Evidence for Creationism and Against Evolution

[Ruinel]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
...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.

It depends on what you would consider 'intelligence'. One of the engines of evolution is natural selection. which involves choices of mates. I agree with IR, nicely put.

[Lief Erikson]

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.

Plainly you didn't read my posts on page 17. Creationism and evolution aren't automatically enemies. I think that the belief that they are incompatable is not to be found in the Bible, and thus is simply a scientific question.

Originally posted by 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.

See my post in page 17 about the mathematics of exponential growth. I got that information from a mathmetician as well- it's not innaccurate.

Originally posted by Cirdan
One needs to evaluate the actual ages of remains and causes of death to even get a vague idea of the death rate.

I do know that some Indians lived a lot longer than 30 years. I'm not sure about all Indians in that historical period, but it doesn't seem likely to me that the death rate would be much higher. And even if the date I set is late, and most people died in their twenties, I learned from the World Book that many Indians married at 15 years old, so the population wouldn't be too severely affected anyway.

Do you really think 30 years old is longer than most Indians in these agricultural communities lived?

Originally posted by Cirdan
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.

Populations in Mexico, for 3,000 years were learning to work with agriculture. When it's successful, it doesn't take long to spread to other parts of America. And even if it didn't, that's irrelevant. I'm only taking into account 1,000 people in the beginning.

Originally posted by Cirdan
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.

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
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.

[Lief Erikson]

Insidious Rex and Cirdan, I really advise you to look at my posts on page 17. They are long, but there I set out first the mathematics of exponential growth, then the discrepancies, the arguments of crops and technology being explanations, and then I proceeded to attempt to refute those arguments. This calculation is simply a follow up on those arguments, an additional underlining that shows how crops have not been nearly so great a stimulant as they are currently believed to have been.

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
Isn't evolution time and undirected chance operating on random beneficial mutations?

No. It is selection operating on random beneficial mutations - and of course that selection can be either natural or artificial.

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
Insidious Rex and Cirdan, I really advise you to look at my posts on page 17. They are long, but there I set out first the mathematics of exponential growth, then the discrepancies, the arguments of crops and technology being explanations, and then I proceeded to attempt to refute those arguments. This calculation is simply a follow up on those arguments, an additional underlining that shows how crops have not been nearly so great a stimulant as they are currently believed to have been.

Lief, I have looked at your posts- the problem is, as Cirdan pointed out, you can't just make up a figure for population growth and decide that it is "reasonable"- you have to actually find some facts.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html

Populations don't grow exponentially unless you have a case of an organism invading a new domain without natural enemies, or the removal of a previous check on the size of the population.

In that case you get the s-shaped sigmoid growth curve: population growth starts off slowly, then climbs rapidly until it reaches the carrying capacity of the environment, then levels off.

I do know that some Indians lived a lot longer than 30 years. I'm not sure about all Indians in that historical period, but it doesn't seem likely to me that the death rate would be much higher. And even if the date I set is late, and most people died in their twenties, I learned from the World Book that many Indians married at 15 years old, so the population wouldn't be too severely affected anyway.

Do you really think 30 years old is longer than most Indians in these agricultural communities lived?

Infant mortality rates. In pre-technological societies most people died even before reaching breeding age.

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.

Exactly. Population DOES NOT grow at a simple exponential rate.
Otherwise we'd be buried in houseflies (proof that the world was created on Thursday.)



quote:

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
Creationism and evolution aren't automatically enemies. I think that the belief that they are incompatible is not to be found in the Bible, and thus is simply a scientific question.

Hey thats great to hear you say that. I certainly have no problem with that point of view. Ive been saying it all my life. Never really understood why so many christians are so adamant about firmly sticking to the doctrine that evolution is a fairy tail in the face of mountains of evidence and cant seem to accept the idea that hey maybe evolution is part of the divine tool box if you will. why must it be an all or nothing thing? It seems to me the smartest thing the Christians can do is not ignore evolution which makes them look as misguided and in denial as those who still believe in a flat earth theory, but instead embrace it, in fact, co-opt it to their own purposes as they have done with so many other secular or pre-christian things over the eons. Its worked like a charm with all the holidays and certain scientific theories like a sun centered solar system and such so why not with evolution? It seems like the logical next step to me.

So its good to hear yer open to this kind of thinking Lief. Course you realize you are talking heresy to a very large number of christians when you say things like that right? The “E� word is simply not allowed in the same sentence as the word god I have noticed with many many Christians. There simply is no discussing (or even contemplating) what role evolution may play in a Christian view of nature for them.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally posted by GrayMouser
Lief, I have looked at your posts

Thanks .

Originally posted by GrayMouser
- the problem is, as Cirdan pointed out, you can't just make up a figure for population growth and decide that it is "reasonable"- you have to actually find some facts.

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/worldhis.html

Populations don't grow exponentially unless you have a case of an organism invading a new domain without natural enemies, or the removal of a previous check on the size of the population.

In that case you get the s-shaped sigmoid growth curve: population growth starts off slowly, then climbs rapidly until it reaches the carrying capacity of the environment, then levels off.

I don't believe that there is any significant enough limitation that was taking place to limit the human population growth so severely. Yes, if creatures cannot survive because of lack of food, then they don't survive. However, these creatures had no lack of food. They had for 3,000 years experimented with crops, and thus were already skilled at this. A major check on human population growth had been removed. On page 17, I went further into the necessity of populationg growth, because of the mathematics. If we don't have population growth among a community, it dies out. If you do have population growth, even a very small population growth, the group will expand incredibly swiftly. Instead of 2.4, I could have chosen 2.3 or 2.2, but I was assuming a significant barrier to human population growth had been broken through, and it didn't seem logical we'd have had so few of people.

Originally posted by GrayMouser
Infant mortality rates. In pre-technological societies most people died even before reaching breeding age.

But they did grow in population, nevertheless. They had to have.

Originally posted by GrayMouser
Exactly. Population DOES NOT grow at a simple exponential rate.
Otherwise we'd be buried in houseflies (proof that the world was created on Thursday.)

There's a big difference here. Humans are at the top of the food chain. Houseflies are around the bottom.

[Lief Erikson]

Originally posted by Insidious Rex
Hey thats great to hear you say that. I certainly have no problem with that point of view. Ive been saying it all my life. Never really understood why so many christians are so adamant about firmly sticking to the doctrine that evolution is a fairy tail in the face of mountains of evidence and cant seem to accept the idea that hey maybe evolution is part of the divine tool box if you will. why must it be an all or nothing thing? It seems to me the smartest thing the Christians can do is not ignore evolution which makes them look as misguided and in denial as those who still believe in a flat earth theory, but instead embrace it, in fact, co-opt it to their own purposes as they have done with so many other secular or pre-christian things over the eons. Its worked like a charm with all the holidays and certain scientific theories like a sun centered solar system and such so why not with evolution? It seems like the logical next step to me.

So its good to hear yer open to this kind of thinking Lief. Course you realize you are talking heresy to a very large number of christians when you say things like that right? The “E� word is simply not allowed in the same sentence as the word god I have noticed with many many Christians. There simply is no discussing (or even contemplating) what role evolution may play in a Christian view of nature for them.

I'm aware that my position on this differs from RÃ*an's, and that of most (possibly all) other Christians on Entmoot. Oh well .

It's not a Biblical doctrine that's at stake here, though, merely an interpretation of a part of the Bible. I find it very awesome to see how much the Bible's Creation Story actually fits in with modern science, and I wait with anticipation to see how much more of it will be in my lifetime.

Originally posted by GrayMouser
Exactly. Population DOES NOT grow at a simple exponential rate.

It has to. I think that is the primary point where we differ, and I believe that it stems from your not understanding the mathematics of the situation adequately. Even at the hunter-gatherer stage, as humans were the dominant species and give birth at a very rapid rate, there should be evidence of major destruction of species. So it was with the dingos in Australia when they were introduced to the terrain, as I recall.

[GrayMouser]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
It has to. I think that is the primary point where we differ, and I believe that it stems from your not understanding the mathematics of the situation adequately. Even at the hunter-gatherer stage, as humans were the dominant species and give birth at a very rapid rate, there should be evidence of major destruction of species. So it was with the dingos in Australia when they were introduced to the terrain, as I recall.

The quote on populations not growing at simple exponential rates was from me.

As for the math of the situation, let's look at Australia.

At the time of European colonisation the aboriginal population was about 300,000. Using the growth rate of 2.4 gives a doubling rate of about 30 years (doubling rate is roughly 70 divded by the growth rate).

To reach a population of 300,000 starting from a single breeding couple would take just over 18 generations - let's even round it up to 20.

Following your line of thought we can show that even if there was only that Aboriginal Adam and Eve, they colonised Australia less than 600 years ago! If there were as many as ten couples , they have been there for just over 400 years.

(Current estimate for arrival of first settlers: about 50,000 years ago.)

[Lief Erikson]

Sorry about that. I'll fix the name on the quote.

I don't really know enough about the evidence for the Aborigines having arrived in Australia 50,000 years ago to say whether it's impossible they arrived earlier. I personally would believe that they probably arrived much more recently than that, because of exponential growth. Whether it's 400 years ago or not, I can't say for certain.

The fact that there seems to have been a lot of game available in Australia for the Aboriginies causes me to believe that food resource wasn't a severe barrier to the increase in population of their numbers. As has been observed in numerous other cases, when a species is introduced that has advantage over other species, it swiftly overwhelmes them until it itself is checked- usually by limitation of its own food resource.

I don't think any animal species has ever greatly superceded man's dominance. So by Natural Selection, we're the species that logically would thrive. Our species also, like many other species (like the fly, or the rabbit) gives birth in such a way that it necessarily does.

Said by the same mathmetician I was speaking of earlier
The thing about exponential growth is not whether or not you have a constant rate. You won't get a constant rate, but the question is whether or not the population is increasing or decreasing. If it is doing either by even a very small amount, the population will plummet or escalate extremely swiftly.

[Cirdan]

DATA SHEET ON ACTUAL POPULATION GROWTH RATES

Applying the standard deviation, even just using today's much higher (and documented) rates and narrower ranges, changes the calculations greatly. You can't accurately apply a rate which you cannot support with data on the specific population at a specific time.

What data do you have for population growth rates prior to the development of agricultural technology?

You assume plenty of food, which is also faulty. Food supplies are never consistent. Desertification, glaciation, and extinction are just a few of the major factors you haven't taken into consideration.

[Sheeana]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
I personally would believe that they probably arrived much more recently than that, because of exponential growth. Whether it's 400 years ago or not, I can't say for certain.

We've got pretty conclusive associative finds that point to an old arrival. There's no way in heck that aborigines arrived as recently as 400 years ago.

I don't think any animal species has ever greatly superceded man's dominance

You are overlooking the obvious. Man's own enemy is ... duh da duh! ... Man. The reason that we can not have a simple exponential growth at a rate of 2.4 is because both competition and resources ensure that any potential simple exponential growth would be checked. If we had constant exponential growth, I'm damned sure we would have over-run the planet by now. Logic dictates that any growth at that level would have to be checked, and it is. However, if you are advocating initial exponential growth, and then a peak, with fall off, then I would be inclined to agree with you. But this is not simple exponential growth - it's an s-shaped sigmoid growth curve, as GM said earlier.

Pop-Biology link:
http://marine.geol.sc.edu/BIOL/Cours...Outline09.html

[Rían]

Originally posted by GrayMouser
No. It is selection operating on random beneficial mutations - and of course that selection can be either natural or artificial.

I was focusing on the "no intelligence behind things" aspect and left out natural selection - thanks

But it couldn't have been "artificial selection" for millions and millions of years, right? Because acc'd to evolutionism, man took millions and millions of years to get here! What's the figure? - man has supposedly been around for only 1 percent or so of the time from the first single-celled thingy? That's a lot of NON-artificial selection (otherwise known as "natural selection") to account for!

Anyway, I think the area in debate is the "single cell to man" part. Intelligent direction behind changes, such as breeding by humans, as long as the change is w/in type, is no problem for creationism, and no proof for evolutionism, IMO.

[Rían]

Originally posted by Lief Erikson
I'm aware that my position on this differs from RÃ*an's, and that of most (possibly all) other Christians on Entmoot. Oh well .

You hold to whatever opinion you think is right, Lief!

(but wait until you read my upcoming multi-post post - you might change your mind! )

[Rían]

Originally posted by 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.

What about the gazillions of years BEFORE man was on the scene? How was it guided then? How can you claim that the change from single-celled thingy to man (or even the famous "fish-like" thingy that is supposed to be the ancestor of man) is guided by intelligence? It's mindless natural selection - by definition, the mutation/change must be advantageous to be selected. There is NO guiding hand of intelligence behind it.

But if you can find a definition of evolution that includes intelligent guidance, I'd be interested in seeing it. I doubt if you will find one, though, but I could be wrong.

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

I'm saying that the standard definition of the theory of evolution is natural selection (thanks, GM ) operating on randomly occuring beneficial mutations over a great deal of time. Would you agree? I've never been particularly interested in theistic evolution.

[Rían]

Originally posted by Insidious Rex
are you kidding? evolution is evolution whether homo sapiens are involved or not.

How does Indians developing corn "prove" the type of evolution that occurred BEFORE man was even around? As I said in the posts above, it's the "single-celled thingy to man" part that cannot be considered to be guided, and that's the part that I don't think there's evidence for.

The very fact that this is possible proves that evolution exists.

What??! (I assume you're talking about macro evolution - as I've said many times before, I have no problem with MICRO-evolution).

Human-directed development is NOT macro evolution (which is req'd for the theory to be true), and does NOT prove the entire theory of evolution. First of all, I've never seen human-directed development in ANY definition of evolution. Can you provide a link? And second, human-directed development does not "prove" that UNDIRECTED (as in no intelligent being behind it) changes of the type that evolutionism requires ever occurred. How can it? It's like saying "I know it's possible for a person to assemble a computer - this PROVES that it's possible for a computer to get assembled if all the parts are left lying in a field and no human ever comes near it."

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).

Right, intelligence provided the right conditions. You're right that the humans didn't say "I want to produce corn!" - however, they did indeed have a goal - you stated it yourself! ("just to get a plant that produced more product and grew under domesticated conditions") - how in the world is that NOT a goal? And they used their intelligence to achieve that goal. And the seed-bearing grassy type thing REMAINED a seed-bearing grassy type thing. It did NOT turn into an oak tree or a marigold. There are natural limits to change every time. (and also from what I've read, corn would NOT have survived natural selection, because the changes involved were NOT advantageous to the corn, just to the humans that like to eat corn!)

But none of this takes away from the fact the EVOLUTION was the primary force in the transition from grass to corn.

Fact? No. It was GUIDED. And THAT is a fact, wouldn't you say?

Text book example of how evolution works.

No offense, IR, but NOT an example of how macro evolution worked in the time before man.

[Rían]

Originally posted by Ruinel
It depends on what you would consider 'intelligence'. One of the engines of evolution is natural selection. which involves choices of mates. I agree with IR, nicely put.

So do you still think, after reading my posts, that human-directed development of corn proves the entire theory of evolution, specifically the part from one-celled thingy to man?

Does anyone else think this?

[Rían]

And my last post in this series - I'm now up to 10 pages on my top-level summary of evidence for creationism that I'm developing off-line. I have one more sub-topic I want to work in, then I"ll get out the pruning shears and shorten it up as much as possible, then post it by the end of this week. I'll be leaving for a week's vacation on Sat or Sunday, so you guys can ignore it or read it to your hearts' content, then anyone that wants to can discuss it with me when I get back.

Go us!! *sorry, I just felt like saying that - you guys are fun!*

[HOBBIT]

silly rian

[Insidious Rex]

Originally posted by RÃ*an
How does Indians developing corn "prove" the type of evolution that occurred BEFORE man was even around?

huh? It proves the mechanisms for evolution are real and functional. That’s what it proves. And that’s all you need to prove. Who cares when it takes place.

As I said in the posts above, it's the "single-celled thingy to man" part that cannot be considered to be guided, and that's the part that I don't think there's evidence for.

theres no difference between evolution in plants and evolution in animals RÃ*an. Its all the same mechanism. So you cant really say one doesn’t apply to the other. Gravity effects pebbles falling an inch to the ground just the same that it effects pebbles falling in inch causing ultimately a chain reaction of natural events that end in an avalanche and a change in a whole mountain side. The force that causes both these events (gravity) is, however, the same.

What??! (I assume you're talking about macro evolution - as I've said many times before, I have no problem with MICRO-evolution).

this is a bogus distinction. Do you also find a fundamental difference between micro-gravity and macro-gravity?

First of all, I've never seen human-directed development in ANY definition of evolution.

well of course not because there is no need to distinguish HOW the evolution took place. Its simply evolution whether its directed by bacteria or pigs or tidal waves or carbon monoxide or ultraviolet light or super intelligent aliens we think are gods…

have you ever seen human-directed acceleration of a falling object in ANY definition of gravity? Probably not. But hey if I push a rock off a cliff guess what… But that doesn’t mean I need to be in text books cause I can push rocks. My action is irrelevant to the definition of gravity. Im just using it as a tool. As the Indians were with their crops.

And second, human-directed development does not "prove" that UNDIRECTED (as in no intelligent being behind it) changes of the type that evolutionism requires ever occurred.

of course it does and using avoidive terms like “development� and “evolutionism� isn’t gonna make it not so. The very fact that evolution CAN occur when humans happen to be the ones utilizing the NATURAL GENETIC tools necessary for it to take place proves that well... it can take place!

It's like saying "I know it's possible for a person to assemble a computer - this PROVES that it's possible for a computer to get assembled if all the parts are left lying in a field and no human ever comes near it."

no dear. Its not like saying that. Computers aren’t natural elements found in nature. Its much more like saying that humans can take advantage of the force of gravity (to stay with our theme here) by packing a snow ball and rolling it down a mountain covered with a thick accumulation of ice and snow and loose rock and this can ultimately lead to an avalanche. But this does NOT mean that avalanches don’t occur in nature withOUT human guidance. It fact it proves that its possible because the human was simply using the “toolsâ€� required in nature to make such an event take place (in this case gravity). And if you have enough avalanches (caused by one snow flake originally) then ultimately you can, as stated before, change entire continents by bringing down mountains and changing the course of rivers and effecting weather that alters landscapes for thousands of miles. In nature things are linked to each other RÃ*an. Enormous changes don’t occur in one big gigantic event. They occur in linked small events using natural laws like gravity and… *drum roll * evolution!