Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Evolution Proof?

My brother-in-law is a geologist and producer-of-oil for a major international oil corporation. Also, a born-again Baptist who believes, or did at one time, that the earth is no more 6,000 years old.

I asked him once how he could ever find oil when he was supposed to be looking in rock formations that were far older than 6,000 years. He said something to the effect of, "For reasons we cannot possibly understand, God wants the Earth to appear to be billions of years old."

He would understand exactly about the radioactive bugga-wugga.

Sounds very much like Christian Deism to me. Nothing wrong with that.

Fishing the last I heard.

Here's a rebuttal.

Jordan

http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/05/rebutting_karl_giberson_and_fr046491.html

Except that I very much DO believe in the divinity of Jesus, as well as His moral teachings.

Fill in one gap, it creates 2 more. Still all your "rebuttal" is, is an argument from incredulity.

You are what is know as a borderline Deist or Christian take your pick. You aren't alone in that regard a number of the Founding Fathers fell into same pigeon hole. There are many borderline Christian Deist today.

It's not a complicated idea, but some folks like things to be complicated, and it's a pretty dumb argument to them.

Rebuttal? Not quite.

More of a whimpering whine that Giberson and Collins did not spell out every molecule involved in a molecular recipe for an eye.

Carefully reading and comprehending links before you post them might help you avoid the appearance of a 'spray and pray' debating style.

In other words "We speculate...."

I have trouble believing your story. The geologists I have met use Noah's Flood to explain the oil and coal. Many years ago I met a geologists who was on staff for two oil companies because he was so good a telling them where to drill for oil. He based all his recommendations on his acceptance of Noah's Flood.

If oil and coal don't happen quickly they won't happen at all. I learned that from a Ph.D chemist who used to be an evolutionists professor. When he did research after college he became a young earth creationist.

Personal attacks don't impress. The "evolutionary scenarios" for the eye are pure speculation---"Just So" stories that are highly improbable (if not impossible) with not a shred of empirical proof. None of the scenarious imagined has a shred of laboratory evidence to support it. It is just so much wishful thinking.

Mathmetician David Berlinski comments on Richard Dawkins fanciful evolution eye scenario.

________________________


Keeping an Eye on Evolution: Richard Dawkins, a relentless Darwinian spear carrier, trips over Mount Improbable.
Review of Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins (W. H. Norton & Company, Inc. 1996)
By: David Berlinski
The Globe & Mail
November 2, 1996



For more information about David Berlinski - his new books, video clips from interviews, and upcoming events - please visit his website at www.davidberlinski.org.




The theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought. It is large, almost entirely useless, and the object of superstitious awe. Richard Dawkins is widely known as the theory's uncompromising champion. Having made his case in The Blind Watchmaker and River out of Eden, Dawkins proposes to make it yet again in Climbing Mount Improbable. He is not a man given to tiring himself by repetition.

Darwin's theory has a double aspect. The first is the doctrine of descent with modification; the second, the doctrine of random variation and natural selection. Descent with modification provides the pattern; random variation and natural selection, the mechanism. Dawkins' concern is with the mechanism; the pattern he takes for granted.

Biological structures such as the mammalian eye are complex in the sense that they contain many parts arranged in specific ways. It is unlikely that such structures could have been discovered by chance. No one, the astrophysicist N. C. Wickramasinghe once observed with some asperity, expects a tornado touching on a junkyard to produce a Boeing 747. This may suggest--it has suggested to some physicists--a disturbing gap between what life has accomplished and what the theory of evolution can explain. The suggestion provokes Dawkins to indignation. "It is grindingly, creakingly, crashingly obvious," he writes, mixing three metaphors joyously, that the discovery by chance of a complex object is improbable; but the Darwinian mechanism, he adds, "acts by breaking the improbability up into small manageable parts, smearing out the luck needed, going round the back of Mount Improbable and crawling up the gentle slopes...."

This is a fine image, one introduced originally by the American bio-mathematician Sewell Wright. Random variation offers the mountaineer an allowance of small changes. Chance is at work. Natural selection freezes the successful changes in place. And this process owes nothing to chance. In time, the successful changes form a connected path, a staircase to complexity.

The example that Dawkins pursues in greatest detail is the eye. Darwin himself wondered at its complexity, remarking in a letter to an American colleague that "the eye...gives me a cold shudder." That shudder notwithstanding, Darwin resolved his doubts in his own favor; the eye, he concluded, was created by a single-step series of improvements, what he called 'fine gradations.' Where Darwin went, Dawkins follows.

It is one thing, however, to appeal to a path up Mount Improbable, quite another to demonstrate its existence. Dawkins has persuaded himself that because such a path might exist, further argument is unnecessary. Impediments are simply directed to disappear: "There is no difficulty"; "there is a definite tendency in the right direction"; "It is easy to see that..."; "it is not at all difficult to imagine...."

In fact, the difficulties are very considerable. A single retinal cell of the human eye consists of a nucleus, a mitochondrial rod, and a rectangular array containing discrete layers of photon-trapping pigment. The evolutionary development of the eye evidently required an increase in such layers. An inferential staircase being required, the thing virtually constructs itself, Dawkins believes, one layer at a time. "The point," he writes, "is that ninety-one membranes are more effective...than ninety, ninety are more effective that eighty-nine, and so on back to one membrane, which is more effective than zero."

This is a plausible scheme only because Dawkins has considered a single feature of the eye in isolation. The parts of a complex artifact or object typically gain their usefulness as an ensemble. A Dixie Cup consists of a tube joined to a disk. Without the disk, the cup does not hold less water than it might; it cannot hold water at all. And ditto for the tube, the two items, disk and tube, forming an irreducibly complex system.

What holds for the Dixie Cup holds for the eye as well. Light strikes the eye in the form of photons, but the optic nerve conveys electrical impulses to the brain. Acting as a sophisticated transducer, the eye must mediate between two different physical signals. The retinal cells that figure in Dawkins' account are connected to horizontal cells; these shuttle information laterally between photoreceptors in order to smooth the visual signal. Amacrine cells act to filter the signal. Bipolar cells convey visual information further to ganglion cells, which in turn conduct information to the optic nerve. The system gives every indication of being tightly integrated, its parts mutually dependent.

The very problem that Darwin's theory was designed to evade now reappears. Like vibrations passing through a spider's web, changes to any part of the eye, if they are to improve vision, must bring about changes throughout the optical system. Without a correlative increase in the size and complexity of the optic nerve, an increase in the number of photoreceptive membranes can have no effect. A change in the optic nerve must in turn induce corresponding neurological changes in the brain. If these changes come about simultaneously, it makes no sense to talk of a gradual ascent of Mount Improbable. If they do not come about simultaneously, it is not clear why they should come about at all.

The same problem reappears at the level of biochemistry. Dawkins has framed his discussion in terms of gross anatomy. Each anatomical change that he describes requires a number of coordinate biochemical steps. "[T]he anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple," the biochemist Mike Behe remarks in a provocative new book (Darwin's Black Box), "actually involve staggeringly complicated biochemical processes." A number of separate biochemical events are required simply to begin the process of curving a layer of proteins to form a lens. What initiates the sequence? How is it coordinated? And how controlled? On these absolutely fundamental matters, Dawkins has nothing whatsoever to say.

In addition to the eye, Dawkins discusses spiders and their webs, the origin of flight, and the nature of seashells. The natural history is charming.

Dawkins is a capable if somewhat dry prose stylist, although such expressions as 'designoid' and 'wince-makingly' are themselves wince-making. The science throughout is primitive. Difficulties are resolved by sleight-of-hand. "In real life," Dawkins remarks in a representative passage, "there may be formidable complications of detail." Yes? What of them, those formidable complications? "These emerge simply and without fuss."

Is the elephant's large nose truly the result of an evolutionary progression? Then some demonstration is required showing that intermediate-sized noses are valuable as well. None is forthcoming. "If a medium sized trunk were always less efficient," Dawkins writes, "than either a small nose or a big trunk, the big trunk would never have evolved." Indeed. The emergence of powered flight is treated as an engaging fable, one in which either arboreal animals glided downward from the tree tops or a primitive dinosaur hopped upward toward the sky. "The beauty of this theory," Dawkins affirms, commending the hopping scenario, "is that the same nervous circuits that were used to control the center of gravity in the jumping ancestor would, rather effortlessly, have lent themselves to controlling the flight surfaces later in the evolutionary story." It is the phrase "rather effortlessly" that gives to this preposterous assertion its antic charm.

A final note. In a book whose examples are chosen from natural history, it is important to get the details right. Hawks may soar or sail, but they cannot hover like helicopters. Not all organisms share precisely the same genetic code. And Gary Kasparov was defeated by IBM's Big Blue, and not a program entitled Genius 2.

Don't you ever tire of short stroking into the argumentum ad ignorantiam illogical fallacy sand trap? It is as if you have a neurochemotaxic attraction response to them.

Noteable that Berlinsky could only find factual faults on three rather trivial statements that have no bearing on the major premises of the Dawkins book.

An abstract on the biochemistry of the eye....


How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated. He had an excellent reason for declining the question: it was completely beyond nineteenth century science. How the eye works; that is, what happens when a photon of light first hits the retina simply could not be answered at that time. As a matter of fact, no question about the underlying mechanisms of life could be answered. How did animal muscles cause movement? How did photosynthesis work? How was energy extracted from food? How did the body fight infection? No one knew.

Darwins Black BoxTo Darwin vision was a black box, but today, after the hard, cumulative work of many biochemists, we are approaching answers to the question of sight. Here is a brief overview of the biochemistry of vision. When light first strikes the retina, a photon interacts with a molecule called 11-cis-retinal, which rearranges within picoseconds to trans-retinal. The change in the shape of retinal forces a change in the shape of the protein, rhodopsin, to which the retinal is tightly bound. The protein's metamorphosis alters its behavior, making it stick to another protein called transducin. Before bumping into activated rhodopsin, transducin had tightly bound a small molecule called GDP. But when transducin interacts with activated rhodopsin, the GDP falls off and a molecule called GTP binds to transducin. (GTP is closely related to, but critically different from, GDP.)

GTP-transducin-activated rhodopsin now binds to a protein called phosphodiesterase, located in the inner membrane of the cell. When attached to activated rhodopsin and its entourage, the phosphodiesterase acquires the ability to chemically cut a molecule called cGMP (a chemical relative of both GDP and GTP). Initially there are a lot of cGMP molecules in the cell, but the phosphodiesterase lowers its concentration, like a pulled plug lowers the water level in a bathtub.

Another membrane protein that binds cGMP is called an ion channel. It acts as a gateway that regulates the number of sodium ions in the cell. Normally the ion channel allows sodium ions to flow into the cell, while a separate protein actively pumps them out again. The dual action of the ion channel and pump keeps the level of sodium ions in the cell within a narrow range. When the amount of cGMP is reduced because of cleavage by the phosphodiesterase, the ion channel closes, causing the cellular concentration of positively charged sodium ions to be reduced. This causes an imbalance of charge across the cell membrane which, finally, causes a current to be transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain. The result, when interpreted by the brain, is vision.

My explanation is just a sketchy overview of the biochemistry of vision. Ultimately, though, this is what it means to "explain" vision. This is the level of explanation for which biological science must aim. In order to truly understand a function, one must understand in detail every relevant step in the process. The relevant steps in biological processes occur ultimately at the molecular level, so a satisfactory explanation of a biological phenomenon such as vision, or digestion, or immunity must include its molecular explanation.

DarwinNow that the black box of vision has been opened it is no longer enough for an "evolutionary explanation" of that power to consider only the anatomical structures of whole eyes, as Darwin did in the nineteenth century, and as popularizers of evolution continue to do today. Each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical processes that cannot be papered over with rhetoric. Darwin's simple steps are now revealed to be huge leaps between carefully tailored machines. Thus biochemistry offers a Lilliputian challenge to Darwin. Now the black box of the cell has been opened and a Lilliputian world of staggering complexity stands revealed. It must be explained.

__________________________
The Darwinian model can't account for this. Show me a peer reviewed scientific article that articulates a plausible Darwinian scenario.

From where, Answers in Genesis?

Do you think the biochemistry of vision is somehow molecularly completely different than the biochemistry of the bacterial flagellum?

Not necessarily. But intelligent design is staring us right in the face.

Here are some quotes from Michael Denton on the complexity of the cell:

Michael Denton quotes (showing 1-6 of 6)



�The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle.�
― Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis


tags: abiogenesis, biology, chance, chemical-evolution, coincidence, id, intelligent-design, irreducible-complexity, living-cells, naturalism, origin-of-life, science, serendipity

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�Molecular biology has shown that even the simplest of all living systems on the earth today, bacterial cells, are exceedingly complex objects. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 gms, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the nonliving world.�
― Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis


tags: bacteria, biology, factory, id, intelligent-design, irreducible-complexity, living-cells, molecular-machines, science

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�Considering the way the prebiotic soup is referred to in so many discussions of the origin of life as an already established reality, it comes as something of a shock to realize that there is absolutely no positive evidence for its existence.�
― Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis


tags: abiogenesis, biology, chemical-evolution, darwinism, evolution, naturalism, origin-of-life, sciece

3 likes

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�To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity.�
― Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis


tags: biology, factory, id, intelligent-design, irreducible-complexity, living-cells, molecular-machines, science

3 likes

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�The theory of phlogiston was an inversion of the true nature of combustion. Removing phlogiston was in reality adding oxygen, while adding phlogiston was actually removing oxygen. The theory was a total misrepresentation of reality. Phlogiston did not even exist, and yet its existence was firmly believed and the theory adhered to rigidly for nearly one hundred years throughout the eighteenth century. ... As experimentation continued the properties of phlogiston became more bizarre and contradictory. But instead of questioning the existence of this mysterious substance it was made to serve more comprehensive purposes. ... For the skeptic or indeed to anyone prepared to step out of the circle of Darwinian belief, it is not hard to find inversions of common sense in modern evolutionary thought which are strikingly reminiscent of the mental gymnastics of the phlogiston chemists or the medieval astronomers.

To the skeptic, the proposition that the genetic programmes of higher organisms, consisting of something close to a thousand million bits of information, equivalent to the sequence of letters in a small library of one thousand volumes, containing in encoded form countless thousands of intricate algorithms controlling, specifying and ordering the growth and development of billions and billions of cells into the form of a complex organism, were composed by a purely random process is simply an affront to reason. But to the Darwinist the idea is accepted without a ripple of doubt - the paradigm takes precedence!�
― Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory In Crisis


tags: chance, coincidence, consensus, darwinism, evolution, macro-evolution, macroevolution, majority-view, naturalism, origin-of-information, origin-of-life, science, scientific-consensus, serendipity

3 likes

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�In the discoveries of science the harmony of the spheres is also now the harmony of life. And as the eerie illumination of science penetrates evermore deeply into the order of nature, the cosmos appears increasingly to be a vast system finely tuned to generate life and organisms of biology very similar, perhaps identical, to ourselves. All the evidence available in the biological sciences supports the core proposition of traditional natural theology - that the cosmos is a specially designed whole with life and mankind as a fundamental goal and purpose, a whole in which all facets of reality, from the size of galaxies to the thermal capacity of water, have their meaning and explanation in this central fact.

Four centuries after the scientific revolution apparently destroyed irretrievably man's special place in the universe, banished Aristotle, and rendered teleological speculation obsolete, the relentless stream of discovery has turned dramatically in favor of teleology and design, and the doctrine of the microcosm is reborn. As I hope the evidence presented in this book has shown, science, which has been for centuries the great ally of atheism and skepticism, has become at last, in the final days of the second millennium, what Newton and many of its early advocates had so fervently wished - the "defender of the anthropocentric faith.�
― Michael Denton, Nature's Destiny: How the Laws of Biology Reveal Purpose in the Universe

Podcast from Denton. Interesting....



http://intelligentdesign.podomatic.com/entry/2013-07-29T16_27_39-07_00