question re evolution

StrawDog · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 6:48 am Post subject: question re evolution

I'm preparing some material for a creationist friend of mine to read, especially on the specific issues he's raised in the past.

This is a quote from answersingenesis (i have a read through their articles whenever i need a laugh)...it explains the creationist claim in question though...

baddogma · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:22 am Post subject:

The information is false.
If you want to take the time Dawkins books are fantastic. Climbing mount improbable, and the blind watch maker would be a good start.

http://www.talkorigins.org/

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StrawDog · Posted: Thu Mar 27, 2008 7:57 am Post subject:

Thanks, I found some good stuff through the link.

runlikehell · Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 1:12 pm Post subject:

Actually, you very likely could breed a chihuahua into a wolf. It's just never been tried. They still retain a lot of the genetic information, its just not expressed. Like they found that birds have the genes for teeth, tails and claws still, even though they haven't had them for a hundred million years.
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Rortykiller · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 1:33 pm Post subject:

No

You would not be able to breed a chihuahua into a wolf. You can't ever breed a wolf into a chihuahua either. Chihuahuas came from an early type of Dog found in Columbia which was bread with a Chinese Miniaturized dog brought by the Spanish. Dogs of different varieties have evolved naturally from wolf like creatures millennia ago. The modern dog is the artificially mixing of different types of dogs. It is never directly from the mixing of one species, that can only slowly deform the creature (miniaturization for example). In the case of Chihuahuas you're talking about such an idiosyncratic mix, such a rich contingency before you ever get back to the wolf.

You would never be able to breed something into a particular other creature. That is to say, this isn't operating in a determinist's model where you sort of set a goal and achieve it by the right mix. There can't be any goal in evolution, thats antithetical to how the process operates. Humans evolved intelligence, they didn't TRY to evolve intelligence, it was contingent on a plethora of idiosyncratic patterns.

Eyedunno · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 1:47 pm Post subject:

I was going to reply, but Rortykiller already covered it pretty well.

When a lineage has forked, you can't reverse the fork in the lineage (though superficially you can sometimes get the appearance of doing so through what's known as convergent evolution).

As for the AiG argument, you can carry this through the entire evolutionary tree:
Animals always have animal offspring!
Chordates always have chordate offspring!
Eukaryotes always have eukaryote offspring!

These are all true, but trivially so, and they don't present a serious problem to evolutionary theory. Evolution, after all, is descent with modification, but creationists somehow seem to conveniently forget the "descent" part.
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Mr_C · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 2:12 pm Post subject: Re: question re evolution

These quoted arguments aren't even arguments against evolution. They're arguments against...nothing, basically. Straw nothingness. No reply is necessary, except perhaps to request an argument that actually addresses evolution.

Eyedunno · Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2008 2:30 pm Post subject:

Oh and:

Rortykiller · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 1:50 pm Post subject:

genome**** lmfao
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Wickedtruth · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 1:52 pm Post subject:

Rortykiller · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 1:56 pm Post subject:

baddogma · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 3:04 pm Post subject:

some times it is major, throw in a penguin

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Beamishboy: Let me tell you what the real pink unicorn is - it's the erroneous belief (based on atheistic faith) that Christians must be bound by the Bible.

josephpalazzo · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 3:07 pm Post subject:

WashMDJD · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 3:21 pm Post subject: Re: question re evolution

I'd be curious, from the point of view of the person making such an argument, just how they objectively decided that the wolf had 'more' information than the chihuahua. How would they measure the 'information' that they claim exists in genetic material in order to make an ordinal comparison?
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Rortykiller · Posted: Fri Aug 22, 2008 3:25 pm Post subject:

yeah, its like looking at a hard drive and telling how much data is stored in it.
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