Alter2Ego wrote:Maybe you should wake Charles Darwin up from the dead and explain that to him, including your version of science fiction where you have whales evolving from hippo-like creatures. Charles Darwin predicted that future generations of paleontologists would find fossils showing a whale on its way to a bear. I believe he got the idea after he saw a bear swimming across the river.
In North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water. Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.
(SOURCE: Charles Darwin, Origin of Species; Chapter 6, p. 184)
You really must read On the Origin of Species more carefully. Charles Darwin speculated accurately that marine mammals probably evolved from terrestrial ones, and bears were a reasonable guess. As it happens, the fossil record shows that hippos are more closely related to whales than bears are. However, you have completely misread the entire passage. Darwin was not saying that Whales might "turn into" Bears, but the other way round.
Alter2Ego wrote:A "short series of successive small differences" does not suffice to fill in the gaps created by the missing link of, for example, the hypothetical Creature B and Creature C. According to Gould and Eldredge (via their punctuated equilibrium theory), Creature A turned into Creature D, despite the fact the fossils for Creature B and Creature C were never found (the gaps or missing links).The "short series of fossils showing successive small differences" that Gould and Eldredge claim are part of punctuated equilibrium are of variations of the exact same creature in some instances, and fossils of entirely, unrelated creatures in other instances. There has never been found a single bone that connects creatures that are entirely different from one another. In other words, even punctuated equilibrium is debunked by the fossils record.
Well, in a way I agree with you. It is possible to look at a continuous series of fossils - marine organisms are the best examples - with continuous gradual differences between them, and arbitrarily say at any stage: "This one is merely a variation of Creature A, but this next one is an entirely new creation, Creature D. All the intermediate forms are variations of these two."
What would be interesting, from my point of view, would be to see a Creationist such as yourself identify the point at which one Species was suddenly replaced by the other, and describe how the transition came about.
As they are so remarkably similar, you might say that God spontaneously and miraculous altered the DNA of a zygote or two of Species A, which was gestated and hatched (or born) as Species D?
Or, was every member of Species A suddenly annihilated, and the chemicals from which they were made immediately replaced by an equivalent population of Species D?
Or, did every member of Species A die childless, and God create some Species D from nothing, who then expanded to repopulate the ecological niche vacated by Species A?
The alternatives above are not the only possibilities, by any means.
You see, these are the questions a true Creationist who was also a scientist would be asking herself, and then, by working out the corollaries to each one, try to identify which was likely to be correct. I have asked several times if you would care to share your scientific views, without success. It may be that you don't have any. That's fair enough, but it makes me wonder why, in that case, you would instigate a scientific debate.
Alter2Ego wrote:The term "moving picture" accurately describes films. That is, the picture moves in front of the eyes of the viewer.
It does, doesn't it. Actually of course, the picture does not move at all. A series of still pictures is projected, each one so similar to the last that it gives the impression of continual change. Rather like the fossil record. It seems to me that an old Disney cartoon, such as Sleeping Beauty, describes the Creationist position, as each frame was drawn and coloured more or less individually, and when run together they give the impression of continuous movement, even though there were no transitional stages between each frame, while a film of actors acting is more like the evolutionist position, as each frame is a still snapshot in time of continuous movement, which when run together recreates that continuous movement for the audience. So, is the fossil record a cartoon or a 'live' movie? And how can we tell? Well. I suppose we could narrow down the search to two successive frames, and ask ourselves - is there anything between them? We turn up at the Disney studio to see the original drawings, and it is clear that the artists drew as many pictures as were necessary and no more. Or we turn up at the MGM studio and discover that the film was actually made with many more frames per second than we originally thought, and that extra frames, in between the ones we saw in the original film still exist. I haven't really thought this out, and maybe it won't lead anywhere, but as 'new frames' in the fossil record are continuously being discovered, the film of life is looking more and more like a 'live' movie, and less and less like a cartoon!
ClassicalTeacher wrote:Arguing about evolution vs creationism is like the abortion issue--no one is going to give an inch--and I'm too old to get all riled up. It is my personal belief, based on what I've learned, read, and experienced over many years, that evolution is a poor theory. I believe that it takes a greater act of faith to believe in evolution--that is, that order came out of chaos--than it takes to believe in an omnipotent entity (aka: God) creating everything from nothing. I can't prove that--no one can--but neither can evolution be proved. We simply cannot apply the scientific method to it.
The only similarities between abortion and evolution are that both evoke quite extreme positions. Scientifically they are wholly different. Nobody disputes what happens at an abortion, the question is only whether it is right or wrong. On the other hand the history of the world was not morally "right or wrong;" the dispute is about what actually happened. However I do have a problem with your biology. In a forum specifically devoted to the interaction between the ideas "God" and "Science", to announce that "we simply cannot apply the scientific method to it" rather denies the premise, don't you think? I hope that by posting here you are at least interested, even if only academically, in what the "Science" side of the discussion has to say, and that you will continue to read and contribute to it.
) to discuss issues with. But I respect your decision if you decide you'd rather not. 