Mud-to-Mozart Atheology (Or, Who are the real skeptics?)

_{Gil Dodgen

October 22, 2011

Intelligent Design}

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I find the “skeptic” claim on the part of Darwinian materialists very interesting and equally illuminating. Darwinists exhibit no skepticism whatsoever about the thesis that physical stuff turned into Mozart by chance. (Don’t try to deny this, Darwinists, that is the essence of your claim. You can try to obfuscate with legion “peer-reviewed scientific papers,” but you’re not going to fool me and many others about what you are actually promoting and advocating.)

I choose Mozart not just because I am a classical concert pianist, but because his existence epitomizes everything that Darwinian theory is totally powerless to explain.

Darwinists, claiming to be skeptics, actually exhibit the antithesis of skepticism — making transparently ludicrous claims and providing a never-ending stream of unsupported extrapolations, based only on wildly imaginative speculation with no empirical support.

How is it that Darwinian atheists are the only ones who get to declare themselves legitimate skeptics? Is mud-to-Mozart-by-chance philosophy the only worldview immune to skeptical inquiry?

Comments

It’s strange how darwinists sometimes have to rephrase things in order to make them apparently more credible, at least to themselves.
Well, I bed to differ! I keep "rephrasing things" because from where I'm standing it looks as though people consistently misunderstanding it, and it's so simple! So I keep trying to find a phrasing that well get that simplicity across!
Let’s be clear: the neodarwinian algorithm is made of chance and necessity. There is no other way to describe it.
Of course there is. It's terrible way to describe it - it tells you virtually nothing. Both terms beg a great may questions, and even if you defined them extremely precisely, that still wouldn't tell you how what the algorithm is. And, btw, it's not a "neodarwinian algorithm" - it's the algorithm that Darwin himself proposed. The entire field of evolutionary biology has grown hugely and elaborated hugely since Darwin's time, not least because Darwin had no idea what the mechanisms of inheritance and variance creation were, and one of the hugely important developments has been an appreciation of the role of drift. But Darwin's algorithm still lies at the heart of evolutionary theory, and if you want to critique it, you have to understand precisely what it is!"Chance and Necessity" is about as helpful as "food and drink" in describing a healthy diet. Actually less helpful, because the terms themselves have very broad meanings.
Chance and necessity are, moreover, completely separated in the algorithm.
No, they aren't.
Chance is the RV part. RV is the only engine of variation, the only tool for generating new functional information.
"Random variation" is not a "tool" at all. It's a result. And "random" isn't even a terribly good description - "stochastic" would be better. Variants are not drawn from a flat distribution: genotypic variants that result in phenotypes that are similar to the parent are much more common than variants give rise to very different phenotypes. Moreover, there is no reason why the basic Darwinian algorithm cannot work at the level of population level as well as at the organism level, so that populations that have reproductive mechanisms that tend to give rise to optimal mutation rates and optimal kinds of mutations will tend be better able to adapt to changing environments and therefore tend to have longer-lasting lineages than populations with less optimal variance-generating mechanisms. And there is growing evidence for this, for example in DNA repair mechanisms, and, indeed, the evolution of sexual reproduction and, with it, genetic recombination mechanisms, which not only generate useful variety, but also allow alleles to propagate independently through the population. So in these senses, variation is not "random" - there are perfectly good causal mechanisms ("necessity") for mutations, and some may have actually evolved at population level, because they confer greater adaptability on the population.
Necessity is the NS part. Positive NS acts only after RV has generated new information that is naturally selectable, and its only effectis to expand the new information in the population.
Well, Natural selection is stochastic too. And to say "its only effect is to expand the new information in the population" does not do justice to what happens. Better to drop the agency language altogether. "NS" doesn't "act" at all. Again, it's a result - a direct result of heritable variation in reproductive success. But it's highly stochastic, in that what determines whether an individual breeds or not includes many many factors that have nothing to do with its genotype, and one result of this is "drift" - near neutral mutations can propagate through the population almost as readily as slightly beneficial ones. This means that any population is constantly being drip-fed by near-neutral mutations, while ones that confer less-than-average chance of survival in the current environment tend to become less prevalent, and ones that confer more-than-average chance tend to become more prevalent. And a population with rich genetic variation is going to be more adaptable should some permanent shift in environmental conditions come along.
On the other hand, negative NS has the role of “protecting” the information that already exists.
Again, you have been misled by your figure of speech. There aren't two kinds of NS. NS itself is a figure of speech only. What there are are variants that tend to promote better-than-average reproduction in the current environmente and variants that tend toe promote worse-than-average ditto, plus of course many many variants that don't do anything other than make life more interesting. However, change the environment ever so slightly (and the allele frequency in the population is itself an environmental factor, so there is lots of feedback going on here, and therefore lots of non-linearities) and what was once beneficial may become neutral or deleterious, and what was once deleterious may become neutral or beneficial. So rather than "NS expanding or protecting information",what is happening is that the environment is leaving behind, in the population gene pool, a record of what works or worked in that environment.
These fundamental points should be clear to all. They cannot be forgotten.
They are far from clear, and are very misleading.
When dariwnists say that NS is not random, they are saying a half truth. It is true that it is not random: it is a necessity algorithm.
No, for reasons I have give above. Dawkins gets this very wrong, btw.
But, at the same time, it is certainly not teleologic. As I have said many times, it is indeed wrong to call it “selection” at all. It is not the environment that selects anything. The environment just is what it is, and determines certain variables, that are not in any way connected to the information in biological beings. Again, it’s the replicating process that really selects the best replicators, given the current environment.
No, it's the environment that does the selection (if you insist on agency language). The replication process merely "offers" the environment variants from which to select. If the environment thinks that a white individual doesn't deserve to replicate, it sends an owl to eat it. If it thinks that a nice brown individual deserves to breed, it hides it from the owl. I jest of course - but that's the kind of mess you get into with agency language, and is certainly more accurate than the idea that the replication process does the selecting! Except of course in the case of sexual selection, but that one helps my case not yours!
NS is a byproduct of the replicating process, and of the information already present in the replicators, that allows them to replicate.
Yes, exactly, it's a byproduct. And of course you are correct that information already present allows them to replicate. Without that basic function there can be no Darwinian evolution, which is why Darwinian evolution can't explain how the first self-replicators got started. But there's a heck of a lot more to the information in the genome than simply the information required to replicate. There's information about how to forage, how to avoid being prey, etc, and all that information gets there from environment, which "selects" those variants that solve these problems. Or rather, because this language produce more heat than light, once you have a self-replicating mechanism that results in replication with heritable variance in reproductive success, those variants that replicate best in the current environment will come to dominate the population. That's the Darwinian algorithm, and it's dead simple.
The only generator of new information, however, in the neodarwinian process, is RV. In essence, the darwinian peocess is a random process, with possible amplification at certain steps, if and when positively naturally selectable functional information appears (that is, practlcally never).
Trying to separate "RV" from "NS" is bootless, IMO. And trying to attribute "information creation" to one half rather than the other, is even more pointless. Apart from the prerequisite that the population must be able to replicate, the "information" that accrues in the population genotypes over time is just as much a product of the variance-creation processes as it is a product of the "selection" process, as should be apparent if instead of thinking of the Darwinian mechanism as "RM+NS" as so many people write it,you think of it as what it is: a single mechanism: self-replication with heritable variance in reproductive success. If there is no variance-producing mechanism in the reproductive process there will be no accumulation of information; but equally, if the variance that is produced has no effect on reproductive success, there won't be any accumulation of information either. Both are necessary; neither is sufficient.
So, let’s say it’s mud to Mozart by chance, with possible little help at some crucial steps. Nonsense, just the same.
And I hope it is clear from my post that this is indeed, nonsense, and not proposed by anyone :)Elizabeth Liddle_{October 23, 2011
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And BTW Nick- the way you use the word creationist it seems to mean "someone who adheres to the evidence and thinks imagination is best left to bedtime stories".Joseph_{October 23, 2011
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Nick, Nature does not select and whatever works good enough survives and reproduces. You cannot look at the genomes of individuals in a population and tell which is going to outreproduce the others. You cannot tell by looking at the organism- natural selection is an after-the-fact statistical assessment. As for "strong selection", well we see that when humans are involved, for example in infections when anti-biotics are used. The surviving bacteria are those with loss-of-function mutations which isn't the type of change your position requires. The fact that YOU don't know these obvious points, and instead rely on bullying and spewage, is, yet again, yet another huge, crashing reason why most people are disgusted with evotard "scientists".Joseph_{October 23, 2011
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Umm "natural selction" is just differential reproduction due to heritable random variation- nothing is being selected as whatever works good enough gets by.Joseph_{October 23, 2011
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Umm there isn’t any selecting going on Nick and Larry Moran tells us: The explanation that best fits the data tells us that >99% of all evolutionary change is due to random genetic drift and not natural selection.
Larry Moran is talking about the genomes of humans and other large genomes and how much of the sequence change is under selection vs. neutral. Most of it is thought to be neutral. Amongst other things, this is strong evidence that a lot of these large genomes is junk (another position which Moran argues for). This is nothing like saying that "there isn't ANY selecting going on" -- Moran doesn't believe that and neither does anyone else in biology. It also doesn't mean anything about the evolution of phenotype -- body size, shape, etc. All of that can be under strong selection, and still 99% of the genome changes (but not all of them) on the sequence level can be neutral. Only a few percent of the genome is even coding sequence or regulatory anyway. The fact that you don't know these obvious points, and instead rely on misinterpretation of a quote mine, and no one in your camp has corrected you here or elsewhere, is, yet again, yet another huge, crashing reason why scientists are digusted by creationists and rightly so.NickMatzke_UD_{October 23, 2011
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What do we really observe? The odds of (a combination of) chance and necessity as a cause of the existing or extinct forms of life are laughably small. It is not serious science. It is make-believe science.Eugene S_{October 23, 2011
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Elizabeth: It's strange how darwinists sometimes have to rephrase things in order to make them apparently more credible, at least to themselves. Let's be clear: the neodarwinian algorithm is made of chance and necessity. There is no other way to describe it. Chance and necessity are, moreover, completely separated in the algorithm. Chance is the RV part. RV is the only engine of variation, the only tool for generating new functional information. Necessity is the NS part. Positive NS acts only after RV has generated new information that is naturally selectable, and its only effectis to expand the new information in the population. On the other hand, negative NS has the role of "protecting" the information that already exists. These fundamental points should be clear to all. They cannot be forgotten. When dariwnists say that NS is not random, they are saying a half truth. It is true that it is not random: it is a necessity algorithm. But, at the same time, it is certainly not teleologic. As I have said many times, it is indeed wrong to call it "selection" at all. It is not the environment that selects anything. The environment just is what it is, and determines certain variables, that are not in any way connected to the information in biological beings. Again, it's the replicating process that really selects the best replicators, given the current environment. NS is a byproduct of the replicating process, and of the information already present in the replicators, that allows them to replicate. The only generator of new information, however, in the neodarwinian process, is RV. In essence, the darwinian peocess is a random process, with possible amplification at certain steps, if and when positively naturally selectable functional information appears (that is, practlcally never). So, let's say it's mud to Mozart by chance, with possible little help at some crucial steps. Nonsense, just the same.gpuccio_{October 23, 2011
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Joseph, you're not making any sense here. First you said "Umm there isn’t any selecting going on" then you said "I know we can have natural selection, ie evolution" You have directly contradicted yourself in the span of two posts.GinoB_{October 23, 2011
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Adding to the above point: even in a strict chance and necessity framework, the laws themselves are contingent and specific. Hence, information is primary to all that exists, and to everything determined from the genesis of time and space.material.infantacy_{October 23, 2011
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Elizabeth:
Why people keep saying that evolutionists think that Mozart happened “by chance”?
Well it definitely ain't on purpose on by plan or by design. So what is left? Reproductive success? Many things contribute to that, including the loss of functionality. And guess what? There isn't any evidence that demonstrates reproductive success can account for the appearance of new, useful and functional multi-part systems.Joseph_{October 23, 2011
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chance and necessity- they said "and"Joseph_{October 23, 2011
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It is exteremely important to expose the impotence of Nick's claims.Joseph_{October 23, 2011
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I know ID is not anti-evolution. I also know we can have evolution and not have universal common descent. I know we can have natural selection, ie evolution, and not have ucd.Joseph_{October 23, 2011
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Information imparted by the environment is restricted to the constraints imposed by the anthropic principle, AFAICT -- apart from that you have the laws of physics acting on material substances, varying stochastically within the physical constraints also imposed by the anthropic principle. At the very least, Mozart is a necessity based on conditions established with the very cause directly preceding the introduction of time and space. That is to say, a necessity given enough probabilistic resources -- and so, the product of chance and necessity, dependent upon the constraints within which C/N operates, i.e., the anthropic principle. The only primary cause that apparently can be added to chance and necessity, in a material framework, is that which was imposed at the genesis of the universe: the physical constraints that allow for material laws in the first place. Other causes, it would seem, are secondary, or "emergent" given the previous assumptions.material.infantacy_{October 23, 2011
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Joseph, Intelligent Design is NOT Anti-Evolution! The fossil record shows clear signs of evolution, but that doesn't mean the deep time evolutionary patterns we see weren't directed by God. I wish you ID skeptics would get this straight for once.GinoB_{October 23, 2011
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Why do you think events must be either chance OR necessity? Why can't events happen due to processes that combine chance AND necessity, as we observe in biological evolution?GinoB_{October 23, 2011
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I don't know how you want to parse it into "Chance" and "Necessity" - I don't find them a very useful pair of concepts myself, but by the simple logical fact that if things replicate with heritable variation, and at least some of that variation is variation in reproductive success, the population will adapt to its environment.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 23, 2011
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By necessity then -- or is there another primary causal mechanism that doesn't "emerge" from chance and necessity?material.infantacy_{October 23, 2011
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Joseph: >99% ~= all. Moreover, what that 99% tells us is there are a huge number of mutations that are near-neutral in the current environment. This is extremely important.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 23, 2011
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Why people keep saying that evolutionists think that Mozart happened "by chance"? We don't.Elizabeth Liddle_{October 23, 2011
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"It leaves us with two kinds of people. Those who pretend to know all the answers, and those who would like to find out as much as possible, incrementally, through research."
I agree. Pretending to know that there is a material root to the biological tree is question begging. It's much better to keep the origins question open to inquiry, allowing for any logical possibilities to be illuminated by evidence.
The difference is not that one kind knows and the other kind doesn’t know. The difference is in how one deals with not knowing.
Exactly. It makes no sense to assume a cause that has not been shown to be in effect, considering that the cause is at issue. Let's instead be reasonable and follow the evidence where it leads. Well said.material.infantacy_{October 23, 2011
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That's one of biggest LsOC I've heard. To know that not knowing is preferable to knowing requires knowing. Rather self defeating if you ask me. Not knowing is what it is. We don't know and can't say. Knowing leads us to two things - 1) more knowledge - 2) the knowledge that we have a lot more to learn. It's really a false humility to assume that someone who has (or claims to have) a particular knowledge is not being realistic with what he/she does not know. So there's two kinds of people, I agree. But the two kinds are those who are wrong and those who are right, and those two types have branches if rightness and wrongness. Deciphering through all that is right and wrong is our task. Materialism to the unbiased observer appears at the outset to be irrational, and it gets worse the more one looks into it. DrBot below has led him/herself into the obvious corner with materialism. Once there the arguments get even more irrational. Don't believe me? Pay attention to how he/she responds (if he/she responds) to my last post there. The point where a materialist realizes that infinite regresses of causes are absurd, is the point where irrational explanations for existence begin - such as multiverses and what have you. I fully expect him/her to start going there. All the research in all of space and time is not going to magically transfer him/her or you out of that corner. It's not so much a matter of knowing or not knowing, but a matter of primary logic when one thinks rationally about how and why we exist. It's that primary logic that has led us to the strength of mind to be able design, engineer and assemble great things, and to learn about our world to the extent we have. It didn't begin with the research, but with right reason. Materialism is the absolute antithesis to right reason on it's very face.CannuckianYankee_{October 23, 2011
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Nick Matzke:
1. Evolution isn’t a chance process. Natural selection is an anti-chance, nonrandom process. That’s why it’s called “selection”.
Umm there isn't any selecting going on Nick and Larry Moran tells us:
The explanation that best fits the data tells us that >99% of all evolutionary change is due to random genetic drift and not natural selection.
Nick sez:
2. Evolution is about the evolution of populations and species. The special features of individuals, particularly rare individuals like Mozart, require additional explanation.
More standard nonsensical propaganda- Populations tend to reign in deviants Nick:
3. Evolution gets you to stone-age humans.
Yeah if you started with stone-age humans.
4. We know evolution happened because we have the fossils which show it happening.
Unfortunately you require biological/ genetic evidence that demonstrates the transformations required are possible. And to date you don't have that. IOW your "fossils" are just a matter of "If I didn't believe it I wouldn't have seen it." So Nicjk how can we test your claim that your view of the fossils is the correct one?Joseph_{October 23, 2011
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Further notes refuting supposed human evolution: Here is a paper which, though technical, shows that the modern genetic evidence we now have actually supports Adam and Eve. Moreover, the evidence it presents from the latest genetic research is completely inexplicable to neo-Darwinism, i.e. neo-Darwinism, once again, completely falls apart upon scrutiny; (and although I don't agree with the extreme 6000 year Young Earth model used as a starting presumption in the paper for deriving the graphs, the model, none-the-less, can be amended quite comfortable to a longer time period. Which I think provides a much more 'comfortable' fit to the overall body of evidence)
The Non-Mythical Adam and Eve! - Refuting errors by Francis Collins and BioLogos http://creation.com/historical-adam-biologos
CMI has a video of the preceding paper entitled, ‘Are All From Adam and Eve?’ by Dr. Carter. It is at the bottom of the list of videos, on the following site, after you click on the ‘Creation Super Conference link at the bottom of the page:
‘Are All From Adam and Eve?’ by Dr. Carter http://www.biblediscoverytv.com/
As well, there is now other lines of compelling 'Genetic Adam and Genetic Eve' evidence. This genetic evidence strongly supports the Biblical view of the sudden creation of man as these following videos and article clearly show:
Human Evolution? - The Compelling Genetic Evidence For Adam and Eve Dr. Fazale Rana - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4284482
Dr. Fazale Rana defends the integrity of the genetic evidence for Adam and Eve, on page 4 of the following site, from some pretty high level criticism from BioLogos:
Were They Real? The Scientific Case for Adam and Eve by Fazale Rana - November 2010 http://www.reasons.org/files/ezine/ezine-2010-04.pdf
Further note:
Human Evolution - Genetic Adam And Eve - Hugh Ross - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4036776 The "Eve" Mitochondrial Consensus Sequence - John Sanford Excerpt: Given the high mutation rate within mitochondria and the large geographic separation among the individuals within our dataset, we did not expect to find the original human mitochondrial sequence to be so well preserved within modern populations. With the exception of a very few ambiguous nucleotides, the consensus sequence clearly represents Eve's mitochondrial DNA sequence. http://www.icr.org/article/mitochondrial-eve-consensus-sequence/
further notes:
Chimps are not like humans - May 2004 Excerpt: the International Chimpanzee Chromosome 22 Consortium reports that 83% of chimpanzee chromosome 22 proteins are different from their human counterparts,,, The results reported this week showed that "83% of the genes have changed between the human and the chimpanzee—only 17% are identical—so that means that the impression that comes from the 1.2% [sequence] difference is [misleading]. In the case of protein structures, it has a big effect," Sakaki said. Chimp chromosome creates puzzles - 2004 Excerpt: However, the researchers were in for a surprise. Because chimps and humans appear broadly similar, some have assumed that most of the differences would occur in the large regions of DNA that do not appear to have any obvious function. But that was not the case. The researchers report in 'Nature' that many of the differences were within genes, the regions of DNA that code for proteins. 83% of the 231 genes compared had differences that affected the amino acid sequence of the protein they encoded. And 20% showed "significant structural changes". In addition, there were nearly 68,000 regions that were either extra or missing between the two sequences, accounting for around 5% of the chromosome.,,, "we have seen a much higher percentage of change than people speculated." The researchers also carried out some experiments to look at when and how strongly the genes are switched on. 20% of the genes showed significant differences in their pattern of activity. http://www.nature.com/news/1998/040524/full/news040524-8.html Study Reports a Whopping "23% of Our Genome" Contradicts Standard Human-Ape Evolutionary Phylogeny - Casey Luskin - June 2011 Excerpt: For about 23% of our genome, we share no immediate genetic ancestry with our closest living relative, the chimpanzee. This encompasses genes and exons to the same extent as intergenic regions. We conclude that about 1/3 of our genes started to evolve as human-specific lineages before the differentiation of human, chimps, and gorillas took place. (of note; 1/3 of our genes is equal to about 7000 genes that we do not share with chimpanzees) http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/06/study_reports_a_whopping_23_of047041.html Could Chance Arrange the Code for (Just) One Gene? "our minds cannot grasp such an extremely small probability as that involved in the accidental arranging of even one gene (10^-236)." http://www.creationsafaris.com/epoi_c10.htm
bornagain77_{October 23, 2011
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It leaves us with two kinds of people. Those who pretend to know all the answers, and those who would like to find out as much as possible, incrementally, through research. The difference is not that one kind knows and the other kind doesn't know. The difference is in how one deals with not knowing.Petrushka_{October 23, 2011
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further notes: These following studies, though of materialistic bent, offer strong support that Humans are extremely unique in 'advanced information capacity' when compared to animals:
Darwin’s mistake: Explaining the discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds: Excerpt: There is a profound functional discontinuity between human and nonhuman minds. We argue that this discontinuity pervades nearly every domain of cognition and runs much deeper than even the spectacular scaffolding provided by language or culture can explain. We hypothesize that the cognitive discontinuity between human and nonhuman animals is largely due to the degree to which human and nonhuman minds are able to approximate the higher-order, systematic, relational capabilities of a physical symbol system. http://www.bbsonline.org/Preprints/Penn-01062006/Referees/Penn-01062006_bbs-preprint.htm Origin of the Mind: Marc Hauser - Scientific American - April 2009 Excerpt: "Researchers have found some of the building blocks of human cognition in other species. But these building blocks make up only the cement footprint of the skyscraper that is the human mind",,, http://www.wjh.harvard.edu?/~mnkylab/publications/rec?ent/mindSciAm.pdf Earliest humans not so different from us, research suggests - February 2011 Excerpt: Shea argues that comparing the behavior of our most ancient ancestors to Upper Paleolithic Europeans holistically and ranking them in terms of their "behavioral modernity" is a waste of time. There are no such things as modern humans, Shea argues, just Homo sapiens populations with a wide range of behavioral variability. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-02-earliest-humans.html Geometric Principles Appear Universal in Our Minds - May 2011 Excerpt: Villagers belonging to an Amazonian group called the Mundurucú intuitively grasp abstract geometric principles despite having no formal math education,,, Mundurucú adults and 7- to 13-year-olds demonstrate as firm an understanding of the properties of points, lines and surfaces as adults and school-age children in the United States and France,,, http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/universal-geometry/
These following studies highlight the difficulty materialists have in fitting our mental abilities into any plausible evolutionary scenario:
New Caledonian Crows Exceed Apes/Chimps at Trap-tube Experiment - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M52ZVtmPE9g Origin of Soulish Animals: Excerpt: Bolhuis and Wynne contrast the cognitive capacities of birds and primates.,,, Evidently, certain bird species exhibit greater powers of the mind than do apes. http://www.reasons.org/OriginofSoulishAnimals A scientist looks again at Project Nim - Trying to teach Chimps to talk fails Excerpt: "The language didn't materialize. A human baby starts out mostly imitating, then begins to string words together. Nim didn't learn. His three-sign combinations - such as 'eat me eat' or 'play me Nim' - were redundant. He imitated signs to get rewards. I published the negative results in 1979 in the journal Science, which had a chilling effect on the field." http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2011/07/19/a_scientist_looks_again_at_project_nim
It is also interesting to point out that the materialistic philosophy has an extremely difficult time assigning any proper value to humans in the first place, i.e. Just how do you derive value for a person from a philosophy that maintains transcendent values are illusory?:
How much is my body worth? Excerpt: The U.S. Bureau of Chemistry and Soils invested many a hard-earned tax dollar in calculating the chemical and mineral composition of the human body,,,,Together, all of the above (chemicals and minerals) amounts to less than one dollar! http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/explain/docs/worth.asp
Whereas Theism, particularly Christianity, has no trouble whatsoever figuring out how much humans are worth:
John 3:16 "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. Casting Crowns - Who am I? with lyrics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt7OZyBj5Ik
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continued rebut on human evolution: This following quote, by a leading evolutionist in the field, is candid in its admission of the gaps for the evidence of human evolution.
A 2004 book by leading evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr stated that "The earliest fossils of Homo, Homo rudolfensis and Homo erectus, are separated from Australopithecus (Lucy) by a large, unbridged gap. How can we explain this seeming saltation? Not having any fossils that can serve as missing links, we have to fall back on the time-honored method of historical science, the construction of a historical narrative.” Misrepresentations of the Evidence for Human Evolutionary Origins: http://www.evolutionnews.org/2009/04/texas_hold_em_part_ii_calling_1.html#more
Even though the preceding comment from a leading evolutionist in the field is crushing, to the smooth transition needed for the materialist to make his case for human evolution, you would think a materialist would at least have some sort of evidence he could cling to with the Homo erectus and the Homo rudolfensis fossils Mayr alluded to. Yet when we look at the evidence presented by the materialists themselves, for the proposed evolution of Homo Rudolfensis and erectus, the evidence is anything but straight forward and appears to be, once again, 'shoehorned' to fit their preconceived philosophical bias:
“Dr. Leakey produced a biased reconstruction (of 1470/ Homo Rudolfensis) based on erroneous preconceived expectations of early human appearance that violated principles of craniofacial development,” Dr. Timothy Bromage http://www.geneticarchaeology.com/research/Mans_Earliest_Direct_Ancestors_Looked_More_Apelike_Than_Previously_Believed.asp Hominids, Homonyms, and Homo sapiens - 05/27/2009 - Creation Safaris: Excerpt: Homo erectus is particularly controversial, because it is such a broad classification. Tattersall and Schwartz find no clear connection between the Asian, European and African specimens lumped into this class. “In his 1950 review, Ernst Mayr placed all of these forms firmly within the species Homo erectus,” they explained. “Subsequently, Homo erectus became the standard-issue ‘hominid in the middle,’ expanding to include not only the fossils just mentioned, but others of the same general period....”. They discussed the arbitrariness of this classification: "Put together, all these fossils (which span almost 2 myr) make a very heterogeneous assortment indeed; and placing them all together in the same species only makes any conceivable sense in the context of the ecumenical view of Homo erectus as the middle stage of the single hypervariable hominid lineage envisioned by Mayr (on the basis of a much slenderer record). Viewed from the morphological angle, however, the practice of cramming all of this material into a single Old World-wide species is highly questionable. Indeed, the stuffing process has only been rendered possible by a sort of ratchet effect, in which fossils allocated to Homo erectus almost regardless of their morphology have subsequently been cited as proof of just how variable the species can be." By “ratchet effect,” they appear to mean something like a self-fulfilling prophecy: i.e., “Let’s put everything from this 2-million-year period into one class that we will call Homo erectus.” Someone complains, “But this fossil from Singapore is very different from the others.” The first responds, “That just shows how variable the species Homo erectus can be.” http://creationsafaris.com/crev200905.htm#20090527a
The 'selling' of shoddy evidence is shameless by neo-Darwinists:
Icon Of Evolution - Ape To Man - The Ultimate Deception - Jonathan Wells - video http://vimeo.com/19080087 Hominid Hype and the Election Cycle - Casey Luskin - September 2011 Excerpt: Ignoring fraudulent fossils like Piltdown man, the last 50 years have seen a slew of so-called human ancestors which initially produced hype, and were later disproven. http://www.evolutionnews.org/2011/09/hominid_hype_and_the_election_050801.html
But perhaps the most underhanded thing for Mr. Matzke and other 'unskeptical' neo-Darwinists to do, is to completely ignore the fact they have demonstrated 'mechanism' for body plan morphogenesis, thus they are not even really 'doing science' in the first place, but are merely making conjectures with no basis to reality in which to refer to:
Stephen Meyer - Functional Proteins And Information For Body Plans - video http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4050681
Dr. Stephen Meyer comments at the end of the preceding video,,,
‘Now one more problem as far as the generation of information. It turns out that you don’t only need information to build genes and proteins, it turns out to build Body-Plans you need higher levels of information; Higher order assembly instructions. DNA codes for the building of proteins, but proteins must be arranged into distinctive circuitry to form distinctive cell types. Cell types have to be arranged into tissues. Tissues have to be arranged into organs. Organs and tissues must be specifically arranged to generate whole new Body-Plans, distinctive arrangements of those body parts. We now know that DNA alone is not responsible for those higher orders of organization. DNA codes for proteins, but by itself it does insure that proteins, cell types, tissues, organs, will all be arranged in the body. And what that means is that the Body-Plan morphogenesis, as it is called, depends upon information that is not encoded on DNA. Which means you can mutate DNA indefinitely. 80 million years, 100 million years, til the cows come home. It doesn’t matter, because in the best case you are just going to find a new protein some place out there in that vast combinatorial sequence space. You are not, by mutating DNA alone, going to generate higher order structures that are necessary to building a body plan. So what we can conclude from that is that the neo-Darwinian mechanism is grossly inadequate to explain the origin of information necessary to build new genes and proteins, and it is also grossly inadequate to explain the origination of novel biological form.’ - Stephen Meyer - (excerpt taken from Meyer/Sternberg vs. Shermer/Prothero debate - 2009) A few comments on Quantum ‘non-local’ epigenetic information: https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1iNy78O6ZpU8wpFIgkILi85TvhC9mSqzUSE_jzbksoHY
It should be pointed that this 'non-local' (beyond space and time) epigentic information, is very, very, friendly to Theistic postulations for human origins, to put it mildly: music and verse:
Steven Curtis Chapman - God is God (Original Version) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz94NQ5HRyk Genesis 2:7 the LORD God formed the man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.
bornagain77_{October 23, 2011
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continued rebut on human evolution: The supposed next step for 'human evolution' does not fair any better for the evolutionists than Lucy did:
The changing face of genus Homo - Wood; Collard Excerpt: the current criteria for identifying species of Homo are difficult, if not impossible, to operate using paleoanthropological evidence. We discuss alternative, verifiable, criteria, and show that when these new criteria are applied to Homo, two species, Homo habilis and Homo rudolfensis, fail to meet them. http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/68503570/abstract Human evolution? Excerpt: Some scientists have proposed moving this species (habilis) out of Homo and into Australopithecus (ape) due to the morphology of its skeleton being more adapted to living on trees rather than to moving on two legs like H. sapiens. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolution#Genus_Homo Who Was Homo habilis—And Was It Really Homo? - Ann Gibbons - June 2011 Abstract: In the past decade, Homo habilis's status as the first member of our genus has been undermined. Newer analytical methods suggested that H. habilis matured and moved less like a human and more like an australopithecine, such as the famous partial skeleton of Lucy. Now, a report in press in the Journal of Human Evolution finds that H. habilis's dietary range was also more like Lucy's than that of H. erectus, which many consider the first fully human species to walk the earth. That suggests the handyman had yet to make the key adaptations associated with our genus, such as the ability to exploit a variety of foods in many environments, the authors say. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/332/6036/1370.summary New findings raise questions about who evolved from whom Excerpt: The old theory was that the first and oldest species in our family tree, Homo habilis, evolved into Homo erectus, which then became us, Homo sapiens. But those two earlier species lived side-by-side about 1.5 million years ago in parts of Kenya for at least half a million years,,, The two species lived near each other, but probably didn’t interact with each other, each having their own “ecological niche,” Spoor said. Homo habilis was likely more vegetarian and Homo erectus ate some meat, he said. Like chimps and apes, “they’d just avoid each other, they don’t feel comfortable in each other’s company,” he said. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20178936/ The Truth About Human Origins: Excerpt: "It is practically impossible to determine which "family tree" (for human evolution) one should accept. Richard Leakey (of the famed fossil hunting family from Africa) has proposed one. His late mother, Mary Leakey, proposed another. Donald Johanson, former president of the Institute of Human Origins in Berkeley, California, has proposed yet another. And as late as 2001, Meave Leakey (Richard's wife) has proposed still another.,," http://books.google.com/books?id=J9pON9yB8HkC&pg=PT28&lpg=PT28 Is the early history of the human race such a mess that it shouldn’t be taught in school? - June 2011 https://uncommondescent.com/human-evolution/is-the-early-history-of-the-human-race-such-a-mess-that-it-shouldnt-be-taught-in-school/
Here are some fairly good videos for refuting the 'non-skeptical' hypothesis of human evolution:
Human Evolution? - What Do The Bones Really Say? - Don Patton - video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEw8fk6NvbI Human Evolution ? - Dr. Marc Surtees - Video http://edinburghcreationgroup.org/humanevolution.xml Is There a Monkey in Your Family Tree ? - Thomas Kindell - video http://uk.video.yahoo.com/watch/2377111
bornagain77_{October 23, 2011
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Well contrary to Mr. Matzke's very non-skeptical claim that lining selected (best candidate) fossils up in a (preconceived) row allows us to 'know evolution happened', there are prominent researchers, who certainly know the fossil record much better than Mr. Matzke does, who 'know' that this 'neat little progression' is anything but the 'neat little progression' Mr. Matzke has portrayed it, 'non-skeptically', to be. These following quotes, from leading experts in the field, sum up nicely what we can make of the poverty of the fossil record for 'human evolution':
When we consider the remote past, before the origin of the actual species Homo sapiens, we are faced with a fragmentary and disconnected fossil record. Despite the excited and optimistic claims that have been made by some paleontologists, no fossil hominid species can be established as our direct ancestor. Richard Lewontin - Harvard Zoologist http://www.discovery.org/a/9961 Evolution of the Genus Homo - Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences - Tattersall, Schwartz, May 2009 Excerpt: "Definition of the genus Homo is almost as fraught as the definition of Homo sapiens. We look at the evidence for “early Homo,” finding little morphological basis for extending our genus to any of the 2.5–1.6-myr-old fossil forms assigned to “early Homo” or Homo habilis/rudolfensis." http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.031208.100202 Man is indeed as unique, as different from all other animals, as had been traditionally claimed by theologians and philosophers. Evolutionist Ernst Mayr http://www.y-origins.com/index.php?p=home_more4 “Something extraordinary, if totally fortuitous, happened with the birth of our species….Homo sapiens is as distinctive an entity as exists on the face of the Earth, and should be dignified as such instead of being adulterated with every reasonably large-brained hominid fossil that happened to come along.” Anthropologist Ian Tattersall - curator at the American Museum of Natural History
further notes: The following sources show unequivocally that 'Lucy', the supposed superstar of human evolution, was an ape:
"these australopith specimens (Lucy) can be accommodated with the range of intraspecific variation of African apes" - Nature 443 (9/2006), p.296 "The australopithecines (Lucy) known over the last several decades from Olduvai and Sterkfontein, Kromdraai and Makapansgat, are now irrevocably removed from a place in a group any closer to humans than to African apes and certainly from any place in a direct human lineage." Charles Oxnard, former professor of anatomy at the University of Southern California Medical School, who subjected australopithecine fossils to extensive computer analysis; Israeli Researchers: 'Lucy' is not direct ancestor of humans"; Apr 16, 2007 The Mandibular ramus morphology (lower jaw bone) on a recently discovered specimen of Australopithecus afarensis closely matches that of gorillas. This finding was unexpected given that chimpanzees are the closest living relatives of humans.,,,its absence in modern humans cast doubt on the role of Au. afarensis as a modern human ancestor. http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2007/04/24/lucy_demoted_from_the_human_ancestral_li "The australopithecine (Lucy) skull is in fact so overwhelmingly simian (ape-like) as opposed to human that the contrary proposition could be equated to an assertion that black is white." Lord Solly Zuckerman - Chief scientific advisor to British government and leading zoologist Lucy - The Powersaw Incident - (a humorous video showing how biased evolutionists can be with the evidence to 'make the evidence' fit their preconceived conclusion) http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4032597 "If pressed about man's ancestry, I would have to unequivocally say that all we have is a huge question mark. To date, there has been nothing found to truthfully purport as a transitional species to man, including Lucy, since 1470 was as old and probably older. If further pressed, I would have to state that there is more evidence to suggest an abrupt arrival of man rather than a gradual process of evolving". Richard Leakey, world's foremost paleo-anthropologist, in a PBS documentary, 1990. http://www.wasdarwinright.com/earlyman.htm
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Not without the absurdity of an infinite regress of causes.CannuckianYankee_{October 23, 2011
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