Problems with Evolution

[godslanguage]

Here are a few good points that evolutionists here should rebut.
I obviously take no credit for any of this. The author of this is on the Intelligent Design podcast "comments" section.
Here goes:

"
There are so many reasons that disprove Darwin, I list a only few.
1. Plant & animal breeders find a limit to variability that is
Incompatible with Darwin. It should be possible to breed dogs with
feathers. (Darwinism claims simple forms like amoebas and worms developed step by step into birds, spiders, & humans.) Furthermore, even the variations bred by breeders disappear when not actively maintained by non-natural (intelligent) selection.

2. Forced mutations like fruit fly experiments failed to confirm
Darwinism. Fruit flies were radiated to cause genetic errors (mutations). Most mutations are not beneficial to the organism. Although duplications of organs occurred (like double wings), no new organs were created. It should also be noted that mutations are not likely to produce improvements in an organism that is already well adapted. Any accidental change is likely to be detrimental. A reasonable analogy would be starting with a radio, shoot a bullet into it and hope to change it into an HDTV.

3. Gaps in the fossil record. If Darwin were right, most fossils would be
transitional. Between dinosaurs and birds or between fish and amphibians, there should be millions of intermediate fossils. Instead we have a few highly questionable intermediate forms. Between sponges, crustaceans and chordates there are no intermediate fossils.

4. If Darwin was right all living things are transitional. Life should
be like a chart in a paint store, with hundreds of shades between red &
blue. There is no reason transitions (evolution) should have stopped. If sponges once grew legs by slight incremental changes, generation to generation, some of the sponges of today should also be growing legs. They should be in various intermediate stages. There should be a smear of life.

5. Although some devolution (loss of organs) can be seen, no nascent
(new) organs in process of forming can be found. Evolution must account for the development of feathers, blood, bones, lungs, the immune system, the liver, and thousands of organs, systems & behaviors starting with a simple life form likes a worm. (Where would the genes come from?) Darwin should also explain what good is a half formed organ. Darwinists claim half formed organs have alternative uses. For example, a partially developed leg might be useful for digging. Of course it might also be a drag on a swimming fish. Trying to find uses for partly developed organs has proven difficult. In the real world organs are usually fully functional, never partly developed.

6. Thousands of organs exist for which no Darwinian explanation exists.
Consider the hollow tooth & poison sac of some poisonous snakes. Why
Would natural selection develop & retain a hollow tooth if there was no
Poison to inject? Why would natural selection develop & retain a poison
Sac, if there was no way to inject the poison? A brilliant biologist (Goldschmidt) once listed 17 organs that he said could not have developed by slight Darwinian incremental changes.

7. The irreducible complexity of Behe is a powerful argument against any naturalistic theory of evolution. Behe says that some organs could not have developed from simpler forms because they are irreducibly complex. Blood clotting, for example must start when needed and stop when the wound is closed. It consists of a complex cascade of actions that would kill (or seriously harm) the creature if any one of them failed. None of the steps can be incomplete, none can start too soon, and none can stop too soon. It is virtually inconceivable that an irreducibly complex system can develop in a Darwinian fashion. (Many explanatory attempts have been made, but none have succeeded.)

8. The extinction of many species is now attributed to non-Darwinian
Causes such as catastrophes.

9. Despite ad-hoc arguments about closed & open systems, evolution works against the law of entropy. An explosion in a junkyard will not produce a jet plane, no matter how many times you try it. A jet plane will however, deteriorate into a pile of junk if you leave it alone for a thousand years. Entropy actually confirms the religious view that a perfect creation has been slowly deteriorating.

10. Stephen Gould proposed a way for evolution to proceed that accounts for the lack of intermediate fossils. His "punctuated equilibrium" has evolution occurring while species are isolated. Then they join the main stream and quickly overwhelm old forms. Because the changes take place while isolated, the change only seems sudden. The problem with his "Punctuated equilibrium" is isolated species are shielded from predators and competitors. Instead of improving, most isolated species lose their competitive edge. When joined with the mainstream they usually lose out. Think of the dodo, or most native species of Hawaii. . Mr. Gould may think he has saved Darwin, but Punctuated equilibrium actual denies the efficacy of natural selection.

11. Darwinists hide from the public much of the evidence against
natural selection. Look up Haldene's dilemma. This famous researcher could not reconcile the time available with the genetic changes required. He desperately wanted to prove Darwin right, but had to acknowledge that the genetic changes required thousands of times longer than the available time. Recent work in genetic codes has shown 4% difference between man and chimpanzee. This seems small, until one learns that this equates to about 35,000,000 point mutations. Evolutionary geneticist Haldane calculated there are only 300,000 generations between man and chimp. Note that if one mutation occurred each generation and each mutation was favorable and each mutation swept over the entire generation at once, there is still a shortage of 34,700,000 mutations. Since most mutations are not favorable and it is not possible to sweep the entire generation with a mutation, the time needed for chimp to man is incredibly longer than the 5-6,000,000 years usually allotted to this. This represents such a large problem for evolution that only a “true believer” can still accept Darwin.

12.Or research what experts now say about the evolution of the horse. This icon of evolution is no longer considered proof of evolution. The various fossils in the displays cannot be linked in place or time, but some museums still use displays without correction.

13. Other icons like the fetus recapitulating the evolutionary history are false. For example gill slits in the fetus were supposed to recapitulate the development of mammals from ancestral fish. Gill slits in mammal fetuses do not develop into any breathing organ. They develop into hearing organs. The apparent similarity to fish gills is only in our imagination. Illustrations used to show similarities were exaggerated and selectively chosen. This has been known for more than fifty years, but is still used by evolutionists as “proof”.

14. Most claims supposed to prove evolution, like drug resistant
microbes etc. do not involve speciation. Species are different, only if they cannot interbreed, or if offspring are always infertile The examples usually offered are only examples of selection among existing variations. No new species is involved. Furthermore, if an example of a new ability appeared after stress from antibiotics, this would not be Darwinian. Such a dramatic development cannot be caused by random variation and a mutation that so specifically fulfilled the need of the microbe is close to the hopeful monster usually derided by Darwinists. It is like one day a chicken hatched out of an alligator's egg.

15. If Darwin were correct, there would only be one genus then a few and finally many as we progress from early fossils to recent fossils. Instead, the earliest finds (like the Burgess Shale) show thirty-five phyla existing. Transitional predecessor forms to these complex body types are conspicuous by their absence. A find similar to the Burgess shales has been found in China. When a Chinese scientist presented his findings in American universities, he pointed out these findings prove Darwin wrong. He got stony silence after that remark, “Strange” he said. “In China I can criticize Darwin but not the government. In the U.S. you can criticize the government, but not Darwin”. He has found ninety phyla. Modern taxonomists usually list only forty. Thus there were some that have no modern descendants.There were more varieties 500 million years ago then exist today. This is devolution, not evolution

16. Many creatures have sexual displays like peacock tails, elk horns, etc. Darwin explained this as selection by females choosing attractive traits among various suitors. Certain male fish exhibit colorful displays during mating season, but they fertilize the eggs without the female being present, or even aware fertilization is occurring. When can sexual selection occur?

17 By far the strongest primary evidence for evolution, for common descent and for Darwinian processes of mutation and natural selection, is that of homology. Homology is the name given to the anatomical correspondences between different species that biologists and paleontologists have noted and studied for centuries.

Darwin himself explained the significance of homology with eloquent simplicity in The Origin of Species when he said; 'We have seen that the members of the same class, independently of their habits of life, resemble each other in the general plan of their organization. This resemblance is often expressed by the term "unity of type"; or by saying that the several parts and organs in the different species of the class are homologous.'
'What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat should all be constructed on the same pattern and should include similar bones in the same relative position?'
On the face of it, there can be only one rational explanation for such similarities and that is descent from a common ancestor from whom the similar features are a genetic inheritance. Some homologies are so striking that it appears impossible to deny this interpretation. Every four-footed vertebrate animal has the same five-fingered design with the same set of bones in modified form. The bones of the arm, wrist and hand that are found in humans can also be found in modified form in all other four-limbed animals with backbones.

It is homology that leads Darwinists to put together isolated fossil remains in ancestor-descendant relationships - often very convincing ones. It is homology that Darwinists rely on to bridge the gaps in the fossil record, as in the case of horses. It is homology that underlies the diagrams drawn up by Darwinists showing how every living thing is related.

But as with all the other evidence for Darwinism, there are major problems when you look closer. Consider this. The human hand is not only homologous with the porpoise's paddle and the bat's wing; it is homologous with a structure much closer to home -- the human foot.
But the human hand cannot possibly have evolved from the human foot, or vice versa, as they are both part of the same organism. They must have both evolved independently to become adapted to their present uses -- grasping and walking -- from different ancestral structures.
But if there is no scientific justification for claiming that the human hand and human foot are homologous structures by reason of descent from a common precursor organ, then what justification is there for claiming such a relationship with the bat or the porpoise or the horse? The only honest answer is 'none'.
There are even worse problems. Australian molecular biologist Michael Denton has pointed out that if the doctrine of homologous structures were valid, then it would apply not merely to developed organs like the hand, but would also apply to embryology and genes. Homologous structures should be specified by homologous genes and should follow homologous patterns of embryological development.
However, this is often not the case. In embryological development, for example, organs that appear identical in different animals do not arise from the same site or group of cells of the embryo. Even a fundamental structure such as the alimentary canal, found in all vertebrates, is formed differently in different animals. In sharks it is formed from the roof of the embryonic gut cavity, whereas in the lamprey it is formed from the floor of the gut; from the roof and floor in frogs, and from the lower layer of the embryonic disc, or blastoderm, in birds and reptiles.
The classic case of homology referred to by Darwin - that of the forelimbs in vertebrates - turns out in fact to be flawed, since forelimbs develop from different body segments in different species. In the newt, the forelimbs develop from trunk segments 2,3,4 and 5; in the lizard from segments 6,7,8 and 9; and in humans from segments 13,14,15,16,17 and 18. As Michael Denton points out, from this evidence it could be argued that the forelimbs are not strictly homologous at all.

Many other comparable examples can be given from embryology: in almost every case they have been put into a file drawer labeled 'unresolved problems of homology' and largely forgotten.
It isn't only embryology that experienced such disappointments. In the 1950s, when molecular biologists began to decipher the genetic code, there was a single glittering prize enticing them. When they found the codes for making proteins out of amino acids, they naturally assumed that they were on the brink of discovering at the molecular level the same homologies that had been observed at the macroscopic level in comparative anatomy.
If the bones of the human arm could be traced to the wing of the bat and hoof of the horse, then the miraculous new science of molecular biology would trace the homologies in DNA codes that expressed these physical characteristics. At long last, biologists were on the brink of opening a treasure box and finding inside the final key to life: the chemical formula for an arm or a leg or an eye.
Yet when biologists did begin to acquire an understanding of the molecular mechanism of genetics, they found that apparently quite different genes specify homologous structures in different species. The treasure box turned out to be empty.
The main problem with understanding the genetic code contained in the DNA molecule is that individual genes do not appear to correspond to individual characteristics. The gene that controls the color of a mouse's coat also controls the mouse's size. The gene that controls the color of the eye of the fruit fly Drosophilae also controls the shape of the female sex organs. Almost all genes in higher organisms have multiple effects of this sort and Ernst Mayr has suggested that genes, which control only a single characteristic, must be rare or nonexistent.
Denton gives an example of the multiple effects of a single gene in the case of the domestic chicken. There is a degenerative mutation known for a single gene that causes a wide range of defects: no proper development of the wings; no claws on the feet; underdeveloped covering of downy feathers; lungs and air sac absent. The significance of this case is that some features affected are unique to birds (wings, feathers) while others, such as the lungs, occur in many other vertebrate species including humans.
Denton points out that; 'This can only mean that non-homologous genes are involved to some extent in the specifications of homologous structures'.
The remarkable discoveries of biochemistry and molecular biology since the 1950s have provided much evidence that, on first reading, appeared to support many of the premises of Darwinism. For example, there are some proteins that are widely used in many organisms, such as the proteins cytochrome C and hemoglobin. Research showed that the sequences of amino acids comprising these proteins varied slightly from species to species. This seemed enormously promising for it appeared to show a variation at the molecular level between species that would mirror the morphological differences in the anatomy of those species. Although fossils and comparative anatomy had failed, biochemistry could perhaps provide the evidence Darwinists sought of patterns of evolutionary inheritance.
It was discovered, for example, that the similarity between the hemoglobin sequences of animals thought by Darwinists to be more closely related was greater than that of creatures thought to be distantly related. This confirmed the Darwinian view of genetic relationships. When the hemoglobin sequence of two mammals such as a human and dog were examined, they were found to have a divergence of only about 20 per cent, whereas when the hemoglobin of human and a fish were examined, they were found to diverge by more than 50 per cent.
Perhaps by compiling a table of sequences of all the common proteins for all species we could get a quantified numerical picture of how closely or distantly related each species is?
This hope, too, was dashed. According to Michael Denton; "However, as more protein sequences began to accumulate during the 1960s, it became increasingly apparent that the molecules were not going to provide any evidence of sequential arrangements in nature, but were rather going to reaffirm the traditional view that the system of nature conforms fundamentally to a highly ordered hierarchic scheme from which all direct evidence for evolution is emphatically absent."

What biochemists found when they compiled their table of proteins (such as cytochrome C) is that it is possible to classify species into groups and that these groups do indeed correspond exactly to the groups that have been arrived at by comparative anatomy.
However, what is most striking about such a protein 'atlas' is that each of these identifiable groups or subclasses is isolated and distinct from the others. There are no transitional or intermediate classes, just as there are no transitional species in the fossil record or in the living world today.
Denton points out that published tables of divergence of the cytochromes, such as the Dayhoff Atlas of Protein Structure and Function, illustrate this dramatic absence of intermediates.
The most primitive organisms are bacteria whose cells do not contain a nucleus. All higher organisms, from yeasts to humans, whose cells do contain a nucleus, are called eukaryotes. If all eukaryotes have descended from bacteria, then you would expect to find a graduated divergence in their proteins like cytochrome C.
In fact what you find is that all the main classes, from man to kangaroo, from fruit fly to chicken, from sunflower to rattlesnake and from penguin to baker's yeast, are all equidistant from bacteria with around 65 to 69 per cent divergence.
According to Denton; . . . eucaryotic cytochromes, from organisms as diverse as man, lamprey, fruit fly, wheat and yeast, all exhibit a sequence divergence of between sixty-four per cent and sixty-seven per cent from this particular bacterial cytochrome. Considering the enormous variation of eucaryotic species from unicellular organisms like yeasts to multicellular organisms such as mammals, and considering that eucaryotic cytochromes vary among themselves by up to about forty five per cent, this must be considered one of the most astonishing findings of modern science.'

Even more extraordinary is the complete absence of evidence from biochemistry for the most basic Darwinian evolutionary scheme of fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal. When the protein divergence of land-dwelling vertebrates - amphibians, reptiles, and mammals - is compared with those of fish, they are all again equally isolated. There is no graduation of divergence, as one would expect in an evolutionary sequence.
The horse, the rabbit, the frog, and the turtle are all 13 per cent divergent in their cytochrome C from the carp. 'At a molecular level', says Denton, 'there is no trace of the evolutionary transition from fish to amphibian to reptile to mammal. So amphibians, always traditionally considered intermediate between fish and the other terrestrial vertebrates, are in molecular terms as far from fish as any group of reptiles or mammals.'
Perhaps the most baffling finding of all is that radically different genetic coding can give rise to animals that outwardly look very similar and exhibit similar behavior, while creatures that look and behave completely differently can have far less genetic divergence. There are, for instance, more than 800 species of frogs, all of which look superficially the same. But there is a greater variation of molecular structure between them than there is between the bat and the blue whale.

17. Pre-adaptation. Many impressive “adaptations” turn out to be non-adaptive, because they pre-existed the need. For example, the sutures in the skulls of young mammals are needed to allow birth without harming the mother, but they exist in birds and lizards that do not squeeze through the birth canal. There are many such non-adaptations.

18. One of the most difficult problems for Darwinism is convergent evolution. We know that Australia separated from the rest of the continents before modern mammals existed. Yet there exist marsupial versions of many animals that exist as placental versions in the other continents. Evolution is supposed to be undirected and based on chance. How did wolves develop in both areas? According to Darwin's theory, evolution is not repeatable. If the clock were rerun, human beings would not re-appear. The fact that a nearly identical animal developed independently is a strong indication that something other than chance is at work.

19. Prominent Darwinian proponents have offered arguments that actually prove they don't understand what they are teaching. For example in his 1990 book Tim Berra uses the example of evolving auto design to demonstrate evolution. What he is actually demonstrating is intelligent design. The autos did not evolve by random variation or accidental mutation. Darwin's most strident defender, Dawkins, uses an analogy that is just as bad. He describes how a long sentence can be easily created by random substitution of letters. He does this by saving the correct letter whenever it appears. He has forgotten that there is no reason to save the correct letter, unless you have an intelligent purpose. Darwinian evolution denies any intelligent purpose.

We read confident statements by evolutionists all the time. Nebraska man was used by Darrow to attack Bryon during the Scopes monkey trial. The evidence was reevaluated and it turned out to be a pig, not a man. Piltdown man appeared in all the books for two generations, until exposed as a hoax. Nebraska man and Piltdown man may be only the tip of the iceberg. Wishful thinking is just as common among scientists as among laymen.

If we have no acceptable naturalistic explanation for evolution, we are left with God. Many Darwinists attempt to rule that an intelligent designer explanation is not science. An analogy to this position is the following. A police officer finds a body. There is a bullet hole behind the left ear, but no gun is there. There is a knife in the back. Lab studies show arsenic in the body. The policeman, a good Darwinist declares the death accidental. He explains there have been cases of guns dropped accidentally and shooting someone behind the ear. No doubt, when falling backwards, the victim fell on an upright knife. Certainly there have been many cases of people ingesting arsenic by accident. Someday we will find the missing gun. We never accept a purposeful explanation if a naturalistic explanation is available. The idea that an intelligent being could be responsible is not scientific.

Many people consider themselves scientists even though they are searching for intelligence in outer space. This search, called SETI has standards for signals that they will accept a signs of intelligence. Perhaps the signal might be a long list of prime numbers. If this is acceptable to science, why not an elaborate code like DNA?

The history of science is replete with important advances that came about only because the scientist accepted intelligent design. Newton proposed gravity that involved action at a distance. His contemporaries thought this was too religious. Newton had no problem accepting action at a distance. He believed God controlled this. When Pasteur proved life comes from life, he was trying to prove God's role in creating life. What is not scientific is ruling out intelligence, no matter how strong the evidence.

Another debate I followed for some years, involves the origin of the universe. The universe was always here, science declared. Religion claimed God had created the universe. Today, science believes in the big bang. This teaches that the world started in an act of creation. Before the big bang-nothing! This is certainly another score for religion.

As a student, I was taught uniformitarianism. Any reference to catastrophes was denounced as a feeble attempt to verify the catastrophes of the bible. Today, orthodoxy teaches the dinosaurs exterminated by a collision with a meteorite. Catastrophism is reborn.

Although a very old earth is still orthodoxy, a well-qualified scientist has found evidence for an instant creation. Radio halos found in geologic formation give evidence of instantaneous creation. The scientist, Robert Gentry has been attacked vigorously but not successfully. These remain an anomaly that awaits explanation. (When I was a boy, I learned that ocean floors did not have the sediment they should have had if they were millions of years old. Scientists ignored this anomaly until plate tectonics finally explained it. The lack of sediment on the moon remains an anomaly)

The anthropic principle is a strong indicator of a purposeful creation. . The Anthropic Principle says that the seemingly arbitrary and unrelated constants in physics have one strange thing in common--these are precisely the values you need if you want to have a universe capable of producing life.
• Gravity is roughly 1039 times weaker than electromagnetism. If gravity had been 1033 times weaker than electromagnetism, "stars would be a billion times less massive and would burn a million times faster."
• The nuclear weak force is 1028 times the strength of gravity. Had the weak force been slightly weaker, all the hydrogen in the universe would have been turned to helium (making water impossible, for example).
• A stronger nuclear strong force (by as little as 2 percent) would have prevented the formation of protons--yielding a universe without atoms. Decreasing it by 5 percent would have given us a universe without stars.
• If the difference in mass between a proton and a neutron were not exactly as it is (roughly twice the mass of an electron) then all neutrons would have become protons or vice versa. Say good-bye to chemistry as we know it, and to life.
• The very nature of water--so vital to life--is something of a mystery (a point noticed by one of the forerunners of anthropic reasoning in the nineteenth century, Harvard biologist Lawrence Henderson). Unique amongst the molecules, water is lighter in its solid than liquid form: Ice floats. If it did not, ice would sink to the bottom of lakes where it would be shielded from the sun and stay frozen instead of melting each spring. The oceans would freeze from the bottom up and earth would now be covered with solid ice. This property in turn is traceable to the unique properties of the hydrogen atom.
• The synthesis of carbon--the vital core of all organic molecules--on a significant scale involves what scientists view as an astonishing coincidence in the ratio of the strong force to electromagnetism. This ratio makes it possible for carbon-12 to reach an excited state of exactly 7.65 MeV at the temperature typical of the center of stars, which creates a resonance involving helium-4, beryllium-8, and carbon-12--allowing the necessary binding to take place during a tiny window of opportunity 10-17 seconds long.
"

[sandy_mcd]

Unique amongst the molecules, water is lighter in its solid than liquid form: Ice floats. ... This property in turn is traceable to the unique properties of the hydrogen atom.

Welcome back GL.
Expansion on freezing is rare but not unique. Several elements (probably silicon, gallium, and antimony) do as well as some compounds. A number of solids expand in 1 or more directions when cooled. But certainly water is the most important example. This property in water is due to the hydrogen bonding between hydrogen and oxygen atoms in different molecules so it is not specifically due to hydrogen alone. (Unlike H2O, NH3 does not expand on freezing.)
But you are correct, if water did not have this property, life as we know it (although not necessarily all life) could not exist.

[godslanguage]

Hi Sandy. Like I stated at the beginning of the post, I am not the author of this. I was reading some interesting debates and found this one completely ignored by the Darwinists. After weeks the author has not recieved any rebuttals on this so I thought maybe I should bring it here.

[sandy_mcd]

9. Despite ad-hoc arguments about closed & open systems, evolution works against the law of entropy. An explosion in a junkyard will not produce a jet plane, no matter how many times you try it. A jet plane will however, deteriorate into a pile of junk if you leave it alone for a thousand years. Entropy actually confirms the religious view that a perfect creation has been slowly deteriorating.

This shows a misunderstanding of entropy. Entropy is not synonymous with disorder. When a jet plane deteriorates through oxidation, the metal/oxygen system actually undergoes a decrease in entropy. Spontaneity in chemical reactions does not specify an increase or decrease in entropy.

[BGoodForGoodSake]

1. Plant & animal breeders find a limit to variability that is
Incompatible with Darwin. It should be possible to breed dogs with
feathers. (Darwinism claims simple forms like amoebas and worms developed step by step into birds, spiders, & humans.) Furthermore, even the variations bred by breeders disappear when not actively maintained by non-natural (intelligent) selection.

Natural selection can only work with existing features, just as breeders can only work with existing features. So unless a dog is born with featherlike hair it cannot be bred for.
Natural selection acts like a vigilant breeder, it does not rest. Natural selection can be defined as a requirement imposed by all the necessary parameters required for survival. For instance, animals in the arctic are annually subject to cold temperatures. Any individual not suited to this environment will perish.

The second part is important, if an animals natural habitat changes a different set of pressures will cause a change in the behaviour and makeup of the population. It will be just as if the breeder stopped actively maintaining the previous traits.

2. Forced mutations like fruit fly experiments failed to confirm
Darwinism. Fruit flies were radiated to cause genetic errors (mutations). Most mutations are not beneficial to the organism. Although duplications of organs occurred (like double wings), no new organs were created. It should also be noted that mutations are not likely to produce improvements in an organism that is already well adapted. Any accidental change is likely to be detrimental. A reasonable analogy would be starting with a radio, shoot a bullet into it and hope to change it into an HDTV.

Duplications are expected, entirely new organs are not expected to occur from single mutations. Once duplication occurs differentiation can occur. For example the thumb, or the differentiation between the forelimb(hand) and the hindlimb(feet). Mutations are not always harmful, they can also be neutral with respect to the current conditions. The radio analogy is not a good one. A better analogy would be two bulbs, one becomming a vacuum tube through modification and the other into an incandescent bulb.

3. Gaps in the fossil record. If Darwin were right, most fossils would be
transitional. Between dinosaurs and birds or between fish and amphibians, there should be millions of intermediate fossils. Instead we have a few highly questionable intermediate forms. Between sponges, crustaceans and chordates there are no intermediate fossils.

Refer to this thread here.

4. If Darwin was right all living things are transitional. Life should
be like a chart in a paint store, with hundreds of shades between red &
blue. There is no reason transitions (evolution) should have stopped. If sponges once grew legs by slight incremental changes, generation to generation, some of the sponges of today should also be growing legs. They should be in various intermediate stages. There should be a smear of life.

Here you are ignoring competition, extinction, climactic change, and catostrophic events. For example lets say we have an ocean filled with primitive creatures which have inferior vision compared to todays organisms. But during that time it was the norm. Now lets say a population(species) of organisms aquired superior vision. The new form will out compete all the older forms. Everywhere the older forms will have to specialize or get replaced. The smear cannot exist, life is not equal oppurtunity.

For the second part imagine you are an inventor. You are comming up with great ideas like the microwave and the radio. But with one caveot, they already exist, and the market place is already filled with sophisticated models because it's a mature industry. Your invention is not new and cannot compete. This same analogy goes for living organisms. A rat like creature could have evolved into the large cats, elephants etc, we know of today. But they did not, until dinosaurs went extinct. The dinosaurs already occupied the available niches in the food chain, therefore mammals were unable to develop in that manor. Again nature is not equal oppurtunity, occupied niches is a form of natural selection.

Number 5 requires a little more detail, I will get to it if I have time later.
=)

[godslanguage]

(Just as a note, I have provided the author with the link to this forum and he is willing to interact on his behalf. )

[BGoodForGoodSake]

5. Although some devolution (loss of organs) can be seen, no nascent
(new) organs in process of forming can be found. Evolution must account for the development of feathers, blood, bones, lungs, the immune system, the liver, and thousands of organs, systems & behaviors starting with a simple life form likes a worm. (Where would the genes come from?) Darwin should also explain what good is a half formed organ. Darwinists claim half formed organs have alternative uses. For example, a partially developed leg might be useful for digging. Of course it might also be a drag on a swimming fish. Trying to find uses for partly developed organs has proven difficult. In the real world organs are usually fully functional, never partly developed.

Where do the genes come from? During development and in daily life processes many genes are reused over and over again for many unrelated tasks. Genes are reused, and modified, for example genetic map of an echinoderm(sea urchin) was recently sequenced showing that it and humans share most of the same gene families(groups of similar genes).
There are no half formed organs. This misunderstanding can only come from a lack of understanding of biology and likening the formation of organisms to the assembly of lego blocks. Organisms, and their component organs are a result of modification over time. Take the lung for example.
In amphibians the lung is a simple baloon like structure. Ancient Amphibians must have also posessed a similar simple lung. As amphibians can also breathe through their skin the simple balloon is sufficient. However in humans the lung has many folds in it. These folds increase the surface area. This is important because the surfaces are where the gas interchanges take place. In order for a larger animal to survive the lung must first develop a larger surface area. One can imagine that this might have liberated the earliest mammal-like reptiles from the swamps. The amphibian lung would no longer suffice once many generations have gradually lost the ability to breathe through their skin as a result of the modified lung.

[Guest]

9. Despite ad-hoc arguments about closed & open systems, evolution works against the law of entropy. An explosion in a junkyard will not produce a jet plane, no matter how many times you try it. A jet plane will however, deteriorate into a pile of junk if you leave it alone for a thousand years. Entropy actually confirms the religious view that a perfect creation has been slowly deteriorating.

This shows a misunderstanding of entropy. Entropy is not synonymous with disorder. When a jet plane deteriorates through oxidation, the metal/oxygen system actually undergoes a decrease in entropy. Spontaneity in chemical reactions does not specify an increase or decrease in entropy.

[Guest]

9. Despite ad-hoc arguments about closed & open systems, evolution works against the law of entropy. An explosion in a junkyard will not produce a jet plane, no matter how many times you try it. A jet plane will however, deteriorate into a pile of junk if you leave it alone for a thousand years. Entropy actually confirms the religious view that a perfect creation has been slowly deteriorating.

This shows a misunderstanding of entropy. Entropy is not synonymous with disorder. When a jet plane deteriorates through oxidation, the metal/oxygen system actually undergoes a decrease in entropy. Spontaneity in chemical reactions does not specify an increase or decrease in entropy.

Does the Second Law of Thermodynamics Prove the Existence of God?
- by John M. Cimbala
Professor of Mechanical Engineering
The Pennsylvania State University
In this short article, I summarize my ideas about the second law of thermodynamics, and why I believe it points to a creator God.

This article also appears in the book In Six Days - Why Fifty Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, edited by John F. Ashton, and published by Master Books, Green Forest, AR. Copyright 2000 by John F. Ashton. It is available on-line from Answers in Genesis .

A formal definition of the second law of thermodynamics is "In any closed system, a process proceeds in a direction such that the unavailable energy (the entropy) increases." In other words, in any closed system, the amount of disorder always increases with time. Things progress naturally from order to disorder, or from an available energy state to one where energy is more unavailable. A good example: a hot cup of coffee cools off in an insulated room. The total amount energy in the room remains the same (which satisfies the first law of thermodynamics). Energy is not lost, it is simply transferred (in the form of heat) from the hot coffee to the cool air, warming up the air slightly. When the coffee is hot, there is available energy because of the temperature difference between the coffee and the air. As the coffee cools down, the available energy is slowly turned to unavailable energy. At last, when the coffee is room temperature, there is no temperature difference between the coffee and the air, i.e. the energy is all in an unavailable state. The closed system (consisting of the room and the coffee) has suffered what is technically called a "heat death." The system is "dead" because no further work can be done since there is no more available energy. The second law says that the reverse cannot happen! Room temperature coffee will not get hot all by itself, because this would require turning unavailable energy into available energy.

Now consider the entire universe as one giant closed system. Stars are hot, just like the cup of coffee, and are cooling down, losing energy into space. The hot stars in cooler space represent a state of available energy, just like the hot coffee in the room. However, the second law of thermodynamics requires that this available energy is constantly changing to unavailable energy. In another analogy, the entire universe is winding down like a giant wind-up clock, ticking down and losing available energy. Since energy is continually changing from available to unavailable energy, someone had to give it available energy in the beginning! (I.e. someone had to wind up the clock of the universe at the beginning.) Who or what could have produced energy in an available state in the first place? Only someone or something not bound by the second law of thermodynamics. Only the creator of the second law of thermodynamics could violate the second law of thermodynamics, and create energy in a state of availability in the first place.

As time goes forward (assuming things continue as they are), the available energy in the universe will eventually turn into unavailable energy. At this point, the universe will be said to have suffered a heat death, just like the coffee in the room. The present universe, as we know it, cannot last forever. Furthermore, imagine going backwards in time. Since the energy of the universe is constantly changing from a state of availability to one of less availability, the further back in time one goes, the more available the energy of the universe. Using the clock analogy again, the further back in time, the more wound up the clock. Far enough back in time, the clock was completely wound up. The universe therefore cannot be infinitely old. One can only conclude that the universe had a beginning, and that beginning had to have been caused by someone or something operating outside of the known laws of thermodynamics.

Is this scientific proof for the existence of a Creator God? I think so. Evolutionary theories of the universe cannot counteract the above arguments for the existence of God. Evidence such as this helped to convince me to believe in God, and to accept His plan of salvation through His son Jesus Christ. For further detailes about my conversion to Christianity, I have written a short testimony.

[Turgonian]

Take the lung for example.

What about the eye? How did that first light-sensitive spot form?

[BGoodForGoodSake]

Take the lung for example.

What about the eye? How did that first light-sensitive spot form?

Turgonion, what is light sensitivity in the purely mechanical sence?
click here
If you can't answer this let me know and I'll continue.

[sandy_mcd]

Turgonion, what is light sensitivity in the purely mechanical sense?click hereIf you can't answer this let me know and I'll continue.

I know! I know! Plants grow towards light (phototropism). After much time, some plants evolved into potatoes!

[Guest]

Take the lung for example.

What about the eye? How did that first light-sensitive spot form?

There is no evidence of a light sensitive spot, except in the vivid imagination of Darwinists.

[sandy_mcd]

Thermodynamics and entropy are completely extraneous to Professor Cimbala's argument. Mainstream scientific opinion is that the Universe is ~ 14 billion years old. [This number is not based on some winding down of an entropy clock.] The sole reason for the inclusion of entropy seems to be to show that the Universe cannot be infinitely old. But this is already accepted. So the argument reduces to:

... One can only conclude that the universe had a beginning,... Is this scientific proof for the existence of a Creator God? I think so.

In this case, the Emperor is wearing way too many clothes.
[Edited to correct spelling error.]

[BGoodForGoodSake]

Turgonion, what is light sensitivity in the purely mechanical sense?click hereIf you can't answer this let me know and I'll continue.

I know! I know! Plants grow towards light (phototropism). After much time, some plants evolved into potatoes!

lol