Evolution v Creationism: A Dead Issue

[Jose Fly]

As someone who spent a lot of time on the evolution v creationism battles over the last 20 years, I've noticed that in the last 5 years or so the issue seems to have largely gone off the radar. In the message boards that are still around (both Christian and secular) it's barely debated, if at all. Websites specifically dedicated to countering creationist talking points such as talkorigins and pandasthumb have gone silent, seemingly because there just isn't much to talk about.

Surveys have shown that younger Americans accept the reality of evolution at pretty much the same rate as the rest of the developed world. Thanks to national focus on science education by organizations like the NCSE, evolution is more widely taught than ever, even in the deep south. The Discovery Institute (the main "intelligent design" organization) stopped advocating for ID creationism to be taught in schools years ago, and they closed their alleged "research arm" last year.

On the science front, creationism remains as it has for over a century....100% scientifically irrelevant.

So for all practical intents and purposes, this debate is over. There isn't any sort of public debate over teaching creationism, nor is there any real debate about whether evolution should be taught. For sure there's still work to do in some parts of the country (mostly the south and interior west) where even though evolution is officially required, teachers don't teach it either because it's "too controversial" or they don't believe it themselves, but big picture-wise, "evolution v creationism" is in about the same state as "spherical v flat earth"....nothing more than something a handful of people argue about on the internet, but outside of that has little to no significance. And even on that front it's kinda dead....most forums where it's openly debated have a very skewed ratio where there's like 10 "evolutionists" for every 1 creationist.

Glad to see it!

[Jose Fly]

Denton considers himself an agnostic and yet he wrote several books that show the fallacy of evolution. The arguments against evolution have never been stronger.

I guess you're not aware that in his book Nature's Destiny, he concedes that evolution is valid. He now argues for the "fine tuning of the universe" view.

CLICK HERE

"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies." (page xvii-xviii)."

How could evolution happen

Huh? Populations evolve all the time, right before our eyes. It's so trivially easy to demonstrate, it's a common lab experiment in undergrad biology courses.

when the human genome consists of 3.5E9 nucleotide sites. If there is a 1% difference between chimps and humans. That means there is a difference of 3.5E7 nucleotide sites. If each generation occurs every 20 years, it means that every generation would have to consist of 116 changes in the nucleotide sites per generation if this evolutionary change took 6 million years. You might say that there are millions or even billions of mutations in a species if the population is big enough. The problem is that you would have all 116 changes in one organism. These mutations would be in 116 different organisms. The mutations would then need to accumulate in one organism or a group of organisms. This accumulation would then take many generations. Therefore making human evolution impossible.

Good grief.....y'all are in desperate need of new talking points.

Humans didn't evolve from chimps, they share a common ancestor that was neither chimp nor human. So your "estimates" are fundamentally flawed at the outset.

The rest of the above is even worse, and quite frankly I'm not all that interested in arguing decades-old creationist talking points for the umpteenth time. If the above is an accurate reflection of your knowledge of the subject, I strongly urge you to stop trying to debate it and take the time to actually learn it.....even at a basic level.

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #51]

Denton has a PhD in biochemistry, do you?

[Sherlock Holmes]

Denton considers himself an agnostic and yet he wrote several books that show the fallacy of evolution. The arguments against evolution have never been stronger.

I guess you're not aware that in his book Nature's Destiny, he concedes that evolution is valid. He now argues for the "fine tuning of the universe" view.

CLICK HERE

"it is important to emphasize at the outset that the argument presented here is entirely consistent with the basic naturalistic assumption of modern science - that the cosmos is a seamless unity which can be comprehended ultimately in its entirety by human reason and in which all phenomena, including life and evolution and the origin of man, are ultimately explicable in terms of natural processes. This is an assumption which is entirely opposed to that of the so-called "special creationist school". According to special creationism, living organisms are not natural forms, whose origin and design were built into the laws of nature from the beginning, but rather contingent forms analogous in essence to human artifacts, the result of a series of supernatural acts, involving the suspension of natural law. Contrary to the creationist position, the whole argument presented here is critically dependent on the presumption of the unbroken continuity of the organic world - that is, on the reality of organic evolution and on the presumption that all living organisms on earth are natural forms in the profoundest sense of the word, no less natural than salt crystals, atoms, waterfalls, or galaxies." (page xvii-xviii)."

How could evolution happen

Huh? Populations evolve all the time, right before our eyes. It's so trivially easy to demonstrate, it's a common lab experiment in undergrad biology courses.

when the human genome consists of 3.5E9 nucleotide sites. If there is a 1% difference between chimps and humans. That means there is a difference of 3.5E7 nucleotide sites. If each generation occurs every 20 years, it means that every generation would have to consist of 116 changes in the nucleotide sites per generation if this evolutionary change took 6 million years. You might say that there are millions or even billions of mutations in a species if the population is big enough. The problem is that you would have all 116 changes in one organism. These mutations would be in 116 different organisms. The mutations would then need to accumulate in one organism or a group of organisms. This accumulation would then take many generations. Therefore making human evolution impossible.

Good grief.....y'all are in desperate need of new talking points.

Humans didn't evolve from chimps, they share a common ancestor that was neither chimp nor human. So your "estimates" are fundamentally flawed at the outset.

The rest of the above is even worse, and quite frankly I'm not all that interested in arguing decades-old creationist talking points for the umpteenth time. If the above is an accurate reflection of your knowledge of the subject, I strongly urge you to stop trying to debate it and take the time to actually learn it.....even at a basic level.

Well statistics, calculations and data is something I'm very comfortable with, let me look into this myself...

[alexxcJRO]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #46]

Denton considers himself an agnostic and yet he wrote several books that show the fallacy of evolution. The arguments against evolution have never been stronger.

How could evolution happen when the human genome consists of 3.5E9 nucleotide sites. If there is a 1% difference between chimps and humans. That means there is a difference of 3.5E7 nucleotide sites. If each generation occurs every 20 years, it means that every generation would have to consist of 116 changes in the nucleotide sites per generation if this evolutionary change took 6 million years. You might say that there are millions or even billions of mutations in a species if the population is big enough. The problem is that you would have all 116 changes in one organism. These mutations would be in 116 different organisms. The mutations would then need to accumulate in one organism or a group of organisms. This accumulation would then take many generations. Therefore making human evolution impossible.

Sir I recommend you familiarize yourself with basic notions of the scientific evolutionary theory.
Like the fact that all great apes shared a common ancestor.
Humans did not evolve from chimps, gorillas or orangutan.
It’s very embarrassing sir.
It’s like trying to resolve multiple integrals without knowing basic calculus, math.
I suggest you to start with something simple like reading the Evolution The Whole Story book.
Its pretty basic, has color pictures.
I read it first 6 years ago.

[alexxcJRO]

Well statistics, calculations and data is something I'm very comfortable with, let me look into this myself...

Q: Since statistics, calculations and data is your thing why do think of this paper(https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/036327v1.full ) which showed statistically evidence for common ancestry and not for separate ancestry?

"CONCLUSIONS
We have developed novel statistical approaches to test CA versus SA from aligned DNA sequences based on maximum likelihood estimation, BIC, and parametric bootstrapping of a parsimony difference test statistic. Our model treats nucleotide base probabilities separately at each site in order to account for biological constraints that limit nucleotide usage differently by site.

We find overwhelmingly strong evidence against SA in favor of CA in primates at both the subordinal and family levels. Additionally, we find common ancestry between primate orders and among primate families. We find very strong statistical evidence against a hypothesis of SA of humans from other primates, This supports the conventional view that humans are closely related to other primates rather than deriving from an independent origin event."

The key point: "overwhelmingly strong evidence against SA".


Let's hope crickets don't show themselves again like the many times in the past.

[brunumb]

Another good read. Long before DNA and the proliferation of fossils, observation of the diversity of life on this planet led people towards the theory of evolution, finally formalised by Darwin and Wallace.

With each chapter focusing on an early evolutionary thinker, Darwin’s Ghosts is a fascinating account of a diverse group of individuals who, despite the very real dangers of challenging a system in which everything was presumed to have been created perfectly by God, felt compelled to understand where we came from. Ultimately, Stott demonstrates, ideas—including evolution itself—evolve just as animals and plants do, by intermingling, toppling weaker notions, and developing over stretches of time.

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to brunumb in post #56]

I've lost count of how many times I've publicly stated in this forum that Darwin was an excellent scientist. I was immersed reading Darwin and of Darwin perhaps before some here were even born.

[Sherlock Holmes]

[Replying to alexxcJRO in post #55]

I just read through the paper and you seem unaware of what it actually says.

It assumes evolution is true - period. Then assuming that it shows that if evolution be true then common descent is a more probable cause for sequence similarity than say functional constraints.

It is contrasting common descent with other potential causes for sequence similarity.

IT DOES NOT PROVE COMMON DESCENT!

You can only claim common descent IF evolution is known to have occurred you cannot assume evolution did occur then claim common descent from that to then prove evolution did occur!

The paper is fine but your interpretation of its meaning is wrong.

See? see what happens when you grab and clutch at documents too hastily? In your eagerness to undermine me you shoot yourself in the foot.

[Jose Fly]

[Replying to alexxcJRO in post #55]

I just read through the paper and you seem unaware of what it actually says.

It assumes evolution is true - period. Then assuming that it shows that if evolution be true then common descent is a more probable cause for sequence similarity than say functional constraints.

It is contrasting common descent with other potential causes for sequence similarity.

IT DOES NOT PROVE COMMON DESCENT!

You can only claim common descent IF evolution is known to have occurred you cannot assume evolution did occur then claim common descent from that to then prove evolution did occur!

The paper is fine but your interpretation of its meaning is wrong.

See? see what happens when you grab and clutch at documents too hastily? In your eagerness to undermine me you shoot yourself in the foot.

Oh good grief SH, how many times do you need to be reminded......evolution is reality, it happens right before our eyes, all the time.

You saying "they assume evolution is true" is no different than if you'd read a geology paper and said "they assume erosion is true".

[Jose Fly]

[Replying to Jose Fly in post #51]

Denton has a PhD in biochemistry, do you?

Nope.