C. some groups had crops.

In world population, between 2000 B.C. and A.D. 1, the population of humans in the world is thought to have only grown by 30 million people in total. I took this to the same mathmetician and showed him the figures, and he said that that was not exponential growth we were seeing in action. He couldn't explain it, and wanted to know the source of information for the World Book graph.

In Conclusion, here is my main point

Even if you do accept the statement that agriculture caused us to grow in such numbers, this does not solve the problem, for even in the times where we had agriculture, that agriculture did not cause nearly so large of population expansion as it would be expected to cause.

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
Originally written in "The World Book"
In Mexico, the warm, dry climate produced a way of life similar to that of other deserty areas-with one important difference. THe people began to cultivate certain grasses that became the ancestors of modern corn. From about 5000 B.C. to 2000 B.C., the Mexican Indians improved the quality of corn until it had large ears. Corn, along with beans and squash, became their main source of food. These Indians no longer had to travel in search of food, and they began to settle in villages.

Ok I just had to say that I find it mighty ironic that in order to attempt to prove creationism you use a perfectly good example of evolution (grasses to corn) to do so. But perhaps Im the only one that got a chuckle out of this so Ill shut up now.

[Ruinel]

lmao!
Oh, I got a chuckle alright!

[Cirdan]

The use of the 2.4 number is faulty. It would be akin to saying that everyone should wear the same size clothes. Even today different populations have very different statistics. One needs to evaluate the actual ages of remains and causes of death to even get a vague idea of the death rate. Other factors, such as the increased desertification in the western US changed the capacity for population support. Additional North Americans never domesticated animals and continued to rely on hunting and gathering for protein and supplimented with limited agriculture.

The high density population centers that arose with agriculture, along with the domestication of animals, lead to a significant increase in the number of lethal pathogens like smallpox, plague, influenza, cholera, malaria, etc. The rapid spread of these diseases within these large populations had a limiting effect of the benefits of agriculture. Prior to the selecting for immunity populations would have been devastated by disease outbreaks.

[Rían]

Originally posted by Cirdan
I know what you mean about insurance companies and the medical industry. I had to yell at my doctor becuase he couldn't figure out what was wrong with me after five years. Only then did he finally run the right tests. I wish you the best with your challenges.

Thanks, Cirdan - it IS extremely frustrating.

[Rían]

Originally posted by Insidious Rex
Ok I just had to say that I find it mighty ironic that in order to attempt to prove creationism you use a perfectly good example of evolution (grasses to corn) to do so. But perhaps Im the only one that got a chuckle out of this so Ill shut up now.

OK, I've been busy with visiting in-laws since Wednesday, so perhaps I missed an announcement - has the definition of evolution been expanded to include directed cultivation by intelligent people? I know you too well to even consider for a second that you would accuse Indians, as a group, of being unintelligent, and one of the major points of evolution is that there is NO intelligence behind the process. Isn't evolution time and undirected chance operating on random beneficial mutations? I don't see how this fits.

[HOBBIT]

eh, why can't evolution be guided?? Why wouldn't forced mutations count as evolution? No expert though, but that doesn't make sense to me.

But going by that definition of evolution Rian, then you say that "divine evolution" is not possible.

(edit: ah yes, i was right. evolution is evolution)

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
OK, I've been busy with visiting in-laws since Wednesday, so perhaps I missed an announcement - has the definition of evolution been expanded to include directed cultivation by intelligent people? I know you too well to even consider for a second that you would accuse Indians, as a group, of being unintelligent, and one of the major points of evolution is that there is NO intelligence behind the process. Isn't evolution time and undirected chance operating on random beneficial mutations? I don't see how this fits.

are you kidding? evolution is evolution whether homo sapiens are involved or not. long term domestication (of plants and animals) is of course a form of evolution. the tools for evolution are the genes. so since we know this we can utilize EVOLUTION for our own purposes. The very fact that this is possible proves that evolution exists. Those grasses EVOLVED into corn because humans provided them with the right environment to allow such a transition. the genes in the grasses didnt know they were following a human plan (the humans themselves didnt have a "goal" to create corn either. just to get a plant that produced more product and grew under domesticated conditions). But none of this takes away from the fact the EVOLUTION was the primary force in the transition from grass to corn. Nobody called down god to please change these grasses into corn and nobody cast a magic spell over the grass to change it. It was simple genetic manipulation (primarily human in this case) that allowed the transition to take place. text book example of how evolution works.