Spiders - or Does Evolution Happen??

[Spinney]

I used to work with a non-believer. His arguments against evolution and for intelligent design included...

• The human wrist is infinitely more complex than the watch that's strapped around it, but if i claimed the watch somehow 'made itself', you'd call me a nutter and lock me up!
• DNA is clearly a hexadecimal code, and code does not evolve!
• Where's all the intermediary species, such as a duck with half a pair of wings?
• Radio carbon dating is hugely inaccurate and cannot be relied upon by any sensible person.
  
• Why do people listen to scientists who believe their ancestor was a bowl of soup?

I do like the standard list of statements creationists use, or what they fondly believe to be 'hard' questions that science cannot answer - they serve very well to demonstrate their appalling lack of understanding of how science goes about things and what the theory of evolution actually is/says...

 

[benb]

I do like the standard list of statements creationists use, or what they fondly believe to be 'hard' questions that science cannot answer - they serve very well to demonstrate their appalling lack of understanding of how science goes about things and what the theory of evolution actually is/says...

"Ah, but explain the eye. How can that have evolved?", they'll say.

 

[Spinney]

A classic, and answered very well by Dawkins in one of his books, as I recall (although I can't remember which book).

They are also fond of quote-mining Darwin as saying:

To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. (Darwin 1872)

Without quoting the following paragraph that puts it into perspective:

Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound. (Darwin 1872, 143-144)

... plus three more pages of discussion about how it could have happened.

Source: http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA113_1.html

TalkOrigins is an excellent website for anyone interested in the lunacy that is creationist 'argument'.

 

[PhilDawson8270]

"Ah, but explain the eye. How can that have evolved?", they'll say.

If God made stuff, then he's a terrible engineer, as a lot of stuff is inefficient and wasted.

 

[Lullabelle]

Oh, I believe in Santa - NORAD tracks him every Xmas!

So do we

 

[MontyVeda]

I do like the standard list of statements creationists use, or what they fondly believe to be 'hard' questions that science cannot answer - they serve very well to demonstrate their appalling lack of understanding of how science goes about things and what the theory of evolution actually is/says...

he burst out laughing at me when i suggested that since evolution is an ongoing process, the intermediary species are all around us.

He was otherwise a very intelligent, interesting and likeable bloke.

 

[Spinney]

Another good one is 'if we are descended from monkeys, why are there still monkeys'

We are not descended from monkeys. We are not even descended from apes. We are descended from an earlier common ancestor of apes and hominids.

And 'what about the coelacanth, eh? Why hasn't that evolved?'

Well it has, and still is, but slowly. If they mean 'why hasn't it evolved in the last millions* of years?' - its slow evolution just shows it is pretty well adapted to where it lives.

*of course, many of them think the Earth is only around 6000 years old...

 

[MontyVeda]

...
*of course, many of them think the Earth is only around 6000 years old...

Yup, my old work mate was one of those, hence the 'radio-carbon dating is completely inaccurate' line... I used to find his perspective interesting and tried my best to spend more time listening than arguing... but the only places on-line that I've found claims of radio carbon dating being inaccurate is on creationist websites.

Why do they put so much faith in some old codger who added up all the ages of the characters in the bible got to the magic c6000 years (and that's bearing in mind that Abraham supposedly lived a good 900 years)...??

My window cleaner is the same (YEC*)... lovely bloke but doesn't want to believe learn anything other than what he believes. I suggested that it is possible to believe in Creation and The Big Bang (as many creationists do)... but he reckons it isn't. That reminds me... i must clean the inside of my windows and give him a call.

* Young Earth Creationist

 

[Fnaar]

Miss Goodbody has "The Big Bang" on her kitchen calendar, down for next June 8th. There's a list of names there too...

 

[Fnaar]

Miss Goodbody has "The Big Bang" on her kitchen calendar, down for next June 8th. There's a list of names there too...

I haven't had an invite yet, but I'll just have to see what evolves

 

[Dayvo]

I haven't had an invite yet, but I'll just have to see what evolves

Sounds like you're going to create an awful mess!

 

[Spinney]

I haven't had an invite yet, but I'll just have to see what evolves

D'you think she'll be serving Primordial soup?

 

[Mugshot]

With that scenario as a starting point, what would be the mechanism that accounts for the massive ethnic diversity of the human race that is currently manifest, if not evolution?

I'm not sure if this is rhetorical or not, however as I recently asked the same thing of a bible literalist perhaps I could share his answer with you and then you'd understand as I do now.
Following the Flood (don't forget that's literally true too, sea shells on Everest are all the evidence you need for that) Noahs 3 sons Shem, Ham and Japheth along with their wives were commanded to go forth and multiply. They did this, in different areas of the globe. However, the sons of Noah were not identical and nor were their wives, they looked different from one another and that is why different races exist, because they originated from different branches of Noahs family. Any changes which have occurred in the years since which makes the races more distinct from one another and indeed from the sub-divisions within those races is due to adaptation to the environment, which is absolutely not evolution.
Now, if I had three sons and one was black another was oriental and the third was caucasian, I think my wife and I would be having a chat, but maybe that's just me.