41

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 16/01/2009 02:12:41 »

There is considerable evidence that modern species existed 400 million years ago.

The coelacanth is a modern fish swimming about today in the Indian ocean and elsewhere, but it existed 400 mya. "A 400 million-year-old fossil of a coelacanth fin, the first finding of its kind.." http://chronicle.uchicago.edu/070816/coelacanth.shtml

Yes there have been extinctions galore.

So where are we going with that?

I recommend that you read yahya on living fossils:

http://www.fossil-museum.com/

42

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 11/01/2009 15:30:08 »

Ben

fbi asked the question. Not me. I'm merely answering as best I can.

43

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 10/01/2009 21:24:35 »

Anyone who thinks Yahya has anything of value to say about science has lost all credibility as an intellectual.

Can you explain why, please?

44

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 10/01/2009 21:23:11 »

Hello everybody,
Just want to thank this thread for forcing me to sign up to the naked science website, I simply had to post something!

Hi fbi - welcome to the savage world of the naked scientists! - Where they savage me, I mean!

Let me first disagree with this comment:

To continue, I may be off the mark here but I was of the opinion that there is no place for faith in science, science must be supported by facts otherwise it is deemed to be untrue.

This is an absolutely correct statement. However, evolution is based on so much fantasising it's untrue. Here's Prof WR Thompson FRS:

"Darwin did not show in the Origin that species had originated by natural selection; he merely showed, on the basis of certain facts and assumptions, how this might have happened,and as he had convinced himself he was able to convince others."

He went on to say: "Thus are engendered those fragile towers of hypothesis based on hypothesis, where fact and fiction intermingle in an inextricable confusion."

from his Introduction to the Origin of Species.

Anything based upon faith cannot be accepted.

 

And therefore, you cannot accept evolution, which is a faith, not a provable fact.

"It is therefore a matter of faith, on the part of the biologist, that biogenesis did occur and he can choose whatever method of biogenesis happens to suit him personally; the evidence of what did happen is not available."—*G.A. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution (1960), p. 150.

"The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory—is it then a science or faith?"—*L.H. Matthews, "Introduction to Origin of the Species, by *Charles Darwin (1971 edition), pp. x, xi (1971 edition).

"The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone . . exactly the same sort of faith which it is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion."—*Louis Trenchard More, quoted in Science and the Two-tailed Dinosaur, p. 33

"The hypothesis that life has developed from inorganic matter is, at present, still an article of faith."—*J.W.N. Sullivan, Limitations of Science p. 95.

"Evolution requires plenty of faith; a faith in L-proteins that defy chance formation; a faith in the formation of DNA codes which, if generated spontaneously, would spell only pandemonium; a faith in a primitive environment that, in reality, would fiendishly devour any chemical precursors to life; a faithin experiments that prove nothing but the need for intelligence in the beginning; a faith in a primitive ocean that would not thicken, but would only haplessly dilute chemicals; a faith in natural laws of thermodynamics and biogenesis that actually deny the possibility for the spontaneous generation of life; a faith in future scientific revelations that, when realized, always seem to present more dilemmas to the evolutionists; faith in improbabilities that treasonously tell two stories—one denying evolution, the other confirming the Creator; faith in transformations that remain fixed; faithin mutations and natural selection that add to a double negative for evolution; faith in fossils that embarrassingly show fixity through time, regular absence of transitional forms and striking testimony to a worldwide water deluge; a faith in time which proves to only promote degradation in the absence of mind; and faith in reductionism that ends up reducing the materialist's arguments to zero and forcing the need to invoke a supernatural Creator."—R.L. Wysong, The Creation-Evolution Controversy (1981), p. 455.

Now, what say you?

And so with this in mind I ask (and will ask nothing else untill I have an answer from Asyncritus):

Why do you accept the Christian explanation of the diversity of life and not the explanation of any other religion?

This leaves the realms of science, and enters the realm of theology.

I have what I consider to be extremely solid grounds for believing that the Bible is the Word of God. A great deal of this hinges on the fact of the resurrection of Christ, which is the cornerstone of Christianity. Hence, I believe the biblical account of things, as best I understand it. If you wish to discuss this further, then a new thread will be in order.

45

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 10/01/2009 20:49:12 »

Yahya's website is just typical ranting and every other word is loaded with 'extra meaning'.
He must make a lot of money if he manages to sell all his books . . .  Perhaps in my Xmas stocking next time.

Is it just ranting? Any more than Dawkins' site where the faithful all open wide and swallow?

Have you ever looked seriously at what the man says, or are you knee-jerking again?

What, for example, do you make of his remarks about the avian lung?

46

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 10/01/2009 20:37:31 »

I'm not sure that's a correct interpretation, especially as only certain characteristcs have been shown to have true, full, dominant and recessive alleles.

Let's think about the genes for scales turning into the genes for feathers.

For the feather characteristic to become universal in the new PHYLUM it has to be extraordinarily dominant and pervasive somehow.

So let's say that F (for scales) has somehow become f (for feathers).

Since F is completely uniform and dominant in the reptilia for scales, then feathers cannot become manifest in the F1 generation, since we now have:

FF x Ff ----> FF, FF, Ff and Ff the only variants possible.

In the F2 generation, ff appears in the ratio 1 feathered to 15 scaled.

The scales are dominant and remain so, and the feathered are rare birds if you pardon the pun.

So what do they breed with? Nothing, and are selected out, not only because of the genetic peculiarity, but because of Cuvier's idea - a single change REQUIRES a considerable number of consequential changes if it is going to survive.

So a reptile with an normal forelimb moving from front to back in a plane more or less parallel to the animal's body, has to generate a flapping movement AT RIGHT ANGLES TO THE ORIGINAL PLANE.

The pectoral musculature required for flight is totally different to that required for normal reptilian movement. The sternum has to change into a keel; the construction of the whole forelimb has to alter; the claws of the reptile's forelimb have to disappear; at least 3 different types of flight feather have to be produced, and that does not begin to count the down feathers, the contour feathers and the eyelashes. The eyelids have somehow to produce a nicitating membrane.

The hind limbs have to become totally modified, and a hallux produced.

Now flight has to be powered by instinct.Somehow the reptile has to know how to fly, or even glide - but I have this picture of the first bird looking at the first wings and thinking, Now what the hell do I do with these?

The instincts ruling flight are necessarily complex, and cannot be acquired by 'natural selection' - because there was nothing in the reptiles to be selected!

Somehow the leathery reptilian egg has to be converted into the hard-shelled avian egg. Somehow, the cold blooded reptile metabolism has to be converted into the highest metabolic rate in the animal kingdom, in the warmblooded birds.

Oh, I mustn't forget. The reptilian respiratory system has to be comprehensively wrecked and the one way avian system substituted.

And to add insult to already painful evolutionary injury, some birds have to learn how to fly from Goya in Argentina, to Capistrano in southern California, a distance of 7,500 miles, and arrive there on the same day every year.

How many 'mutations' do you see being needed to perform this major miracle of biological conversion? Mendel showed that there can be no halfway house, because red flowers crossed with white flowers don't produce pink flowers. They produce more red and white flowers.

So a scaled reptile, if it ever crosses with a feathered creature will not produce a half-feathered pro-avis.

The whole thing is totally absurd, and should not receive any scientific credence even in the most faithful (and I use the word advisedly).

As for Lenski. Lenski signally failed to produce a new species in 31,500 cultivated generations of E.coli. It is immaterial whether they metbolised citrate or not - they were still E. coli. Now to do the calculation:

If 31,500 generations produces no new species, how many generations does it take to produce 1 million new species?

Well, according to my calculations the answer is an infinite number i.e. it cannot happen. Now gainsay that if you can.Remember, this is based on scientifically verified evidence, published, I think - though I may be wrong here - in PNAS, a well thought of rag, I gather.

You are compelled to bother because of the simple facts that are evident to anybody who will take the blinkers off and simply look. Hasn't it occurred to you yet that Lenski has proven quite categorically that evolution cannot have occurred? When are you going to see that?

I didn't publish the paper - Lenski did. You might like to look at this criticism of the paper:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Lenski

And here's a piece of the PNAS abstract:

"No population evolved the capacity to exploit citrate for >30,000 generations, although each population tested billions of mutations. A citrate-using (Cit+) variant finally evolved in one population by 31,500 generations, causing an increase in population size and diversity."

As I said, no new species 'evolved'.

Evolution is firmly up a gum tree, and likely to stay there.

47

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 06/01/2009 18:12:37 »

Had they known what we know about genetics now, Darwin would never have made it off the ground. Mendel's work would have seen to that. Unfortunately...

I've just spotted this.
Perhaps Asyncritus could explain that statement. How do the two views not support each other?

Easy. There is no mixing of characters possible. Dominance and recessiveness reduce that idea to rubble, and Mendel was the discoverer.

48

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 06/01/2009 18:07:07 »

You people seem to think that hey presto, mutation occurs, a wing forms on a reptile somehow, and that's it! It can fly! Cuvier would have destroyed you root and branch, as he did Darwin and Lamarck's ideas.

One of the most common arguments of creationists, born of an incorrect interpretation of how evolution works. No evolutionist will say that a wing will spontaneously form in one generation.

Watch this video for some education on the subject.
Richard Dawkins on the Evolution of Wings -

Dawkins has nothing intelligent to say on the evolution of wings, apart from his usual question-begging counter-factualism. Why doesn't he debate the subject here, for instance, or with Yahya, instead of feeding gullible undergraduates the usual tripe?

Why not look here: http://www.harunyahya.com/evolution06.php Far more sense to be had.

49

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 06/01/2009 18:04:44 »

It's 42.

Nah, 43. That's a prime number!

50

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 06/01/2009 18:02:40 »

Ben, after 31,500 generations E.coli was still E.coli. Yeah, it could metabolise citrate - but Behe has pointed out that the gene does exist in the wild strains, and had been deactivated. It merely regained its functionality, and wasn't anything new.

So I'm afraid you're still stuck with the old question. If 31,500 generations failed to produce a single new species, then where did all the thousands of Cambrian species come from?

51

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 05/01/2009 18:01:35 »

Cuvier, Owen, Agassiz and Lyell to name but 4, wanted nothing to do with it, and they were not religious men.

Owen's arguments against evolution were not religious ones, but based on his knowledge of comparative anatomy. That data obviously made him a critic of evolution. 

I was intrigued to read Prof.John A Davison saying (http://john.a.davison.free.fr/?p=13)

"Furthermore, there is not a scintilla of tangible evidence that natural selection, the cornerstone of the Darwinian model, ever had anything to do with organic evolution except to stabilize species for as long as possble. It has always been entirely anti-evolutionary as it still is today. How could natural selection conceivably have been involved in a structure which had not yet appeared? That is the question that St George Jackson Mivart asked 12 years after the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species and it has yet to be answered for obvious reasons. That unanswerable question alone is lethal to the Darwinian hypothesis."

So where is your natural selection now?

Cuvier disagreed with Lamarckian evolution, and died before Origin was published.

Cuvier's arguments are irrefutable to my mind. He pointed out in this connection that any alteration in the structure of say, a claw, would require that the talons became larger, the wrist bones become bigger and stronger, the forearm more powerful, the humerus bigger, the shoulder joint stronger and so he went on.

You people seem to think that hey presto, mutation occurs, a wing forms on a reptile somehow, and that's it! It can fly! Cuvier would have destroyed you root and branch, as he did Darwin and Lamarck's ideas.

Owen believed in creation, and that man was special amongst animals - so obviously wouldn't accept evolution.

I don't know a lot about Agassiz, but wikipedia informs me that you are right - he didn't accept evolution.  He did think different races were created in separate events though.

Lyell was a good friend of Darwin's, and helped and encourage him to publish.  He was conservative about accepting natural selection, as he also held man as special in nature - quite understandable for the time, as we knew far less about genetics than we do now.

Had they known what we know about genetics now, Darwin would never have made it off the ground. Mendel's work would have seen to that. Unfortunately...

Science is essentially conservative - evolution was new to these people, and didn't have as much research and evidence behind it as it does now.  Science is dynamic, and hypothesis are re-evaluated in the light of new evidence. As such, it is wise to be conservative.

Sophiecentaur is quite right, you know - there are a few people reading these threads yet nobody has come out to support you.

I'm not surprised given the amount of flak your side has generated! Keeping the head well below the parapet is a good idea in these debates!

I think I've said this before, but you choose to believe in god despite the fact that it is entirely non-falsifiable, and evidently nothing to do with science.  Why do you think you have the right to complain about what you perceive as non-science, while admitting that you do not require evidence for the beliefs you hold to be true?

I have the right to criticise a scientific theory on scientific grounds, which is what I'm doing, in pointing out the inadequacy of evolution to explain well-observed and measured facts of natural History. Unfortunately, rocking the boat doesn't go down too well!

Again, we can observe evolution in the wild and in the lab - we can make predictions based on our understanding of evolution that come true.  Evolution is a well evinced scientific theory, which supports and is supported by the facts.

Which evidence are you referring to?

This is at least the third time I've said this in this thread, but you seem to ignore it every time - it's the answer to the main question of this thread.  Instinct is reactive behaviour

Instinct is not reactive behaviour, Ben. Yes, some instincts protect the species, but how can you possibly say that flying to Capistrano from Goya in Argentina is 'reactive behaviour'? Reactive to what? It is totally unnecessary, and is not a response to environmental factors. Winter temperatures in Southern California aren't sufficiently low to bother other swallows, so why do these leave, and why go so far?

- behaviour is under genetic control- behaviour is under genetic control (as can be seen by breeding knock out mice who do not show fear, for example).  We know that genes pass from one generation to the next, and that genes for an advantageous behaviour are more likely to be passed on, and so will be come more common in the population.  There's nothing to complain about there - mice who are not afraid of cats will not live long enough to breed - mice who are instinctively afraid of cats will live long enough to breed - therefore, there is a selective advantage, and we would expect to see instinctive fear becoming more common in a population of mice.  More complicated instincts will have more complicated pathways.

But you have run into the age-old question: HOW DID THE BEHAVIOUR GET INTO THE GENES? Natural selection is no help at all, especially in the vastly complicated behaviours of the swallows and plovers, the red knots and arctic terns too. It cannot be involved in with characteristics which have not appeared as yet, such as the non-existent ability to navigate to Capistrano when it wasn't there.

Natural selection stabilises populations: it does not introduce new elements, merely destroys or retains ALREADY EXISTING features. So where did those features come from?

.

52

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 05/01/2009 17:06:13 »

 

Asyncritus

You describe one of my posts as a "personal attack" yet you are more than happy to bandy around words like "nonsensical", "lousy" and "fanciful". Try to apply the same rules to yourself please.

In case you missed it,

a. your supporters have been more than happy to be exceedingly offensive, and a bit of retaliation may not be amiss, but long overdue. But

b. I am describing your arguments as lousy, nonsensical and fanciful. I don't know you, and therefore I cannot possibly be insulting you personally.

I notice that you seem to shy away from  offering any details of what you believe is true.

I am a critic of evolution. It is my mission to demonstrate its fallaciousness. By elimination therefore, we arrive at divine creation. If you wish to swallow a bad egg, that is your affair.

Your statement -
"I believe that the world was created in great bursts of creative activity at unspecified times in the past, but in accordance with the Genesis 1 and 2 records. I am an Old Earth Creationist by persuasion."
- is very woolly. There is no information, no precision and no 'workings' in (any of) your statements - just rantings and non-specific quoting of a few named, eminent, past Scientists who, we can be sure, would have been more than prepared to get 'specific' in their arguments.

So we're back to the personalities: 'rantings' is a good example. Kindly desist, or I shall have some more hard words to say.

"Ya boo sucks"  or "my Dad can fight your Dad" are not arguments in favour of or against any idea yet that is virtually all you can come up with. If you can't address specific numerical arguments in your own terms then any argument you make is not valid. You clearly didn't understand the implications of the sums in 'that link' so you are not in a position to reject it on any basis other than your faith.

You clearly didn't understand Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's extremely clear statements. You are in no position to argue with them, and neither am I. Perhaps you'd like to get your statistician to comment on their errors, as you think they must be wrong.

I would like to remind you that the topic under discussion is How does Instinct Evolve. Please confine your remarks to the issue at hand and refrain from the personalities.

We could all stack up a list of big-named supporters of each view and weigh the results on some scales - what would that prove? On a Science Forum we are, surely, trying to examine the arguments in specific (although, on occasions, amateurish) detail because that is what interests Scientists at all levels. Your arguments all seem to be delivered through a magaphone; you offer assertions, not discussion.

I note that you carefully refrain from specifics, especially when making such claims as 'we have refuted your arguments on many occasions'. Please furnish any such refutations with respect to the cliff swallows or the golden plovers.Or the yucca moth if you like.

Or stop talking for the sake of doing no credit to your case, such as it is.

You offer no arguments at all that are worthy of the name, so please produce some (with evidence, as Simpson demands) or concede the argument.

Why do I get the feeling that you have not taken on board a single one of the arguments against your  ('anti')theory? Could it be a 'fingers in ears "la la la"' situation?

You get that feeling because you have not produced a single evidenced argument worthy of discussion. If you have, where is it?

BenV has been honest enough to acknowledge that he has no explanation to offer of some of these phenomena. Where is your admission or your supporting evidence? 'Evidence', mark you, not 'speculation'.


.

53

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 05/01/2009 16:45:27 »

Atavisms prove nothing. Here's a most unpleasant one - what do you think it proves?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7791321.stm

That's not an atavism, it's either "foetus in foetu" or a teratoma.

A structure can only be described as an atavism if there was an ancestor with the same feature...

Can you prove that there wasn't?

atavism (plural atavisms) The reappearance of an ancestral characteristic in an organism after several generations of absence.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/atavism

Then the argument that says the whale with legs is an atavism is question-begging, as you are question dodging in the above example. Preconceptions prove nothing.

So unless you have evidence of numerous human fossils with feet growing out of their head, then the case you sited is not an atavism.

I've never heard a count, but I'm certain that there are many.

54

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 04/01/2009 11:09:21 »

 
Asyncritus

1 I believe that the world was created in great bursts of creative activity at unspecified times in the past, but in accordance with the Genesis 1 and 2 records. I am an Old Earth Creationist by persuasion.

So, basically, you accept all the Science which you can grasp, at the moment, as real Science but, when you come across something too hard to grasp, you say that God stepped in.

I accept all science which is provable - at least in my own field of |Biology. I have an acute sense and ability to recognise nonsense when I read it - and evolutionary Biology is loaded to the gunwales with such material.

I may also point out that the half-baked, nonsensical 'replies' to the biological FACTS which I have presented are typical of the lousy quality of evolutionary biological thought exhibited in the textbooks. Your fanciful hypotheses are presented as 'facts' and 'explanations' and 'refutations'. It is as GG Simpson said:

"It is inherent in any definition of science that statements that cannot be checked by observation are not really saying anything — or at least they are not science."—*George G. Simpson

Your collective efforts are merely examples of the above and stand roundly condemned as non-science: which sounds alarmingly similar to non-sense.

Now notice how irrelevant to the facts that I am presenting is the following personal attack. You have nothing to say about instinct, but are descending to your imaginative reconstruction of what 'I would have thought' 200 years ago.

Why not stick to the scientific facts I have brought forward, and give up with the personalities? The answer, of course, is that there IS no science which supports the evolutionary nonsense you all espouse.

That, presumably means that, had you lived 200 years ago, you would have believed a lot more of what we now call Science as totally down to God. You most certainly wouldn't have accepted Genetics as even a wild possibility; it would have had to be divine.
It also implies that you would put a bit less down to God if you were to live 500 years in the future.
You offer no positive proof for your ideas- just attempts to refute other people's scientific ideas. Be honest. If that's what you believe then just say it's faith and not grounded on any evidence.

This is a pure lie, and you should know that it is. If I did not believe in God, I still would not believe in evolution - it is such trashy nonsense. Are you aware of the fact that the rejectors of Darwin's theory when it was published did not reject it on religious grounds, but on purely scientific ones? Cuvier, Owen, Agassiz and Lyell to name but 4, wanted nothing to do with it, and they were not religious men. For a fuller discussion of that fact, read Denton's 'Evolution: A Theory In Crisis' and wake up to the truth that it is the facts that destroy the theory, not religious preconceptions.

I did ask you to go over that link in detail; you clearly didn't because you made no comment on the details on probabilities and how it is so easy to do inappropriate calculations. It is the details which count, you know. I thought you were supposed to have studied statistics. Perhaps you are the one who needs a calculator; you could repeat the calculations and see that they work rather than just quoting someone else's view based on an unspecified calculation.

I am far inferior to Hoyle and Wickramasinghe as far as statistics are concerned. They knew exactly what they were doing, and showed just how foolish the whole idea of abiogenesis and evolution really are.

You, I take it, have no statistical training, and yet you are trying to tell me that this gentleman knows enough to challenge Hoyle and Wickramasinghe's points. On what basis have you formed that judgment? It certainly wasn't an informed judgment.

Why are you involving yourself with people who favour Science? Are you after converting us all?

I am not writing for you supporters of evolution. Nothing will change a view that is set in concrete. I am writing for the benefit and information of the 8,000 or so viewers who have visited this particular topic. If they are uncommitted, maybe they will at least see the sense of what I'm saying, even if you can't.

55

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Why does this Titan Arum plant bloom only once every six years?

« on: 03/01/2009 21:29:53 »

It is a completely irrational 'explanation'. You, Ben, are bright enough to recognise the problem and stop putting up these fatuous remarks.

HOW DID THE GENETIC PROGRAM EVER GET CONSTRUCTED AND INSERTED INTO THE GENOME?

Once it's in, then natural selection can act. I agree with that. But that IS NOT THE QUESTION. Now stop fudging the issue and admit that there's no explanation other than divine origination.

56

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How did mimicry evolve?

« on: 03/01/2009 21:06:25 »

Now ask yourselves, people, if this:



didn't happen by chance, then what about these?



stingray:



shrimp:



Frog:






frog



octopus:



scorpionfish:



mantis:



cicada:



scorpionfish again: can you see it?



Moth:

57

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / Re: Why does this Titan Arum plant bloom only once every six years?

« on: 03/01/2009 20:37:15 »

But why did the cicadas choose 17, a prime number, for their hibernation? Scientists believe there is a predator that likes to crash their party and also emerges periodically after a certain number of years. The cicadas found that by choosing a prime-number cycle

Come on RD - neilep's inference (or the guy who wrote the article) is pretty plain, I would have said, apart from the hasty backtracking you're now trying to do.

Cicadas CAN COUNT, everybody knows that, don't they? - and they know about prime numbers too - otherwise they couldn't CHOOSE 17, a prime number cycle!

Now wangle your way out of that one!

.

58

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 03/01/2009 20:29:26 »

A
Can you argue, mathematically, against what the following link is saying?
http://www.creationtheory.org/Probability/Home.xhtml

You say you can do maths - force yourself to read the details; it may do you good.

Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe (both reasonably good mathematicians) said:

"an enzyme consisting of 300 residues could be formed by random shuffling of residues, and calculate a value of 10^250, which becomes 10^500000 if one takes account of the need for 2000 different enzymes in a bacterial cell. Comparing this calculation with the total of 10^79 atoms in the observable universe, they conclude that life must be a cosmological phenomenon."

Whoever wrote your little article should have his calculator taken away if he's trying to somehow diminish the probabilities given above.

59

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 03/01/2009 20:20:44 »

Atavisms prove nothing. Here's a most unpleasant one - what do you think it proves?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7791321.stm

60

Plant Sciences, Zoology & Evolution / How does "instinct" evolve?

« on: 03/01/2009 20:13:34 »

Asyncritus
You never did reply to my question about what actually goes on in your model.
Does someone constantly tweak the situation or was it just set going at some stage?
What is your particular idea of timescale for this?
How does the clear(?) evidence of past extinctions weigh with you?

I really would like a short, accurate answer to this.
Is it beyond you (or 'beneath you')?
If you are trying to be scientific, then you should have a replacement for any theory which you object to.

Are you opting out of this one, Asyncritus?
If you can't talk Science then why come on a Science Forum?

Sorry Sophie, I thought I had answered the questions in my previous post, though not directly to you. As that didn't get through here are the answers again:

1 I believe that the world was created in great bursts of creative activity at unspecified times in the past, but in accordance with the Genesis 1 and 2 records. I am an Old Earth Creationist by persuasion.

2 The timescale is enormous

3 The created 'kinds' (I read our modern taxon 'families' for 'kinds') had considerable but limited amounts of variability built in, as we see today.

4 Because I can't or won't produce a good egg is no reason for me to eat your bad one, if you can grasp the meaning of that little parable.

.