[Alan Fox asked why I’m a YEC (Young Earth Creationist), and I promised him a response here at The Skeptical Zone.]
I was an Old Earth Darwinist raised in a Roman Catholic home and secular public schools, but then became an Old Earth Creationist/IDist, a Young Life/Old Earth Creationist/IDist, then a Young Life/Young Earth Creationist/IDist. After becoming a creationist, I remained a creationist even during bouts of agnosticism in the sense that I found accounts of a gradualistic origin and evolution of life scientifically unjustified.
The fundamental reason I accept YEC is the physical evidence appears to me to be consistent with the recent miraculous emergence of humanity followed by a global flood in a way that is mostly line with the genealogy of Jesus as described in Luke 3 and Matt 1.
Theoretical physicist turned minister, John Polkinhorne said what distinguishes Christianity from any other religion is it’s bold claims about history. Luke 3 is a bold claim about history. Because of the boldness of the Bible’s claims and recent evidence supporting those claims, I came to accept the Divine Inspiration of Luke 3 and Matt 1.
The genealogy of Christ is partly elaborated in the Old Testament (OT), and I became astonished that the OT, unlike other religious texts (like the Book of Mormon), had archaeological confirmation for some of its claims related to Christ’s genealogy, like the existence of King Hezekiah (715 BC) , the exitence of Saul (1050 BC), etc. The genealogy of Christ may have support perhaps as far back as Abraham (2100 BC) who was only 9 generations away from Noah who was 9 generations from Adam.
My belief in the New Testament follows along the lines of former atheist and famed police detective James Warner Wallace’s journey to faith. Wallace was featured on national TV for solving cold case murders, but he also wrote the book Cold Case Christianity which details how he came to accept the New Testament as credible witness testimony though the witness records are ancient and often presumed to be fabrications.
The most important part of YEC for me personally is the creation model which posits miraculous events as the origin of life and of species versus the mainstream model which posits natural origin of life followed by Darwinian Selection.
Darwin led the world into thinking that nature acts like an engineer. He supposed if given time, nature will construct ever more complicated designs. Darwin thought giving nature more time is friend of mindless design like time is a friend to intelligent design by an engineer. This is demonstrably false at least as far a known science and OOL and debatable with respect to the post OOL world. As far as a supposed pre-OOL world, we observe biological materials in an almost-working state decay quickly into far-from-working state. Time is the enemy, not friend of mindless design (which is an oxymoron as far as I’m concerned).
Even if one argues life is not Turing complete, nor a full-blown Quine software system, nor full blown von Neumann Constructor, emergence of elements of these systems in biological chemistry (DNA-RNA-Protein) is far from natural expectation as a matter of principle, so much so infinite many worlds are put forward by researchers like Koonin as a solution to OOL. If one posit infinite Many Worlds as the creator, one could just as well posit the infinite Christian God as the Creator.
What we have seen in the lab is that all the essential parts of living von Neumann Constructors must be in place for the algorithmic style of 3D replication/printing in cells to take place. Hence, a chemical evolutionary scenario is ruled out as a matter of principle. This is not an argument from ignorance, but rather a proof by contradiction. Whether one is an atheist or not, it would seem to me, as a matter of principle, the origin of life was a highly unusual event far from expectation. But at what point is an unusual event indistinguishable from a miracle? Though “miracle” has theological connotations, it seems the first life was a miracle.
If the first life was created, Darwin claimed subsequent life from that first life evolved:
…the first creature, the progenitor of innumerable extinct and living descendants, was created.
Charles Darwin
But what about after OOL? Superficially, similarity of DNA appears compelling evidence of common ancestry, but it could just as well be evidence of common design of separate special creations if there is a Creator. Rather than Darwin’s Tree of Life, the Creator could just as well create an Orchard of Life from which all life radiated from specially and independently created ancestors.
One set of strong evidences of the Creationist Orchard of Life vs. Darwinian Tree of Life was articulated in two papers by an Associate Professor of Biology at a secular university, Change Tan. This professor got her PhD at an Ivy League school, so she is no run-of-the-mill-Kent-Hovind-preacher-type creationist. See:
Information Processing Differences Between Archaea and Eukarya and Information Processing Differences Between Bacteria and Eukarya. Tan’s paper highlights several problematic evolutionary molecular convergences that defy common descent as a matter of principle (not argument from ignorance, proof by contradiction).
In addition to molecular convergence, common descent is also challenged by the problem of orphan genes and orphan features. Orphan and taxonomically restricted features just pop up without any suggestion of a gradual pathway. Hence, it is easy for one to believe if the first life was created, the Creator also created a set of ancestral species which radiated into the sub-species we have today. How to define the actual trees of the orchard could be an active area of research.
Having at least a provisional case for a Creator of life and ancestral species, we can turn to hard-nosed empiricism to establish when species might have appeared on Earth. The physical data suggest the fossil record is far younger than claimed by the mainstream.
An old universe and Earth seem intuitively satisfying in as much as something so grand and changeless as the Earth should rightly be old. One would think if the Earth isn’t Old, God ought to make it that way! But as aesthetically pleasing the thought may be of an old or eternal universe, I decided if the evidence favors a young fossil record, I can accept by faith that maybe the Earth or even the universe could also be young. Part 2 will state some reasons I think the fossil record is young.
Salvador:
Species had to greatly proliferate after the flood in order to account for present diversity. This means your “genetic entropy” argument is in conflict with your YECism. And you can’t blame the fall for the decline, because this decline you’re talking about had to come about after the post-flood diversification.
Put mildly, your position is incoherent.
Piotr Gasiorowski,
And the pyramids were made of limestone …
Yep, I was trying to figure how far off base YEC ideas are. Used all my fingers and all my toes 🙂 They’re off by between 5 and 6 orders of magnitude for the age of the Earth (figure partly depends on whether you can pin them down to 6000 or 10000 years. Nice level of precision they’ve got). Whew, my brain hurts.
Can’t fix that age gap with a few hundred years re-dating the pharoahs.
Hammer. Nail. You got it, Mung.
stcordova,
How strong is ‘strong’? You seem unaware of how even small s value changes lead to a substantial shift in fixation/loss expectations. It is not justifiable to say that, because the organisms were healthy enough, their genes would not be subject to purifying selection. s is an exponent, and you are mathematically aware enough to know that tiny exponents can have massive power (pun intended) when compounded. From simple math one can see that diminutions in s values undetectable in small-scale experiments can readily lead to (almost) inevitable loss. You probably need to study population genetics in a bit more depth.
That makes no sense. Kimura did not prove that selection does not exist.
Sure, IF something happens, we need to evaluate the impact of that something. You are drawing conclusions ahead of time, however. And you have side-stepped the question of what, if these sequences are not subject to selection (ie, have no impact on organismal function), they are doing there, on a Design/YEC paradigm. Universal But Dispensable Sequences are not really much of an argument for Common Design, are they?
I am simply not as ready as you to leap to a particular conclusion, and ignore all confounding facts. The refutation is provided by the vastly more substantial body of data that conforms to expectations from near-universal branching descent over a substantial time period. UCEs will have an explanation, I am sure. But the bulk of the genome does not consist of UCEs.
… or most of the genome is junk. That is the commonly held view, ENCODE notwithstanding. If we were specially created ‘not too long ago’, we would have much less variation than we do, or would need to suffer an even higher catastrophic mutation rate to get the variation in quickly.
stcordova,
are massively in excess of historical ones due almost entirely to the activities of God’s special little biped.
How do you, YEC Cordova, know that this present rate of extinction is anything more than temporary fluctuation? I ask because you are a YEC, and one of the major ‘arrows’ in the YEC ‘quiver’ is the argument that just because Process X is behaving in a certain way today, that doesn’t tell you anything about how Process X used to behave at a time Y number of years in the past. You YECs are perfectly happy to “refute” the findings of real science with the argument that no, the present is not the key to the past! when real science concludes that the Earth is, you know, 5-6 orders of magnitude older than YEC dogma demands it has to be, after all.
So please, Cordova, do explain how you, a committed YEC, can possibly take the rate of extinction which is observed in the present day to have any relationship whatsoever to any rate of extinction which may or may not have obtained at any time, or times, in the past.
Mung,
“Put mildly, your position is incoherent.”
As is yours, mung.
Lest we so quickly forget:
The apparently absent, non-interactive, invisible, silent, hidden, indifferent, concealed Designer who created everything 6000 years ago and left no sign of it.
And yes, there’s a kicker (isn’t there always a kicker?):
There is no positive case for …Special Creation
What’s wrong with me. Expecting a YEC to be consistent. Sheesh. Will I never learn?
ok, so some times it takes me a while to go through things in relevant detail.
Salvador is a YEC who does not know whether or not the earth and the universe is young. That explains so much.
I don’t think it makes any sense, but it still explains a great deal.
Was I the first one in this thread to spot this? If so, can I pat myself on the back?
Salvador, you plan to start a Young Fossil Record thread. Will you also be starting a Young Life thread, or is this thread the Young Life thread?
Here’s wishing a speedy recovery from this YEC silliness. The universe is old. The earth is old. Jesus is still Lord.
well, two outta three ain’t bad. 🙂
Well spotted, Mung.
You will have to explain how all the sedimentary rocks containing fossils are young, even when they are at times intersected, or even covered, by much older igneous rocks.
You will have to explain how very young sedimentary rocks deposited in wildly varying depositional environments (deep marine, shallow marine, continental, aeolian, glacial, in no specific order) can be found stacked on top of each other over large areas, often virtually undeformed over hundreds of kilometers.
Given the continuity of sedimentary formations across oceans, you will have to explain continental drift in 10,000 years – not just the latest phase, but all of it, including the formation of the Atlantic ocean twice.
You will have to explain how continental drift was so fast, yet slow enough to clearly influence the sediments deposited at each stage of the way.
You will have to explain the sedimentation rates of deep sea oozes like chalks, which can be hundreds of meters thick and made up virtually entirely of the fossil remains of microscopic algae.
You will have to explain where the hundreds of meters thick and aerially extensive salt layers found in many of the world’s seas and oceans come from, in the time you have available (seeing that they lay on top of fossil bearing strata).
You will have to explain why the fossil record shows such a distinctive stratification, which is correlatable (and predictable!) all across the globe (if not continuously, then at least via well documented jump correlations). Why are the fossil species not all mixed up, if they all lived and died at the same time?
You will have to explain much, much more that is incompatible with very young sedimentary rocks, but you get the gist. We can go over many other things if you wish.
You better have a geologically, chemically and physically sound model for all of this, or seriously ask yourself why you are unwilling to accept the standard scientific model that is so beautifully narrated in books such as Richard Fortey’s ‘The Earth’, or ‘Life, an unauthorised biography’. For starters – you can look at geological text books and the literature later.
fG
Just echoing other commenters that part 2 (where you will present evidence that the Earth really is only 6,000 years old) might have been better presented as part 1 rather than arguing over whether Darwinian explanations for the diversity of life past and present that we observe [are correct*], simply because a young Earth rules out OoL theories and evolution at a stroke.
*added in edit.
Allan Miller,
Let me just flesh this out with a numerical example using Kimura’s equation (10) from ‘On the Probability of Fixation of Mutant Genes In A Population‘ (1962), which I won’t attempt to render in mathematical font ‘cos I don’t know how:
u = (1-e^-2s) / ( 1-e^-4Ns) .
Let’s say there is a fitness differential of just one less offspring per 1000 for the less fit allele, and a population (N) of 10,000. s=0.001 for the fitter allele, or (approx) -0.001 for the less fit.
Now, if I’ve done my sums correctly (by no means certain!), if the fitter allele arose in single copy amongst the less fit, its probability of fixation is about 0.2% (in accord with Haldane’s approximation u ~2s, which only applies to positive s in a certain range).
However if the less fit allele arose against a background of the fitter, its probability of fixation is just 8 x 10^-21. That’s a huge difference, and all from just one fewer births per thousand, which you would not detect in a simple knockout experiment. It’s enough to conserve a sequence though.
This also illustrates the strength of the bias in favour of adaptation and against its reversal, incidentally.
It’s fun trying. Just add {latexpage} (substitute square brackets) and put any latex code between “dollar signs” (i e the key stroke that carries that symbol).
ETA In fact the {latexpage} isn’t needed as LaTeX is allowed by default. Beware the dollar sign if you don’t want LaTeX notation.
It’s enclose in a pair of dollar signs to include notation in text. Doubled dollar signs put the notation centred on its own line.
ETA you need curly brackets around symbols that are in sub-groups, such as more than one digit raised to a power.
ETA
from u = \frac{(1-e^{-2s})}{(1-e^{-4Ns})} (enclosed in double dollar signs)
Alan Fox,
Ah, ta very much!
Actually Mung doesn’t get it, though superficially it might seem that way to some.
Darwinian Selection insinuates that diversification proceeds by a process of elimination. That is logically contradictory, you don’t increase diversity by reducing it in a game of competition for resources!
If Darwin had said, “Net increase in the number of species by means of elimination of lots of individuals”, the incoherency would have become clearer.
As Stanly Salthe and other’s pointed out, Fisher’s fundamental theorem of Natural Selection implies reduction of diversity, and if not Fisher’s theorem, plain old common sense! Diversification can happen when there isn’t pressure to remove diversity!
As there is geographical competition by humans against other life forms, the other life forms go extinct as human population grows exponentially. Just as the Malthusian fitness model would almost suggest, the life form with the highest sustained exponential growth rate will swamp out competitors, and in this case, exterminate many of the competitors along the way. Bwahaha!
Hence, diversification happens when there was not too much competition for resources, and loss of diversification happens when there is competition for resources. It would seem then, a few creatures after a global cataclysm would have much more opportunity to diversify versus an environment where they compete for living resources. The incoherency is Mung’s viewpoint, not mine.
I invite the reader to look at the following graph. It flat lines on the left side around 10,000 years ago. That suggests, 10,000 years ago or so, even a human population of say 2 could grow to the 7 billion we have today.
human population growth graph
Which suggests, humanity could be young and we are misinterpreting the fossil record to say that humanity is old.
Darwinists don’t see the implication of their theory. A species capable of eliminating its competitors on the planet will cause a net loss in the number of species, not a net increase.
Salvador,
You say there was little to no competition for resources after the global flood, so the species from the ark diversified. By what mechanism? And in spite of Genetic Entropy.
And then you say, eventually, once they diversified, they had to start to compete for resources, and this led to Darwinian selection, and that accounts for the disappearance of species.
So the whole subject of genetic entropy is irrelevant.
And that’s why the argument is incoherent.
Regards
Revisiting the original claim.
Salvador wrote:
But species diversified greatly after the flood, without dying faster than they got replaced, so your position does not confirm that nature destroys rather than creates, and therefore it does not follow that the present set of species was specially created recently.
In fact, Salvador, even you don’t believe the present set of species was specially created recently!
Try to set aside, for a moment, any antipathy you may have towards me and just think about what you’re saying.
You say present species diversified from the species that were on the ark. This contradicts your claim that “the present set of species was specially created recently.” Even you don’t believe that claim!
This is why your argument is incoherent.
The global flood actually poses an obstacle for the YEC position. When they actually address post-flood species diversification it causes insurmountable problems for their other positions.
That’s a misreading.
Darwinism is selection from variation. It’s true that Darwin did not identify the source of the variation. But he understood that there was a lot of variation.
Feel free to drop the global flood hypothesis, or the recent creation hypothesis, or both. 🙂
Neil, remember, we’re talking about a pair or seven pairs. So how much variation can there be?
So there wasn’t likely to be much competition, or variation, yet we still got the present diversification from just a few survivors. Miraculous. 🙂
Species goes extinct at rapid rates and there is massive reductive evolution complexity, not construction of it. Selection doesn’t really help, as I pointed out
here, it actually worsens the extinction of genomes:
The only place reductive evolution and net loss of species in a competitive environment isn’t the norm is in the imagination of evolutionists, not in actual lab and field observations.
As far as synergistic epistasis working, a number of first-rate geneticists are concerned with the loss-of-function deterioration of the human genome, I linked to some of the papers that raise the issue and defer the resolution of the problem for later because there is no resolution.
If you assert there is an ongoing net rise in the number of:
1. novel functional genes in humans
2. novel developmental pathways in humans
3. body plans in the biosphere
4. novel proteins in humans and the biosphere
5. novel RNA interactions in humans and in the biosphere
Then you might have a point, but it sure doesn’t look that way, especially in places like the South American rain forests where Darwinian deletion of species is what is going on, not origination of them.
We don’t have to necessarily delve into the mathematics to see what is really going on. Reductive evolution and extinction of forms is the norm, not Darwin’s view of Nature being some sort of creator of new designs. Data indicate Nature is a sustainer and occasional destroyer, not a Creator.
What is probably not excusable from the stand point of medical science is insisting human genomes aren’t deteriorating because Kondrashov said so. The matter should remain open, and not be shut down because evolutionary biologists feel threatened by its obvious implications toward recent special creation of humanity.
Thank you for the feedback.
Part 1 was to offer a little context to Part 2. If it can be shown that life emerged via an event that is not much distinguishable from a miracle, and if humanity is shown young via various lines of argument (not just the fossil record), to me then, if the age of the fossil record is falsified, then does it matter that much that Earth is 6,000 or 4.5 billion years old?
To me, that’s enough to accept the genealogy of Christ in Luke 3 as being largely correct hence it suggests Divine origin.
If one can falsify or cast serious doubt on the mainstream dates of the fossils, the creationists have mostly won. So what then if the Earth is 4.5 billion years old, Darwin, Dawkins and Dennett will have been proven wrong by many orders.
Any way, I’ll type up part 2. Thank you again for raising the question, and apologies for my inability to be succinct, and thank you for your forbearance.
No it does not and it can be demonstrated theoretically but also experimentally via accelerated mutation experiments.
That illustrates only fixation on the generous assumption there are population resources to both fixate the trait as well as maintain it. It’s inappropriate to extrapolate the equation if there are numerous other traits to maintain!
As Nobel Laureate H. Muller pointed out, 1 loss-of-function mutation per human per generation is not reversible, even Larry Moran confirmed that number. If a genome as gigantic as 3 giga base pairs is getting 1000-function-compromising mutations per individual per generation, there cannot be reversal as a matter of principle unless there is some sort of unnatural truncation selection, but even then we don’t know how much damage there will be.
Put plants in a cobalt bomb or chemical mutagenesis accelerated mutation environment. Slight selective advantage won’t ensure the species retains supposedly evolved traits. If the rate of damage is faster than the rate of repairing the damage, there will be a net loss of function, not acquisition of it.
We’re just a slow motion version of the accelerated mutation environment given mutation rates and reproductive excess.
What I’ve said is not an obscure opinion, other geneticists are obviously expressing concern, and for good reason — audits of the Darwinian viewpoint yield numbers that just don’t add up.
A Creationist Tries to Understand
Moran wrote:
Yeah, perhaps I was too generous with my 6-bad-mutations model, 1 might have done the trick. 🙂
Salvador, if you’re not a young Earth Creationist why do you identify yourself as a Young Earth Creationist?
No one here thinks you’re avoiding the evidence for the age of the universe and the earth because the evidence is on your side.
And if you did have evidence for a universe and an earth that is only 6000 years old everyone here thinks you would present it.
It takes no great leap to deduce that you haven’t a leg to stand on. But you’ve not yet begun to fight, right?
Unfortunately for you, this isn’t something you can just avoid.
Looking forward to your series on “young fossils” where you will no doubt explain the absence of human fossils which should have been fossilized in the flood along with everything else.
Since they haven’t come within a parsec of doing so I’d say it’s not a problem.
Sal, there exists a whole ecosystem of Cambrian aged fossils dating back over 500 million years at the top of the Canadian Rockies embedded in the Burgess shale. There exist distinct fossilized fauna in every geologic layer: the Cambrian, the Silurian, the Ordovician, the Silurian, the Devonian, the Carboniferous, the Permian, the Triassic, the Jurassic, the Cretaceous, clear up to the Cenzoic era.
You can’t even come up with a decent hand-wave as to how they got there.
Sal quotes Larry Moran above and omits the crucial part of Moran’s remarks (to no one’s surprise, I’m sure).
Here’s what Moran wrote, with the parts that Sal redacted rendered in bold:
I can’t wait for the part on living fossils!
I blame Alan Fox, he seems to have motivated this farcical escapade. Alan, next time, just keep your mouth shut.
Salvador, why is it that your previous claim that there is no positive case for special creation should not be taken seriously?
What on earth are you doing now, if not attempting to present a positive case for special creation?
Just another example of what I mean when I say your position is incoherent.
Salvador:
Heh. Famous last words, and all that.
Come on, Sal. Not this again. You’re famous for quote mining. For your own sake, fucking cut it out.
Rich, to Sal:
He did. Several paragraphs’ worth. That’s the problem. 🙂
You want me to include Moran’s claim that 90% is junk? Does that overturn the fact that over half the UCE’s are in that 90% area he says is junk. If you don’t understand the significance of this, then you don’t understand why it’s irrelevant and hence not included.
Yeah, then you and Keiths should show how including the rest of Moran’s essay overturns the point I was making about UCE’s, especially those in the non-coding regions that were knocked out.. Otherwise you’re just showing baseless rage.
Baseless ignorance is no better than baseless rage.
Is this irony?
Only if you never actually intended to make Salvador look like a fool.
stcordova,
If there was no mechanism for generating further variation, it might be incoherent.
Nope. I’m genuinely curious how someone can maintain the contradiction between belief and evidence. And it’s clear from evidence that Sal is not unique in juggling faith and reality. That’s why I said I wasn’t pressing him for an answer as I realise facing these contradictions may be traumatic.
ETA making it clear who I’m responding to
Of course nobody is insisting that potentially deleterious mutations aren’t building up in “the human genome” now. Of course they are.
You have failed to address my point: that Kondrashov’s equation fails to take into account that the selection coefficient is not a constant.
In a benign environment, mutations that would be “slightly deleterious” move into the “very slightly deleterious” zone, while those that are “very slightly deleterious” move into the neutral, or even very slightly beneficial zone. It’s not uniform, of course – for instance alleles that used to favor late fertility in women, were probably quite strongly deleterious in the past, but are quite strongly beneficial now, and vice versa. But in general, our current environment is quite benign, and thus favour near neutral alleles.
Come catastrophic global warming, we may go extinct. Or it’s possible that the vast size of the human population, with its enriched range near-neutral alleles, will mean that there’s a big selective sweep, and the survivors will bear a rather different distribution of alleles to the ones possessed by humans today.
Absolutely none of it means the earth is young. What it it does mean is that the selection coefficients of alleles change as the environment changes (and, indeed, that environment is function of the distribution of allele coefficients).
In fact, Sal, for YEC even to work a tiny bit, you have to assume this is the case. There were, at most, 4 alleles from every species on the ark, and only room for representative baramins. From 4 alleles, those baramins had to evolve to the vast range of beautifully adapted species we observe today. Therefore there must have been a great number of beneficial mutations, and virtually no drift, at least in the early days, when the population was well below the N required for viability according to Kondrashov.
It’s bonkers of course – but Kondrashov is far more of a problem for YEC, flawed though the equation he was using is (not that his paper claims that it isn’t) than for an old earth. YEC requires Kondrashov’s to be far more wrong than he actually was.
None of this is a criticism of Kondrashov, whose paper pointed out the problem with the equation – not with the reality it was supposed to model.
None of which is a criticism of Kondrashov – his paper is very good.
And there are no grounds for suggesting that biologists don’t like its “implications”. No scientist can afford to ignore “implications” of good models. But they do have to get those implications right. They also have to know when the problem is with the model and when the problem is with the implication.
stcordova,
Well. .. yes it does. Small positive changes in s have a disproportionately greater effect on fixation/retention probability than small negative ones. Therefore there is a substantial bias. Just saying ‘no they don’t’, in the face of a mathematical demonstration of the same, is just … obtuse. Of course we need to know about the distributions of real s values being fed in, but this bias has a profound influence that simple denial does not address.
And … have you a response only to my final 2-line paragraph? How about acknowledging the substantive thrust of the actual post, that healthy knockouts do not prove ‘no selection’, which requires much larger datasets?
Attempting to disprove natural evolution by accelerated mutation? Hmmm.
Proposition: “Water is essential to plant growth”
Creationist rebuttal: “That can’t be so, because if you apply water at a rate of 6 feet an hour, they don’t grow”.
The rate of the whole process is important. There is a mutation-fixation/loss process. You can’t just ‘speed up’ the mutation part, with no reference to the fixation/loss element, which occurs over many generations. You add water, it has to evaporate, transpire or drain. Then you add more. Same thing with mutation. You can’t speed up part of it and draw wide-ranging conclusions from that.
And of course, like every YEC, you simultaneously propose or require massive post-Ark mutation/fixation rates (curiously, presumably magically, biased in favour of just the right kind). Such blatant, unembarrassable inconsistency is the hallmark of the YEC case.
And appeal to authority. How come Muller was not a YEC, if this issue is insurmountable? Don’t say “prior materialist commitment”.
stcordova,
Moran is very clear that ‘junk’ is not synonymous with ‘non-coding’. If a region is highly conserved, it’s probably not junk. Moran’s 90% is non-functional. I doubt he would argue that a highly conserved region is non-functional, even if its function is presently unknown.
Moran’s point is that a species wouldn’t survive 130 mutations per generation to functional code. There are functions other than protein coding, but that doesn’t affect the genetic load argument.
Sal (via Sanford) seems to think that the end is nigh. But an expanding population is hardly indicative of genetic meltdown. How is the end going to look?
This would make a good chapter-end question for a textbook:
One detectable aspect of a species suffering mutational meltdown is that its death rate exceeds its birth rate. Humanity does not appear to be doing that. Why? What factors oppose Muller’s ratchet?
When I try to trace the origin dates of various ancient languages, lo and behold, they converge on dates that are relatively recent (relative to supposed geological timescales).
See the graph to see the timeline of various civilizations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cradle_of_civilization#Timeline
I find the coincidence quite compelling. Also see the listing of several independent languages and their earliest date of record:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_first_written_accounts#Before_1000_BC
What really struck me is that it seemed all the languages emerged around the same time and it almost looked like humanity conspired in very diverse geographic locations to start having new written languages at the same time.
Suggestive again that humanity is a relatively recent phenomenon.
Indo European languages. Ignoring Basque and new world languages.
What a surprise that conquered people have related languages.
(facepalm) The date of the origin of written languages doesn’t date the first appearance of humans any more than finding a 1950 penny in the park means the Earth is only 65 years old.
We have considerable archaeological evidence of permanent human settlements going back to at least 8500 BC in both the Middle East and China. Look up Jiahu in China or Çatalhöyük in Turkey.
We also have considerable archaeological evidence of humans existing way earlier than that, back to over 100K years.
Really Sal, this latest YEC dreck is so bad it’s embarrassing.
You have to smile if this is the best.
Creationists believe there are created kinds which can diversify into subspecies. This is the orchard model.
Subspieces might be reproductively isolated, but just because two individuals of a species can’t interbreed doesn’t mean there has been a new created kind.
Lots of humans can’t interbreed — sterility being one of them, and I doubt anyone will insist if Bruce/Caitlin Jenner doesn’t become child bearing that Jenner is some sort of new created kind, at least in the Creationist sense. He will remain part of the human species.
So diversification of subspecies (reproductively isolated descendants of a created kind) can happen after the flood, but I don’t expect new created kinds to appear but rather can go extinct. We already know many body plans no longer exist, they’ve gone extinct and the number of distinct plans has gone down. I expect this is true at many taxonomic levels.
Darwin and other evolutionary biologists failed to realize removal of competitors actually casts doubt on the evolutionary mechanism to create and sustain the variety of forms.
No they’re being deleted by the competition for resources in the struggle for existence, endless forms most beautiful are not emerging, they’re disappearing.
FWIW, any one care to suggest the net number of species being created each year? Any takers?
I’ll play the game Patrick/Mathgrrl played over CSI, can the Darwinists give figures for how many new vertebrate species each year are being created by Darwinian Selection? 0,1,2,3 …..
An estimate would suffice, an educated guess with some supporting reasoning would suffice.
Darwinian Deletion as a means of evolutionary diversification is a conceptually incoherent theory. If anything, absence of selection allows diversification.
Observed present-day extinction suggests life is young. We are almost like bacteria in a petri dish getting over populated and killing itself. We’re not dead because we arrived relatively recently.