Evidence for God from Science

The discovery of fossils is rarely very exciting, and although stages in transitions are discovered all the time, very few make it to the popular press. The discovery of Tiktaalik in 2004 is a case in point, and many people got the impression that it was the only half-fish half-amphibian ever found. For a quick insight into the real situation, you might like to Google "The Fish-Tetrapod Transition: New Fossils and Interpretations" by Jennifer A Clack, which is published online and gives a quick, but good overview of the real state of our understanding of the arrival of terrestrial chordates.

hughfarey wrote:The discovery of fossils is rarely very exciting, and although stages in transitions are discovered all the time, very few make it to the popular press. The discovery of Tiktaalik in 2004 is a case in point, and many people got the impression that it was the only half-fish half-amphibian ever found. For a quick insight into the real situation, you might like to Google "The Fish-Tetrapod Transition: New Fossils and Interpretations" by Jennifer A Clack, which is published online and gives a quick, but good overview of the real state of our understanding of the arrival of terrestrial chordates.

Took the words right out of my mouth Hugh! Seems you've done your homework here

Actually Ryan, the evidence Hugh brought up was not what I was going to talk about. I'm writing it out now (it's about geographical distributions. On continental islands vs oceanic islands etc)

hughfarey wrote:The discovery of Tiktaalik in 2004 is a case in point, and many people got the impression that it was the only half-fish half-amphibian ever found.

Thanks for the name. I only read the Wikipedia page. But I still don't view it as a transistional fossil. I view it this way (only describing my view as part of discussion and not arguing, hope it comes out the right way).

Tiktaalik was an animal created by God. It seems similar to a crocodile. But it was probably better suited to the earths atmosphere and water conditions of the time. From the evolutionary perspective, they made some assumptions within the evolutionary framwork that says - it was part of the transition from water to land; vegetation near the shoreline started to attract prey, etc. But nothing about the fossil tells them that is the case. The fossil tells them how they would have lived, but not the evolutionary process. That's their interpretation based on their evolutionary perspective. Take that perspective away, put on the 'God creates' hat, and then you get a simple - interesting fossil from a time God felt this animal would do well in his creation, it probably lived near the shoreline at at prey that was attacted to shoreline vegetation.

I'd be very interested in seeing a "string" of fossils showing one species evolving into another. Even better would be if the fossil record was just ever evolving as I'd expect, but since the fossil record is static, that won't happen. Now the best we can expect is some kind of "string" showing say a deer into a horse. If that even makes sense.

SonofAletheia wrote: (it's about geographical distributions. On continental islands vs oceanic islands etc)

I look forward to it. I'm not sure I've heard of what you plan to write. Thanks for taking the time.

ryanbouma wrote:Tiktaalik was an animal created by God. It seems similar to a crocodile. But it was probably better suited to the earths atmosphere and water conditions of the time. From the evolutionary perspective, they made some assumptions within the evolutionary framwork that says - it was part of the transition from water to land; vegetation near the shoreline started to attract prey, etc. But nothing about the fossil tells them that is the case. The fossil tells them how they would have lived, but not the evolutionary process. That's their interpretation based on their evolutionary perspective. Take that perspective away, put on the 'God creates' hat, and then you get a simple - interesting fossil from a time God felt this animal would do well in his creation, it probably lived near the shoreline at at prey that was attacted to shoreline vegetation.

I'd be very interested in seeing a "string" of fossils showing one species evolving into another. Even better would be if the fossil record was just ever evolving as I'd expect, but since the fossil record is static, that won't happen. Now the best we can expect is some kind of "string" showing say a deer into a horse. If that even makes sense.

The Wikipedia article does seem a little over simplified, and if I were a creationist I might not find the little pictures of all those animals convincing. That's why I hoped you would have a look at the academic article, which contains rather more of the sections of the 'string' you request. Tiktaalik was nothing at all like a crocodile, but very like a large number of more or less similar organisms living in more or less similar environments. Some were a little more like fish, and others a little more like amphibians, and they all fit into a convincing evolutionary sequence from true fish to true amphibian. Just as if they evolved.

Now you are, of course, at liberty to believe that over, say, 20 million years, God spontaneously created one species after another, making each one become successively extinct and creating another ex nihilo to take its place, until he was happy with the land animals he had eventually derived from fish. Similarly, over a similar time, he could have created the hundreds of species that looked a little less like a small deer and a little more like a horse, and again, caused each one to go extinct and be replaced by another one that looked almost identical, until he'd arrived at the modern horse. Is that, in fact, what you believe? That God created and destroyed millions of generations of organisms of all kinds, until he arrived at the organisms we find in the modern world. It's not impossible, with God. But is that what you think he did?

Thanks Hugh, ill look up that article.

The wiki entry made the claim its like a croc, so that's where I got that from.

I don't believe it totally the way you've described. I don't believe God did it gradually to reach a point. I think he did it in a logical order to fit the conditions of earth. So not a small deer, to medium, to large, to bigger hoofs, to small horse, etc. I believe he made the animals as he saw it fit. It just so happens that it resembles a order close to that of the order predicted by evolution.

I gotta ask, how do you explain the Origin of Life? Miraculous by God? I would assume that's what you believe based on your faith. I basically believe life was created over and over.

ryanbouma wrote: I don't believe God did it gradually to reach a point. I think he did it in a logical order to fit the conditions of earth. So not a small deer, to medium, to large, to bigger hoofs, to small horse, etc. I believe he made the animals as he saw it fit. It just so happens that it resembles a order close to that of the order predicted by evolution.

Far be it from me to question the ways of God, but I can't understand that he 'saw fit' to create thousands of successive species of organisms, only to have them all go extinct in quite a short (geological) time, only to create a whole lot more organisms almost identical, which fitted a slightly changed environment slightly better, and then got rid of them and started all over again with a new set a couple of million years later. There is also a slight technical problem here, which ought to be measurable. Biochemically, life is often measured in terms of the amount of carbon being used. If God was creating new organisms from nothing, then the total amount of carbon on the earth would have been measurably increasing over the last 3 billion years. We do not find this. If he was reusing pre-existing carbon, then the total amount of carbon would remain the same. This is what we find. Therefore, when, for example, the first two modern elephants were created spontaneously, an equivalent amount of pre-existing organic chemicals spontaneously ceased to exist. Every act of creation would thus be in exact balance with an act of annihilation. Is this really the meaning of Genesis?

ryanbouma wrote:I gotta ask, how do you explain the Origin of Life? Miraculous by God? I would assume that's what you believe based on your faith. I basically believe life was created over and over.

I cannot emphasise too strongly that I think the whole universe, including galaxies, evolution and the creation of life is miraculous. Why is there something rather than nothing is a question for philosophers, and while many have atheistic views, others, including me, have theistic ones. So yes, of course the origin of life is miraculous, in that it is miraculous that the circumstances for it to occur in, beginning with the Big Bang and the origin of physical laws, occurred at all. If, on the other hand, you think that the first prokaryotic cell appeared suddenly from nothing in a nutrient soup, then I disagree completely. It is certainly true that there is no scientific consensus about where and how the abiotic conditions on the earth gave rise to self-replicating molecules, and even less about how those molecules surrounded themselves with an appropriate semi-permeable membrane, but there are plenty of avenues to be explored, and no scientific frustration that there is nothing left to try out.

It is quite easy to believe that God suddenly, successively or gradually over time, simply popped a new organism onto the earth, and possibly popped up an earthquake here or a volcano there, fine-tuning his world until he got what he wanted (you and me, I guess). I, on the other hand, believe that he works in more mysterious ways his wonders to perform, and from what I have learnt from his creation, I think my way represents a more wonderful and more crreative sort of creation than a more literal interpretation of genesis.

Ok, I'll try and keep this as short as possible..but no shorter I'll stick with the evidence from the distribution on islands for now at least. Important to note I'm pulling some of my information from Jerry Coyne's book, Why Evolution Is True

First we have to distinguish continental islands (islands that were once connected to a continent but have been separated) vs. oceanic islands (islands that were never connected to a continent [arose from seafloor]).
What scientists had long noticed was that oceanic islands are missing many types of native species that we see on both continents and continental islands. And the most important point was that it wasn’t arbitrary groups missing on different islands; rather, it was the same missing groups: mammals, amphibians, freshwater fish, and reptiles (to name a few)

Some may respond at this point that these specific groups do not fare well on oceanic islands. But this is not the case at all. Quite the opposite when looking at history. When groups are brought over to an island where it had no originated they tend to do just fine. Pigs and goats are doing more than well on Hawaii. Rats, toads, frogs, and mongooses as well. The Galapagos islands have a tree frog introduced and is now spreading over the islands. There are dozens of excellent examples here. But I won't draw out the point because I'm sure you get it: The species that are missing from the oceanic islands do indeed fair quite well when introduced to the environment. But again we ask, why are they missing originally?

The next point to make is that the animals that are found native to the oceanic islands are often present in profusion. To list a couple examples: On the Galapagos Islands there are 28 species of birds found nowhere else. 14 of them belong to a single group of close related birds: The Galapagos finches. And the islands themselves are quite diverse. It's not as if the islands were "built" for finches. Hawaii has its birds, the honeycreepers. About half the huge fossil record of the birds on the island were honeycreepers! More examples would be certain plants and insects on various islands like St. Helena, Hawaii and Juan Hernandez. I won't draw this out though. We see how while there are many critical groups missing from islands, the ones we do see tend to be in profusion.

In short, animal and plant life on oceanic islands is quite unbalanced. The question is why?

Now take a look at the list of groups that are very often native to oceanic islands: Plants, birds, insects and other arthropods. What are very often missing: land mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and freshwater fish. Take a moment and think about the differences between the two lists.
The difference is that the first list can colonize an oceanic island through long distance dispersal while the second cannot. The birds can fly and carry plants on their feet/droppings. The plants can float over. The wind can take them. Insects can fly etc. The second list cannot do any of this to a very large degree and have difficulty traversing great expanses of sea. There are dozens of examples that I could pull for the first list but I think you get the idea.
Interesting to note also that the type of insects and plants native to oceanic islands are usually the best specimens for colonization (natural selection at work here).
There are some exceptions to the rule here. But of course they make perfect sense. New Zealand has two bats that are nowhere else in the world. Bats, because they can fly across large distances make sense of what's been said.

Now to sum up. This all makes perfect sense under the tenets of evolution. The species that inhabit the oceanic islands descended from earlier species that colonized the islands from nearby continents. This happened in rare events of long-distance travel. On the islands, the colonists were able to form many species because oceanic islands offer environments with lots of empty space and few predators or competition. This all explains the somewhat strange mix of species on oceanic islands and the fact that the species we do see are replete with huge amounts of similar species (I didn't mention this before but it should be stated that continental islands, far more than oceanic islands, share in the types of species with the continent that they were once joined with. I assume this was obvious)

Now, how would we explain all these facts from a non-evolutionist creation perspective?
Why would God, when he created, happen to leave amphibians, mammals, fish and reptiles off oceanic islands, but not continental (when they fare very well there)?
Why did He produce radiations of similar species on oceanic islands, but not continental ones? Why does God just happen to create the creatures that could transverse to oceanic islands on the islands (quite the coincidence)? In short, why did God create this situation that looks so much like evolution if evolution is false?

In my humble opinion, this entire picture screams the truth of evolution. And it seems if you want to deny this (as well as the other arguments/evidence for evolution) you have to bend over backwards to disregard it.
In short, the other views (day-age creation, progressive creation, young-earth etc) seem to be ad hoc. That's just my opinion of course

Sorry for the long post. Hope the argument made sense

SonofAletheia wrote:So if I start quoting from the 95%+ of scientist who believe in evolution will you be convinced? You seem to think that you quoting from arbitrary scientists from 15-50 years ago will change our minds and defeat the evidence we show.

ALTER2EGO -to- SON OF ALETHEIA:
What is this? A popularity contest to see how many scientists believe in evolution and how many do not? As I recall, several centuries ago, most of the scientists sided with the Catholic Church and insisted earth is the center of the universe, while a minority of scientists correctly concluded that earth simply revolves around the sun.

If true science went with the majority, people would still be arguing that earth revolves around the sun. True science looks at evidence, whereas science fiction aka macroevolution myth looks at similarities in fossils and proceeds to speculate--without proof--that the similarities in fossils equate to: "they evolved from one another." That's why I named this thread "Macroevolution Myth."

SonofAletheia wrote:You know this is not how debate works. This is not even how we find truth. You can't just go google searching for quotes that support your position and then copy-paste them and expect to win an argument.

ALTER2EGO -to- SON OF ALETHEIA:
So it is okay for you and other members of the Religion of Atheism to do it, but theists are not allow to do likewise? What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

The fact is that there are no fossils in existence that connect any creature to something entirely different. All of the pro-evolution scientists have been forced to admit there is nothing but gaps in the fossil record. That's why Niles Eldridge and Stephen Gould got together in 1972 and decided to make things up as they go. They decided to do replacement theory of Charles Darwin's debunked evolution theory by coming up with punctuated equilibrium, which states there is no need for transitional fossils. And no wonder, since they themselves were forced to admit to the following (keep your eyes on the words in bold print within each of their quotations):


2. "As we shall see when we take up the creationist position, there are all sorts of gaps: absence of graduationally intermediate 'transitional' forms between species, but also between larger groups -- between say, families of carnivores, or the orders of mammals. In fact, the higher up the Linnaean hierarchy you look, the fewer transitional forms there seem to be." (Eldredge, Niles, The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism, 1982, p. 65-66.)


3. "All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically abrupt. Gradualists usually extract themselves from this dilemma by invoking the extreme imperfection of the fossil record." (Gould, Stephen J. The Panda's Thumb, 1980, p. 189.)


4. "He [Darwin] prophesied that future generations of paleontologists would fill in these gaps by diligent search....It has become abundantly clear that the fossil record will not confirm this part of Darwin's predictions. Nor is the problem a miserably poor record. The fossil record simply shows that this prediction was wrong." (Eldridge, Niles, The Myths of Human Evolution, 1984, pp.45-46.)

Hi Alter2Ego, good of you to return to your thread!

You first make the point that we should not simply grab quotes to support our arguments, which I thoroughly agree with. However you then grab three quotes from a pair of the most dedicated evolutionists of our time, wholly out of context, which seems a little inconsistent.

No matter. The context is easy to explain, and it becomes clear that Eldredge and Gould in no way support a creationist position. Their point is that for thousands of generations a species remains fairly stable, adapted to its surroundings, but that when its environment changes suddenly, or a group of organisms from a species move to a new environment, then they take a few hundred generations to adapt to the new conditions. Obviously we would expect far fewer fossils from the relatively short transitional stages than from the long stable stages, which is exactly what we find. The contrast they are making is not between evolution and creation, but between continuous gradual evolution and sporadic rather rapid evolution.

You find that Eldredge and Gould's stated lack of evidence for gradual evolution is evidence for creation, but this is not true either. Quote number 2 mentions an absence of 'gradationally intermediate transitional forms.' What is clear from the rest of the book is that for many species or groups of species they observe a geologically rapid series of intermediate transitional forms between the ages-long series of stable forms, which accounts for the disproportionate number of fossils of each kind. Quote 3 says that there is 'precious little' in the way of transitional fossils, which is good evidence against Darwin's idea of continuous gradual evolution (Quote 4). However, the quoted paucity of the transitional stages is always relative to the abundance of stable-stage fossils, and is what it says it is, a relative paucity, not a non-existence. There are sufficient transitional forms to demonstrate the truth of saltatory, or punctuated evolution, as explained in earlier posts.

Having examined your objections to evolution, may I inquire about your creationist views. New Earth or Young Earth? Progressive Creation or all at once at the beginning?

hughfarey wrote:Hi Alter2Ego, good of you to return to your thread!

ALTER2EGO -to- HUGH FAREY:
I cannot imagine why you are surprised that I returned to my thread. I debate at several other websites. I also have a life off-line, in the real world. So I do not have the time to come here every single day.

hughfarey wrote:You first make the point that we should not simply grab quotes to support our arguments, which I thoroughly agree with. However you then grab three quotes from a pair of the most dedicated evolutionists of our time, wholly out of context, which seems a little inconsistent.

Anybody can go to the papers that I quoted from and confirm that I quoted within context. That is not the case with pro-evolution skeptics and pro-evolution pagans. They routinely ignore context.

hughfarey wrote:No matter. The context is easy to explain, and it becomes clear that Eldredge and Gould in no way support a creationist position. Their point is that for thousands of generations a species remains fairly stable, adapted to its surroundings, but that when its environment changes suddenly, or a group of organisms from a species move to a new environment, then they take a few hundred generations to adapt to the new conditions. Obviously we would expect far fewer fossils from the relatively short transitional stages than from the long stable stages, which is exactly what we find. The contrast they are making is not between evolution and creation, but between continuous gradual evolution and sporadic rather rapid evolution.

ALTER2EGO -to- HUGH FAREY:
Who said they did? I certainly didn't. I stated in my last post that they dreamed up the fabricated term: "punctuated equilibrium" in 1972 when they realized there were no transitional fossils showing a connection between fossils of creatures that appear to be similar. I even quoted them admitting to that.

BTW: I am well familiar with Gould's and Eldridge's personal philosophy about how different species came into existence. So you need not explain any of it to me. We both know that it all amounts to speculations aka personal opinions on their part. There is no evidence in the fossils to support anything that they gave as their explanation for "punctuated equilibrium." None. Nada.

All of the pro-evolution scientists have been forced to admit there is nothing but gaps in the fossil record.

You're not reading/responding to any of my responses so there's no use continuing this discussion. I've responded 8-10 times now and you've just ignored this and continued to quote random scientists.

Would you like me to start quoting scientists? Would that convince you? Scientists from within 5 years? (not 30-50 years ago).

I cannot imagine why you are surprised that I returned to my thread. I debate at several other websites. I also have a life off-line, in the real world. So I do not have the time to come here every single day.

No need for this passive aggressive tone. We've been having a great conversation in this thread while you were out. No need for that to change now.

But it seems you've made up your mind on evolution as being a "myth"

Alter2Ego wrote:I cannot imagine why you are surprised that I returned to my thread. I debate at several other websites. I also have a life off-line, in the real world. So I do not have the time to come here every single day.

I'm surprised because in my experience it's quite rare for creationists to want to discuss the science of creation. I have been delighted that both Philip, to some extent, and much more generously ryanbouma have been prepared to explain clearly what they think occurred, rather than what they think didn't occur. I noted that having 'thrown down the gauntlet', so to speak, you did not then explain your position. and say what you think occurred. Nor have you yet. I look forward to it.

Alter2Ego wrote:Anybody can go to the papers that I quoted from and confirm that I quoted within context. That is not the case with pro-evolution skeptics and pro-evolution pagans. They routinely ignore context.

Being a good evolutionist I have all the "papers" you quote from and can confirm that you did not give any context, let alone the correct one. For a start I would not want anybody coming to your post for the first time to think that the popular books you quote from are "papers" in the generally academically accepted meaning of the word. Not that they are any less well argued in that respect; they simply lack the more rigorous (and more technical, and less popularly appealing) detail of the scientific papers they refer to.

In fact the quotations refer to quite different evolutionary scales, which it is important not to conflate. Eldredge's quotation about the lack of a gradual sequence of fossils between major groups is from a book which describes many of the transitional fossils you deny exist. His point, as I have explained in earlier posts, is that major evolutionary niches were colonised in relatively short times, compared to the eons of relative stability that ensued. That explains the disproportion between the numbers of transitional fossils and the numbers of fossils from more stable eras. Eldredge does not deny that transitional fossils exist at all.

The second quotation, from Gould, is from an article concerning such closely related organisms that most people couldn't tell them apart anyway. Nevertheless, the two snakes and the two rodents he used as his examples are each different in such a way that it is hard to explain how one adaptation morphed gradually into the other. He mentions the scientists who tried to explain it and failed. His solution was that although the adult versions looked quite different, only a minute difference in ontogeny might be needed to account for it. Thus a minute evolutionary step could produce quite a large phylogenetic change. As luck would have it, his prediction in the case of the mice was confirmed only a few years later by Brylski and Hall, and Frazetta's recent paper (2012) enlarges on the latest views of the whole topic.

Alter2Ego wrote:There is no evidence in the fossils to support anything that they gave as their explanation for "punctuated equilibrium." None. Nada.

As I explained above and previously, there is indeed evidence to support their position, and they give it, in their popular books and more particularly in their scientific papers, in abundance. I am happy to concede that for creationists, a more formal proof of evolution is required than a sparse series of transitional fossils, but to deny their existence altogether is simply misguided.

Alter2Ego wrote:I stated in my last post that they dreamed up the fabricated term: "punctuated equilibrium" in 1972 when they realized there were no transitional fossils showing a connection between fossils of creatures that appear to be similar.

I don't understand what you really mean by this. Names for all new ideas I suppose can be 'dreamed up' or consciously 'fabricated' but the two sources seem to be mutually exclusive. I expect somebody dreamed up the fabricated terms "motor car" or "moving picture" or "apologetical forum." You seem to imply that "dreaming up" "fabricated terms" is in some way reprehensible. Perhaps I misunderstand.

Anyway, what are your own views? How do you think creation occurred?