Creationists respond to Dawkins
by hooberus 17 Replies latest jw friends
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stillajwexelder
Thankyou for supplying links giving the other side of the story - nice to have balance on a forum such as this
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Spook
How about they respond to some of the primary literature instead of nitpicking analogies and popular presentations? The rejoinders to their replies are available as well, for those interested. I'll leave the finding to you.
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Leolaia
Indeed, the origin of the first self-reproducing system is recognized by many scientists as an unsolved problem for evolution, and thus evidence for a Creator.
Logical fallacy. Not solved does not mean insolvable, and an insolvable problem itself (i.e. insolvable through scientific methodology) does not mean that the problem is itself evidence of a non-scientific solution. If the problem is not solved or even insolvable due to a lack of evidence (e.g. a lack of fossils attesting the earliest stages of the process), the lack of evidence is not itself "evidence" that another approach is needed.
It's like saying a sighting of an unidentified flying object is evidence that the UFO is an extraterrestial spaceship because it is unidentified.
Talking about flying saucers, wasn't yesterday the day Prophet Yahweh was gonna spring UFOs galore over Vegas???
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greendawn
The world is still waiting to see those intermediate species fossils why are they not showing anywhere? In their absence is it not logical to assume that there are no intermediate forms? How long do we have to wait for them to appear?
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Satanus
Aren't all forms (except the first and the last) intermediate?
S
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iggy_the_fish
It's reasonably miraculous (if you'll pardon that expression) that we're lucky enough to have any ancient bone available to us at all, rather than expecting a continuous catalogue of examples of every animal species which ever existed.
Anyone interested by this thread, make sure you not only read www.answersingenesis.org, but you also read www.talkorigins.org (for example) or the evolution sites of your preference, or go down your library and read up a bit on all sides of the story, and then make your minds up on the balance of all the evidence. Lecture over
ig.
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Leolaia
The world is still waiting to see those intermediate species fossils why are they not showing anywhere? In their absence is it not logical to assume that there are no intermediate forms? How long do we have to wait for them to appear?
There are all sorts of transitional fossils. They have been well-documented:
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional/part1a.html
Moreover, since speciation events often involve small populations that later radiate in ecologically favorable conditions (cf. Punctuated-Equilibrium, the Founder's Effect, etc.), there will always be a greater rarity of morphologically transitional fossils in comparison to genetically stable established species. To give an example involving language, Haitian Creole is the national language of Haiti (alongside French), and it is based on French. But where did it come from? It looks a lot like French and one might reasonably argue that it developed from an earlier version of French. So we look at old texts of French (= fossils) from the 1400s, 1500s, 1600s, etc. Well, in some ways the older French was closer to Haitian. But it's still not the same thing. And there are no "transitional" texts that give a part French, part Haitian intermediate form. There are, however, early texts of Haitian going back to the 1700s, 1600s, etc. Just nothing to link the two. So did Haitian just pop out of the ground fully-formed, with no transitional form? Well, what probably happened is that it arose from French on a few isolated plantations in Haiti or in the Antilles. It was invented in a small population in order for exploited slaves to survive and communicate with each other in those harsh conditions. Unfortunately, those populations were so small that they likely did not leave any records and since slaves were illiterate anyway, they did not leave their own records. Then later, the new language radiated and spread until we have lots of records and texts from the established language. Thus we would have a situation in which one obviously developed from the other, but with little direct evidence of the transition itself. This illustrates why transitional forms are often (but not always) very rare. Nevertheless, they definitely do exist, as paleontologists know from experience.
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Satanus
Leolaia
That language example of transitional stages is interesting to me, because, if the principle can by applied to evolution of the species, then the actual devlopments or changes into new forms (macroevolution) would been extremely rapid, covering a very short time, archeologicaly speaking. In real yrs, i wonder many it could have been. Maybe some of the evolution pros have an idea. Microevolution may have had a longer term. or perhaps be continuously in action.
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rocketman
From what I've read of the Answers In Genesis site, there's a Young Earth Creationism slant to much of what is written there. As far as "unsolved problems" are concerned, we might note two interesting examples of what might be considered "unsolved problems": - In 1783, astronomer John Mitchell predicted the existence of a star so massive that light could not escape its gravity. This projection would be hard to accept because its prediction could not yet be observed. However, over 200 years later, the predicted existence of such massive stars has been confirmed, as the Hubble Space Telescope has amassed evidence of the existence of Black Holes. - The Greek astronomer Democritus predicted in the 4th century BCE that matter was composed of atoms. It took about 2,400 years for man to learn confirm their existence and learn to manipulate them. These examples show that sometimes it takes quite some time for proof of certain theories and predictions to be realized. Simply dismissing such as "unsolved" and thus "proving" something else can be a serious mistake in judgement.