In his recent video Michael Behe explains the reasons for his acceptance of common descent.
Do you find it confusing?
Most members of the Discovery Institute find the idea of common descent lacking. Behe, ‘for the sake of the argument’ , is willing to accept it and, instead, focus on the mechanism of Darwinian evolution, natural selection and random mutations, as insufficient to explain evolution.
Here is an example of what I mean:
If a five pound land walking mammal is an ancestor of a 50 ton whale, through common descent, and the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection acting on variations is insufficient to explain their ancestry, as per Behe’s own admission, isn’t his acceptance of common descent confusing, or even contradictory?
If the mechanism of evolution can’t account for common descent, why would anybody accept it?
Watch the video and judge it for yourself…
ETA: Larry Moran is using Behe’s acceptance of common descent as evidence that he (Behe) accepts evolution…https://sandwalk.blogspot.com/2011/08/evolution-is-fact-and-theory.html?showComment=1581708597421#c1276531141808451482
phoodoo,
Evolutionary theory doesn’t explain everything. Endosymbiotic theory fills in a particular gap very neatly. And there’s quite a bit of supporting evidence. I’d post a link or two if I thought you’d follow them.
Alan Fox,
You mean if you thought I would follow you down a fucking meaningless rabbit hole, so you can avoid saying why bacteria in a lab can never become anything other than bacteria in a lab?
Gee, I wonder why I wouldn’t follow your absurd diversions?
phoodoo,
You can lead a horse to water…
But the niche isn’t random!
You do get it! 👍
Alan Fox,
And bacteria never become anything other than bacteria, even though your theory claims that they could.
It certainly doesn’t appear to be proof of ID…
Not my theory but the idea that mitochondria and chloroplasts started out as free living bacteria and were engulfed by other microbes (an archaeon is the latest favourite) is not outlandish. Once you have eukaryotes, Evolutionary pathways to multicellular organisms are plausible. As I said, there are plenty of examples of transitional symbionts – lichens for example.
Great, then Lenski should have no problem making a few lichens then right? What’s the hold up?
No billions of years excuses.
Your misunderstandings do not invalidate anything at all.
Lenski isn’t making anything. His experiment provides a simplified and precisely controlled niche environment in which mutations happen spontaneously and those mutations that prove beneficial in that niche proliferate. You can’t simulate 4 billion years of evolution in a decade or two.
I get you don’t like evolutionary theory but you’ve never advanced an alternative. Do you ever wonder?
Your are projecting your fear onto others. Nobody is afraid to proffer explanations. Nobody is afraid to explain what you pretend to want to have explained.
If you were to ask a genuine question, you’d get a genuine answer from knowledgeable people. Just look at the attempts made to educate colewd.
But you’ve burnt those bridges phoodoo, nobody takes you seriously now.
Oh, here we go with the time excuse again.
So to go from bacteria to lichen we need 4 billion years huh? Well, then what about from nothing to a bacteria, how long is that? Another 4 billion? And then from lichen to Junebug, another 4 billion? Gee, we are starting to run out of billions Alan. Seems like you like to always start from zero when doing your math Alan (more fake theoretical math?)
But how’s about ol Lenski, does he have to start from zero? I thought we already got a few billion years locked up, because, you know, we already have the bacteria (whew, what a time saver!) .
So what’s the first step, does that take a billion years? How’s about we ghet the first step.
I am starting to think none of the steps actually happen, because every time we ask when do we get the next step, the answer is always the same-well, just gimme a billion years, then I can show you.
Its like when you ask someone, how long does it take to go from an ape to a man. The answer is always, millions, billions of years, you know, its long. Ok, then how about the first step, how long is that? Millions, billions…
Every step takes millions, billions. Or is it like one step-poof, wait a million. Another step-poof, now wait another million. So Lenski’s bacteria, haven’t they already been around for a few millions years-when’s the poof? Reset back to zero…?
More evolution tap dancing.
phoodoo,
Evolution ! The worst theory ever! Apart from all the others.
More excuses.
phoodoo,
Phoodoo, you’ve clearly indicated your disdain for Evolutionary theory and you have said you refuse to look at any evidence that I might present. I’m open to hear alternative explanations but you don’t have anything to offer on that score. Never mind. Science is in this way like riding a horse. Persist in trying to ignore facts and you come to grief.
All you have to do, phoodoo, is come up with something that explains the observed facts.
Scientists, being scientists, will then immediately drop ‘evolution’ in favour of whatever it is you are proposing.
So the onus is actually on you. You need to explain what the alternative is and why it’s better.
But neither you nor J-Mac or colewd can do that. All you can do is poke holes in your caricature of evolution.
And what does it say about the strength of your alternative that you refuse to provide it?
It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. It’s a terrible, incomplete partly incoherent theory. And, yet, it’s the best we have. And until something else comes along it’s what we are forced to work with.
Follow the evidence where it leads. And so far it’s not leading to any sort of Intelligent Design.
Bacteria have existed from very early in the history of life on Earth. Bacteria fossils discovered in rocks date from at least the Devonian Period (419.2 million to 358.9 million years ago), and there are convincing arguments that bacteria have been present since early Precambrian time, about 3.5 billion years ago.
https://www.britannica.com/science/bacteria/Evolution-of-bacteria
You clearly are an evolution cheerleader (God panic, I reckon). But what in the world does that have to do with your inability to explain why we can’t see any evolution from bacteria? Which excuse are you trying to go with, can you at least try to stick with one. or are you trying to just throw every excuse you can think of against the wall (of course) and then see if any of them help you obfuscate.
Billions of years, what nonsense. The clock already started billions of years ago, so find a new one.
I wonder if you think your deflections should be convincing?
This is the core of the problem. You imagine motivations for peoples actions and then everything else follows.
You seem to think that people are afraid to admit that the evidence points to god because then those people will need to answer to that god and they don’t want to.
But that can’t possibly be true because we’ve no idea what “answering” to that god actually means in practice. If it was demonstrated unambiguously that god existed I’d still literally have no idea in what way to change my behaviour to “answer” to that god.
Should I sacrifice my first born to a volcano? Should I circumcise myself?
The reality is that nobody has “God Panic”, it’s just your projection once again. The only people afraid of the evidence are people like you. It’s more like “atheism panic” when you realize you have no actual factual basis for your beliefs, whatever they are.
Nobody is trying to convince you of anything. It’s clear that you cannot be convinced of anything, the anger and bitterness is obvious to all. And as we’re ascribing motivations, it’s clear to me you are angry that your beliefs are not supported by any evidence. And you try to invent that evidence by pointing to the insufficiency of evolution. If evolution did not do it then phodoo’s thing must have!
It’s sad really.
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/192830/new-bacterial-strain-discovered-england-wales/
..
Getting fitter? But that’s impossible according to phoodoo.
Seems like we do and can see evilution in bacteria. So you are wrong.
Great.
I am going to use your analogy to make a wooden table:
Observer: Here is a tree in a workshop, can you please make it into a table?
Evolutionist: Well, in theory you could, but, do you have an idea how long it takes for a tree to grow?
Observer: But the tree is already fully grown. In fact, its already been cut down. Its ready to go.
Evolutionist: Look, first you have to start with a small seed, and then, it has to grow. You know, you need the right environment for it to grow, it can’t just grow anywhere. And that takes time, let me tell you.
Observer: Ok, but what about this old tree, can’t it be made into a table?
Evolutionist: Well, of course it could! But you would need a saw. Do you have any idea how complicated it is to make a saw? You need the metal, you need a handle. Where you gonna get the handle for the saw from, another tree? And if you only have a saw, but no other tools, making a table still won’t be easy, if even possible at all. No, you need lots of things to make a table.
Observer: I will give you a saw, could you get started then?
Evolutionist: Saws are one theory. Chisels are another. No one says a saw is the only way, but its one way. You still have to have the right environment. Even with a great saw, unless, you use the saw right, you ain’t going to get a table. But look, there are things similar to tables. There are shelves, they are almost a table, so its not that hard to go from a shelf to a table. But, still need time.
Observer: So what’s the first step.
Evolutionist: Look, it doesn’t really matter what the first step is. The point is that whatever the first step is, you still won’t have a table with just one step. And just because we can’t identify the first step, that doesn’t mean that its not possible.
Observer: So you don’t know how to make a table, is that what you are saying.
Evolutionist: No, of course not. Of course I know. Lots of people know. Its in lots of books. Everyone knows that trees can become tables. Geez, why are you so insistent that you know every step. I am trying to teach you and you just don’t want to listen…
Observer: So, here is a new saw I got you.
Evolutionist: What, you have a better idea?
Observer: No, the table, um…
Evolutionist: Do you know how long it take to grow a tree! Grow up! If you think its so easy, let’s see you do it. Table denier!!
but they are still bacteria, wahhh.
phoodoo, J-Mac, colewd:
Did your intelligent designer design M1UK or did it evolve?
Simple question. I expect dissembling in return, of course.
Says it all really.
You have nothing and know it and want to drag everybody else down to your level of knowing nothing. So at least you won’t feel so bad about knowing nothing yourself.
Look, you don’t need to invent analogies. You just need to say what your better alternative is. If that’s ‘godddit’ then so be it, but at least that would be honest.
Sigh.
phoodoo,
So, where do tables come from? Does your designer create them whole and drop them into our reality?
All you have to do is give a better explanation for tables. But all you want to do is point out how they are not made. Logically that’ll never convince anybody of how they are actually made, only how they are not made.
So even if you succeed in your quest we’ll simply know nothing instead of a partial something.
Why are you advocating for ignorance?
Haha.
Thanks, next time I will make sure and add that part. You can spoof an evolutionist much better than I !
phoodoo,
Not sure what your point is. Do we finally agree that Bacteria is a taxonomic domain, and what that implies?
So you want bacteria to evolve into non-bacteria over the course of 20 years, or evolution is false.
Are you actually this dumb or just pretending?
Random crazy creationist: “I won’t believe in evolution until this rabbit evolves into a oak!1!!1!”
phoodoo: “what? are you nuts?, it would still be a eukaryote, you fool!”
Yes, that’s basically it. It takes too long to observe on human life timescales.
You’re also not going to see an entire mountain range come into existence in a human life.
Some times that really just is the explanation for why you don’t see some thing before your own eyes. It some times really just does take way too long. I have never seen a tree grow from a seed to 100 meters tall. I won’t live long enough to see that.
In such situations we are forced to make historical inferences by making predictive hypotheses and testing them against future observations. If X changed into Y over this long period, we should expect to find that A.
This method is used everywhere in scientific historical inferences, from geology(the formation of continents, rivers, mountains, glaciers, and so on) and astronomy(the formation of stars, planets, galaxies, asteroids and comets, etc.), to biology and even linguistics(the gradual evolution of languages from different language ancestors no longer spoken).
No single person has seen a language evolve completely into a different one. No single person has seen a mountain range fully form. No single person has seen a continent form, or a glacier, or a comet, or a planet, or a galaxy. Yet we can know that these things occur and have occurred over extremely long timescales from the kind of evidence they leave behind.
In the case of evolutionary biology, they leave behind nesting hierarchical structure in the sequences of shared similar genes. That observation only makes sense on a long-term gradual process of branching descent with modification.
Rumraket,
Yea, it takes a redwood a long time to be tall. But you know what we can see? A redwood seed turning into a sapling? Now gee, imagine that!
Now, the ignorant evolutionist argument is, yea, but its not fully formed yet, that takes to long. Yea, well, it was a seed and then became a tree. We don’t go around saying, well, you know how long it takes for the seed to develop. And before the seed can develop you need to have a sun and an earth spinning around it, so how can you expect to see a sapling, if first you need the big bang, and then a Sun, and then the Earth, and then carbon has to turn into a seed…
We already have the fucking seed. We already have the fucking Sun. We aren’t asking you to start from scratch. That’s the bullshit it takes billions of years nonsense from you evolutionist. We are ready to go, we got the bacteria, we got the seed. And guess what, we can see trees grow, hooray! How can it be that we can see trees grow when it takes billions of years to make a tree. That’s impossible!!
So your foolish, it takes a long time crap. You spoof yourself. How long does it take a cow to become a whale? Don’t say it takes billions of years because first you need the fricking cow.
Citation please.
phoodoo presumably is a Pangaea denier.
phoodoo, did can Pangaea be shown to have existed according to your ‘rules’ of evidence?
Yes, and we can see bacteria change too. They’re still bacteria, but they change. They evolve, and they adapt. Mutations accumulate, they’re subject to natural selection, the species changes over time through that.
Yes, exactly. The degree of change you want to see takes too long to see in a single human lifetime. And there are scales of change involved. Some take decades, some take centuries, some take geological eons. At any point when the slowest gradual processes occur, we are only ever able to see tiny microscopic changes accumulate. But they do add up over much longer timescales.
That is just a reality.
Yes and you aren’t going to live long enough to see it grow to it’s full height. So we infer that it is able to do this by seeing gradual pieces of the transition in other trees at many different stages of growth.
In the same way, we can infer how mountain ranges form by the pressures that accumulate where tectonic plates collide. We can measure only tiny centimeter-scale changes on human lifetimes. And we can see the effects they leave behind over much longer timescales in the rocks.
In the same way, we can infer how planets form from supernova remnants in protoplanetary discs in astronomy. We can only see tiny changes in luminosity and morphology of protoplanetary discs even when monitoring them for decades. But we can see the many different stages in the evolution of planets by observing many different protoplanetary discs at various degrees of formation.
Surprise surprise, we can do the same in evolution too. Infer how populations of organisms evolve over much longer timescales than we have been around to directly observe. We see small-scale evolutionary changes in the laboratory and in the wild in human lifetimes, and we can infer much bigger changes have occurred by comparative anatomy and comparative genetics. In a similar sense we can even some times see different evolutionary stages reflected in animals that exist today, such as snake-looking organisms with tiny vestigial legs, semi-aquatic mammals like seals and walruses, crawling fish like mudskippers, and let’s talk about the entire amphibian clade. And in similar ways to geology and astronomy, the gradual process leaves evidence behind in the genomes of living organisms. Analogous to how a growing tree leaves evidence behind in it’s rings. Or layers in the rocks.
Simple and easy to understand for people who aren’t angry ideologues. Relax, accept reality, move on with your life.
OMagain,
I don’t fall for evolutionist lame “well have you got a better excuse” arguments. If your argument is stale and usefulness, as the evolutionist one is, saying its the best one is meaningless.
You need to start teaching more honestly in schools:
Evolution-sure, its stupid, but have you got a better idea?
Not really, unless you use some ridiculous notion of change that has nothing to do with evolution.
Its the same as Darwin’s finches, some have large beaks, some have small beaks, and they are still finches. Some people are tall, some are short and some have red hair and some brown. Calling that evolution is silly, no one thinks every single organisms of a species looks the same, or like the same food.
We can’t show ANY real evolution. Nada. Just birds being birds and fish being fish, and no cats becoming dogs.
Yeah it’s the same notion of change that Darwin wrote about. Species become exquisitely adapted to their local environment through natural selection. He didn’t know about mutations, we do today, so we understand it even better and understand why it takes a long time.
And they evolved different beaks.
No, those really are examples of evolution. Some people have genes that predispose them to be taller, others have mutations that give them red instead of brown hair, and so on and so forth. That’s evolution too.
And it turns out the explanation for why differences in appearance and prefence exist within a population of even the same species, is also evolution.
We have for example found the genetic mutation responsible for why some people don’t like brussel’s sprouts.
Why is it that everything you say is so easy to debunk?
I’ve never seen the formation of a continent, or the gradual change of a language into a completely different one. I guess they spoke english 15.000 years ago.
Yeah, because evolution totally predicts that, right phoodoo? geez
Hmm, let me think, if we call saying that some people like brussel’s sprouts and some people don’t debunking, wait, that’s it, that’s why!
BUT, some people like talking about cars and some people don’t. Aha!, I have debunked your debunking! Why is that so easy!!
Is getting a tan an example of natural selection in action? Because if your new definition of evolution is adapting to your environment, you are talking about an entirely different subject. I don’t think there are many creationists out there who doubt the ability to tan.
Evolution predicts anything that happened, happened.
The just so stories are used to fill in the details.
That’s called science. Do you have a better idea?
No? Then please, continue whining.
What’s ‘real’ evolution? Unless you define it you can simply say that to every example.
Heh. You get to define away anything you like. But how’s that working out for you? Convinced many people to abandon everything they know in favor of ignorance?
No, in fact some quite specific predictions have been made and fulfilled.
https://skeptoid.com/blog/2013/06/21/predictions-of-evolution/
It’s in fact Intelligent Design that predicts anything that happened, after all the designer wanted that way answers all possible questions. Whereas with evolution we can in fact make predictions that can be tested. Even to the extent of knowing where to dig for particular fossils.
Even Darwin made a prediction(s) that was actually proven to be true. But I won’t bother to describe those, as I’m sure you are more than familiar with them already and have dismissed them, given your quoted claim above.
OMagain,
Humorous.
There is a ‘theory of evolution”? And in the 1800’s no less. Wow. I hope we learn what that theory is one day.
How’s that working out for you?
Ladies and gentlemen, in this thread we see the best output of phoodoo. This is it, what you see here is PEAK phoodoo.
How could evolutionary biology have persisted for one and a half century against the onslaught of ideas such as these? Why don’t cats give birth to dogs?
The God-fearing evolutionists have no answer for that, they just hate God. QED.
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species_(1859)
No but here’s one. It’s been linked to here several times before.
No because your tan isn’t heritable. Your taste in foods and hair color is.
Your ability to tan in response to exposure to sunlight is an adaptation that evolved though, yes. The tan itself is not an example of evolutionary change, because you don’t pass it on to your offspring. It’s a somatic response, not germ-line adaptation.
Populations adapting to the environment was always part of the definition of evolution.
How individuals respond to their environment during their lifetime without passing it on to their offspring is not evolution.
Simple. Anyone can understand this, even you if you let yourself try.
No, you are. You are the one who just changed the subject to getting a suntan, where before you spoke about taste preferences and about hair color. Taste preferences and hair color are heritable traits. Your sun-tan is not a heritable trait. Hence YOU are the one who changed the subject.
Dude, you are so confused you don’t even understand when you yourself are the one changing the subject.