NationStates Jolt Archive

Due to declining participation among the original thread invitees the limited participation portion of this thread is now finished. This thread is now open to any and all posters. Point of information should this thread now begin to grow at an accelerated rate: The limitted participation portion of the thread is contained on pages 1 through 6 for anyone who wants to peruse it.

(PS: If a moderator is able and is inclined to do so, they could change the thread title to reflect the change of status since apparently just editting this post title doesn't do it.)

From the answers to the telegrams I received we have among the participants at least one Young Earther and several people who question the general reliability of various radiometric dating methods so we might as well begin there.

The “Evolutionary” Position

The quotation marks are up there because technically this is the position established by geology and physics, not evolution… and established quite independently of evolution.

Carbon (C14) Dating:

C14 dating is used to date the remains of organic, air breathing organisms up to approximately 50,000 years old. While living these organisms breathe the atmosphere, which contains trace amounts of the radioactive isotope Carbon 14 that is constantly being produced in the upper atmosphere through neutron bombardment. So long as they are alive the C14 content of their bodies will remain in equilibrium with the C14 content of the atmosphere. When they die respiration ceases, along with the intake of any new quantities of C14. Over time the C14 decays with a half-life of 5568 years into N14. By measuring how much C14 remains un-decayed the time elapsed since the death of the organism can be determined.

A common misperception of C14 dating is that it relies on the assumption that atmospheric C14 levels remained constant in the past so that we can know how much C14 an organism started off with. While this was an assumption made when the technique was first developed about half a century ago it has not been the case for several decades. Historical atmospheric C14 concentrations have been charted and calibrated using both dendochronology and lake varves which incorporate organic sediment in their annual deposition layers. One particularly good example of this is Lake Suigetsu in Japan where cores have been drilled to a depth of 45,000 annual layers. Because of the layering process we have an independent count of exactly how old every layer is… and because the layers incorporate organic material (the remains of a surface algae which dies off every year and sinks to the bottom of the lake) each layer can be C14 dated as well, and using these two data points the atmospheric C14 content can be charted all the way back for the entire time span encompassed by the varve core. This data (cross-checked against multiple other sites and methods) then allows us to apply C14 dating to other sites already knowing how fluctuations in atmospheric C14 concentrations in the past will effect the results… and allowing us to calibrate out error that would otherwise be introduced due to those past fluctuations.

Just one more note on C14 dating... once this calibration scale was applied it was discovered that previous C14 dates had been underestimating ages. By a few percent. There are also the occasional examples of C14 dates which have supposedly been wildly inaccurate. Many of these examples are the result of grossly improper applications of the method. For example, one I have encountered quite often is the "C14 dating of a living snail shell" that came back as thousands of years old... I believe this is one of Hovind's pet illustrations. The mollusks in question were extremely inappropriate subjects for C14 dating, which anyone familiar with the method would know. They form shells which are in equilibrium with the carbon content of the water sources in which they live... NOT the atmosphere. No C14 lab worth it's salt would ever date such an organism without warning the person requesting the test of the reservoir effect that would most likely render the test results invalid.

Longer Ranged Radiometric Dating:

There are a great many longer ranged radiometric dating methods using radioactive isotopes with longer half-lives than C14. I’ll quickly review a couple of them.

1. Argon-Argon (Ar40-Ar39) dating. Argon-Argon is a method closely related to Potassium-Argon, where the age of a sample is determined by measurement of how much of the potassium-40 in the rock has decayed into Argon-40. However, with the Argon-Argon method it is also possible to tell if there is any Argon-40 present which is NOT a product of the decay of the potassium in the sample. This is done by placing the sample to be dated in close proximity to a nuclear reactor for several hours. The resulting neutron bombardment from the reactor causes potassium-39 in the sample to be transformed into Argon-39. Argon-39 has a half-life of only 269 years, and is not found in nature… so any subsequently detected argon-39 is known to be a product of the decay of the potassium-39 in the sample. After this is done the sample is then put through an incremental heating process and the released argon-40/argon-39 ratios are measured at every stage. A sample that contains only argon-40 that is a product of the decay of the potassium-40 in that sample will release argon-39 and argon-40 in the same proportion at EVERY heating step. If there is parentless argon-40 in the sample that is not a product of the decay of that sample’s potassium-40 however the ratios will change at different heating stages. This eliminates the popular claim that excess parentless argon in a sample can cause that sample to date as older than it really is.
2. Rubidium-Strontium (Rb-Sr) dating. Very useful for dating igneous rocks in particular. There are many different isotopes of Strontium (Sr-87, Sr-86, etc…). Rubidium-87 decays into Strontium-87. When magma first cools into an igneous rock formation all parts of the rock will have the same ratio of strontium-87/strontium-86 because the isotopes are freely dispersing through the molten rock prior to that time. However, once the rock hardens different parts of the rock will have different rubidium/strontium ratios than others since the atomic make-up of rubidium is larger than that of all the strontium isotopes and it will be incorporated into the structure of some minerals more or less easily than that of others. From that point on the rubidium will continue decaying into strontium-87… and the areas of the rock with higher initial ratios of rubidium/strontium will have their concentrations of strontium-87 increase at a higher rate than those with a lower ratio of rubidium-strontium. By taking multiple measurements from different sections of a sample and plotting their final ratios of strontium-87 to other strontium isotopes which, not being byproducts of the radioactive decay of other elements, have remained stable since the formation of the rock… the initial ratios of those isotopes throughout the sample can be determined and the elapsed time since the samples formation is established. Again, this method is highly resistant to any objections that we have to assume the concentrations of the isotopes in the samples being dated in order to date them. That is simply not the case. The initial concentrations are experimentally determined.

For further info on the various radiometric dating methods, and since (I believe) all the other participants in this discussion are Christians, I would highly recommend this page:

http://www.asa3.org/ASA/resources/Wiens.html#page%206

Dr. Wiens goes into considerably greater detail than I have, there’s the added advantage of several visual aids, and he’s not a godless atheist like me for those that tend to distrust us as a matter of principle… just in case there are any of those reading along.

Constancy of Decay Rates

For my last point in this post I’ll address one more often-encountered claim. That we just assume that decay rates have remained constant over time. This is not true. The constancy of decay rates over time has been independently established by multiple tests. Among them the isotopic analysis of the byproducts of the Oklo Natural Fission Reactor at Gabon which establish that decay rates have undergone absolutely no detectable change for a minimum of the past 1.8 billion years. There is also an entire battery of interstellar observations that can be made that would detect a past alteration of decay rates since that would require a change of the fine structure constant of the universe… with quite readily observable effects. Effects which are never observed no matter how far away (and thus how old) the object is we are looking at.

And that is a summary of the “evolutionary” position on dating methods. The dates arrived at are accepted and used in establishing ancient evolutionary timelines, ages of fossils, etc... because there is extremely solid evidentiary support for the reliability of those methods.

Questions and comments from the discussion participants are now welcome. Once everyone is satisfied they have a personally acceptable understanding of the evolutionary position on this topic we can move on to the next.

That all sounds pretty reasonable. I'm just wondering how, if the rate of carbon-14 being produced in the atmosphere does fluxuate, do biologists distinguish between younger samples that lived when C14 was low, and older samples that lived when C14 was high? Even with a sedimentary chart to reference, in many cases the same sample might intersect with more than one point on the chart of C14 concentration and age.
Of course I'm aware that not every sample would be much of a problem in this respect, I'm just curious if it's an issue that is confronted very offen.

That all sounds pretty reasonable. I'm just wondering how, if the rate of carbon-14 being produced in the atmosphere does fluxuate, do biologists distinguish between younger samples that lived when C14 was low, and older samples that lived when C14 was high? Even with a sedimentary chart to reference, in many cases the same sample might intersect with more than one point on the chart of C14 concentration and age.
Of course I'm aware that not every sample would be much of a problem in this respect, I'm just curious if it's an issue that is confronted very offen.

An example of the radiocarbon calibration curve:

http://www.ipp.phys.ethz.ch/research/experiments/tandem/radiocarbon/HajdasPhDthesis1993.pdf

(Page 9)

As you can see, the fluctuations are on the order of background noise superimposed on the generally straight line. The fluctuations do cause local uncertainties, and this is the reason the error bars in C14 measurements are what they are... but it's never going to be a matter of tossing a coin between whether something is, for example, 3000 years old or 7000 years old. The fluctuations just aren't big enough for more than minor interference. The more significant factor is the general trend going back in time for C14 levels to have been slightly lower than modern times, which consistently shifted the entire calibration curve below the absolute ages determined by counting the varves or, in this particular case, tree rings.

(And wisjersey... come on man... it's right at the top of the first post in big bold letters... and there's also the thread title. Make a commentary thread!)

(And wisjersey... come on man... it's right at the top of the first post in big bold letters... and there's also the thread title. Make a commentary thread!)

Umm... ok whatever... (although i have to admit i don't get it why) :D

Edit: for my defense, i tend to not notice things written bold...

I can for the most part accept everything you just said. I do have one question though, because Im curious. How do scientists find the half life of something to be several hundred years? You couldnt just let it decay partially and then extrapalate from there because that would provide innacurate results. Also, Im afraid I dont have a good example right now, but Ive heard of Carbon dating over longer periods being extremely short AND extremely long. The thing is, its not innacurate enough for me to accept young earth theories.

First off:

Alexandria Quatriem – Thorograd - Falconus Peregrinus – Acrimoni - Ra hurfarfar

If you are not one of the above people (or myself) PLEASE DO NOT POST IN THIS THREAD For explanation, see here: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=417372

If you feel an absolutely irresistible urge to comment on something you see posted here, please start a separate commentary thread. If I notice such a thread has been created I will even edit this post to provide a handy link to it for others.Because "closed debates" can be rigged for one side to deliberately "lose", closed debates are not honored by NationStates Moderators. That is to say: We do not prohibit such attempts, but if an uninvited player makes civil and on-topic posts in this topic, we Moderators will not honor requests to remove the post.

With that understanding established, you may carry on.

--The Modified Democratic States of Cogitation
"Think about it for a moment."
NationStates Game Moderator

I can for the most part accept everything you just said. I do have one question though, because Im curious. How do scientists find the half life of something to be several hundred years? You couldnt just let it decay partially and then extrapalate from there because that would provide innacurate results.

I'm not quite sure I'm following you. Are you only concerned about the short half-life elements which are measured in the hundreds of years? If so, why would they in particular produce innaccurate results?

Determination of half lives is a fairly straightforward process. All you need to do is place a sample of the material in question inside a radiation detector and measure how fast it's decaying directly. The longer you measure, the more accurate the measurement... but it really doesn't take all that long to get a pretty good bead on a value.

Cogitation: Noted. There was no intention of relying on mods to enforce the participation limits. The hope is that common courtesy will accomplish that on it's own. (Don't take that the wrong way wisjersey, I appreciate your intrusion was unintentional)

Cogitation: Noted. There was no intention of relying on mods to enforce the participation limits. The hope is that common courtesy will accomplish that on it's own. (Don't take that the wrong way wisjersey, I appreciate your intrusion was unintentional)Perfect. Then we understand each other. :)

Carry on.

--The Modified Democratic States of Cogitation
"Think about it for a moment."
NationStates Game Moderator

I can agree with everything so far. All sounds principals, both theoretically and empirically. I like the short but effective explanations.

The biggest problem that I have with radioactive dating (which you have tried to address in the last paragraph), is the constancy of decay rates. How is it that we know that these isotopes will decay at the same rate over an indefinite period of time? You mentioned the Oklo Fission Reactor, but how is it that this proves without a doubt that the rates have remained constant for 1.8 billion years? Even if there is conclusive data, then how do we know it has nothing to do with that specific area? There are many things that could theoretically change the decay rate, and so how do we know for sure that it decays at a constant rate. We, obviously, cannot test the carbon rates 1.8 billion years ago, and so the theory rests upon the assumption that what data we do have proves it beyond any doubt. Also, with that snail, how do we know that the fossils we test did not have a separate intake of carbon aside from the carbon levels in the atmosphere. If it is possible that the snail can, is it also possible that these organisms are affected from things aside from the atmosphere? Basically, I have a problem with the reliability of these tests because I do not see any conclusive observations that can assure us of its reliability. If you could please specify and provide examples and the proof, I would be grateful.

Sorry this took so long, but I got busy and I wanted to do some research.

I understand that there is some pretty hard evidence here. However, the radiometric dating process can't explain many things, and so I believe it is in some way flawed. I do not state this as a fact , because I can't prove the flaw, but I can show some interesting evidence to counter its accuracy.

First, there is the T-Rex blood. For those of you who have been in forums like this, you know what I'm talking about. For the rest of you, here's the short story:

Dino dies. Man digs up dino. Man examines dino bones. Man finds soft tissue. Soft tissue is intact proteins and blood. Evolutionists scramble for explanations.

So, here's the issue: For a species and a specimen dated to about 65 million years, WHY IS SOFT TISSUE INTACT? Evolutionists try to explain this fact and assume the tissue must be able to survive, since their readings tell them it has to be this old. But the fact remains: SOFT TISSUE CANNOT SURVIVE FOR 65 MILLION YEARS. Even in sterile environments and freezing temperatures, soft tissue can still decompose into simpler chemicals. And being stuck in the ground is nothing like the controlled environment of a lab.

For more information, you can go here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0325rbcs.asp

Here's another, less known, example.

In England, there are these weird mud springs. I won't go into detail about them, because they are not as important as what they hold. They more or less spit out fossils, like those of ancient ammonites, in "pristine condition". Their condition is so pristine, in fact, that SOME HAVE THEIR ORIGINAL SHELLS AND ORGANIC LIGAMENTS. And they are supposedly 165 million years old? How did anything remain? It's not like the mud is a great preserver, as it has been tested to have bacteria and chlorine gas.

Here's a link to this story: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i2/surprise.asp


Basically, I'm saying there is something wrong with the dating techniques. And all the evolutionists can come up with is "these things must be able to survive, because the dating says they have to be this old".

I look forward to hearing back from you to see if you can find any reason to explain these discrepancies.

For instance, say a half life is four years just for this example. You would have to wait four years to know its half life. Standard extrapilation can be done for a straight line, which this is not. This line is expointial. Say you only wait 2 years. 1/4 of the material is decayed, right (im not sure)? So it should be easy to say that after twice as long it should be 1/2 decayed, but that cant be! If that was so, after 8 years it would be completely gone. After 8 years 1/4 of it is left, then 1/8, 1/16, etc. So, I know you have to increase by divisions, however if it keeps halving then it is never completely gone, just smaller and smaller numbers. You can still get an idea of where it is going, which is why it is accurate, but carbon dating ussumes that finally the line will reach reach the asymtope, which it mathimatically cannot. However, it will reach the line, becuase the asymtope is not a true asymtope. The element has a limited number of atoms and they will eventually be completely gone. However, science is using the mathematics and adjusting them to match the asymtope, because mathematically an asymtope must be assumed. Therefore, the adjustment throws off the calculations slightly, but a small mistake is greater over thousands of years. I know this is only the carbon Im talking about, but it fits with others too.

I would just like to clarify that I think that Carbon dating is very accurate, but not perfect.

Those are some very interesting objections to the accuracy of Carbon dating, I look forward to hearing the explanation. As for the accuracy of half-lives, as our host has stated, determining half-live's is relatively simple and very accurate. It's difficult to explain, but trust us, it is reliable.

The biggest problem that I have with radioactive dating (which you have tried to address in the last paragraph), is the constancy of decay rates. How is it that we know that these isotopes will decay at the same rate over an indefinite period of time? You mentioned the Oklo Fission Reactor, but how is it that this proves without a doubt that the rates have remained constant for 1.8 billion years?

First, as a note, there is never any such thing as "without a doubt" in science. There is at best "so firmly supported by the evidence that, lacking some truly momentous new discovery, doubt would be irrational". That said, I had an explanation of the Oklo data which I had already written up over a year ago for another discussion I was involved in… and now I can’t find it so I’m going to have to do this from scratch. Gah. It was a really good one too…

Ok… basically what happened is during a uranium mining operation in Gabon they found a uranium deposit which had a far lower concentration than should be found naturally. On closer examination it also had a very unusual isotopic signature associated with it. Naturally occurring Neodymium has the following isotopic signature:

http://www.grisda.org/origins/images/17088-01.gif

On the other hand, Neodymium that is a byproduct of the fission of uranium-235 has this signature:

http://www.grisda.org/origins/images/17089-02.gif

…which is significantly different. The deposit they discovered at Oklo on the other hand had this signature:

http://www.grisda.org/origins/images/17090-03.gif

The presence of a small amount of the 142 isotope indicates there was at least some naturally occurring neodymium at the site (the 142 isotope isn't a product of U-235 fission)… when the signature is corrected to account for the amount of naturally occurring neodymium indicated by the amount of 142 present the Oklo deposit has this signature:

http://www.grisda.org/origins/images/17090-04.gif

Which is a perfect match for the byproducts of a U-235 fission reactio, the only thing that produces a signature like this. So, at some point in the past a deposit of U-235 actually underwent a fission reaction similar to what occurs in modern nuclear reactors.

Now, that by itself is pretty cool… but it also lets us verify some things.

If the decay rates had been different when that fission reaction was occurring the fission products would have had a different signature. The fact that the signature is identical to that of U-235 fission today establishes with high certainty that the decay rates are unchanged between now and when that reaction occurred.

That established, multiple radiometric tests of the date of that reaction were performed, establishing that it occurred approximately 1.8 billion years ago… meaning decay rates haven’t changed in the last 1.8 billion years.

Even if there is conclusive data, then how do we know it has nothing to do with that specific area?

The half lives of radioactive isotopes can be determined directly from quantum mechanics... they are the resuts of fundamental physical constants which do not vary based on geography. Additionally, different isotopes decay in different ways, and any change that did theoretically occur in those physical constants would result in the half-lives of those different isotopes being altered by different amounts. This means that if the reliability of radiometric dating is to be questioned some explanation would be required for why different radiometric dating methods using different radioactive isotopes in different manners all supposedly come up with not just wrong answers... but the same wrong answers.

There are many things that could theoretically change the decay rate, and so how do we know for sure that it decays at a constant rate.

Actually, there are very very few things which can theoretically change decay rates, and they tend to be of such a nature that we would know if they had happened. For example, a truly intense cosmic radiation bombardment could do it for as long as such a bombardment was maintained... but of course a bombardment of sufficient intensity to significantly throw off radiometric dates would also be of far more than sufficient intensity to sterilize the entire planet... so that option can be quite safely ruled out.

Was there any particular possible manner in which decay rates could have been changed that you had in mind?

We, obviously, cannot test the carbon rates 1.8 billion years ago,

Note: Carbon is not used for dating anything that old.

and so the theory rests upon the assumption that what data we do have proves it beyond any doubt. Also, with that snail, how do we know that the fossils we test did not have a separate intake of carbon aside from the carbon levels in the atmosphere.

Carbon dating is not done on fossils. It is only used on relatively recent (50,000 years old or less) organic remains of animals or plants which we know have no tendency to intake carbon14 from non-atmosperic sources. For example, no matter how old we thought it was we would never try to carbon date the remains of a seal or what appeared to be a close relation of a seal which tend to have significant non-atmospheric carbon... and we would likewise never try to carbon date a polar bear since they tend to indulge in a regular diet of seals... etc... Of course it is always possible to have an occasional exception to the rule, even in animals where such considerations do not hold, which will give an erronious date. That is why you will seldom if ever find any archeologist relying on a single test of a single specimen to establish a date of a given site or artifact.

If it is possible that the snail can, is it also possible that these organisms are affected from things aside from the atmosphere?

Theoretically possible in any given individual case? Of course. Likely? Not really. Likely that this would be the case systematically such that carbon dated samples in general which do have a strong tendency to agree with each other are all similarly wrong? Really incredibly unlikely.

And then of course we add in the secondary corroborating dating methods often used in conjunction with C14 dating which rely on other independent factors (Thermoluminescence, Electron Spin Resonance, etc...). In order to deny the accuracy of the results arrived at you would need to hypothesize, for example, that something disrupted the C14 content of the organic samples AND the ambient radiation levels of the local environment effecting the mineral samples... AND did so in a manner that caused both techniques to arrive at the same wrong answers.

Sorry this took so long, but I got busy and I wanted to do some research.

No apologies necessary, I would rather everyone involved take their time quite frankly... which is one of the reasons I wanted to limit participation. It allows that to happen without the posters involved feeling like they're being left behind when 20 other people make 50 other posts if they leave the thread long enough to eat dinner.

I understand that there is some pretty hard evidence here. However, the radiometric dating process can't explain many things, and so I believe it is in some way flawed. I do not state this as a fact , because I can't prove the flaw, but I can show some interesting evidence to counter its accuracy.

First, there is the T-Rex blood. For those of you who have been in forums like this, you know what I'm talking about. For the rest of you, here's the short story:

Dino dies. Man digs up dino. Man examines dino bones. Man finds soft tissue. Soft tissue is intact proteins and blood. Evolutionists scramble for explanations.

So, here's the issue: For a species and a specimen dated to about 65 million years, WHY IS SOFT TISSUE INTACT? Evolutionists try to explain this fact and assume the tissue must be able to survive, since their readings tell them it has to be this old. But the fact remains: SOFT TISSUE CANNOT SURVIVE FOR 65 MILLION YEARS. Even in sterile environments and freezing temperatures, soft tissue can still decompose into simpler chemicals. And being stuck in the ground is nothing like the controlled environment of a lab.

For more information, you can go here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/docs2002/0325rbcs.asp

I see AiG is trying to use Schweitzer's work to claim evidence for a young earth...

Still.

Despite Schweitzer herself telling them they're misinterpreting it.

This was the actual paper they're talking about:

http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/94/12/6291

Notice how you will see it directly cited in no AiG treatment of this topic, that might lead to people actually reading it and finding out what it really says. Instead you will see them reference second hand popular media accounts of the findings... as they did in their original article on the subject:

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i4/blood.asp

Where the source they cite is... "The Real Jurassic Park", an article in a magazine called "Earth". :rolleyes:

Upon going to the actual source material instead we quickly discover the following:

1. Heme compounds, NOT hemoglobin. Heme compounds are iron-based... they can last quite a long time. Also, hemoglobin breakdown products from hemoglobin which, obviously, has broken down over the great many years since T-Rex was around. NOT actual hemoglobin.
2. The bone was "nonpermineralized", NOT "unfossilized". Permineralization is when the open structures inside the bone are filled in with mineral deposits. The bone was in fact fossilized, it just hadn't been deeply penetrated by water which would deposit minerals inside the open cavities in the core of the bone.

This was pointed out to AiG at the time. As it mentions even in that article Schweitzer personally clarified the first point after they misrepresented her work. From the article:

I also received a reply from Dr Schweitzer regarding the positive immunological response observed in studies in which extracts of dinosaur fossil were injected into rats. According to the AiG site, this response represents compelling evidence that the dinosaur specimens could not be millions of years old. However, as elaborated on by Dr Schweitzer, ‘Now, heme is different than protein, and is a very tiny and very durable molecule.’ (It is not unexpected, therefore, that it would remain intact in million-year-old dinosaur fossils.) ‘But the heme itself is too small to be immunogenic. We believe that there were possibly 3–4 amino acids from the original protein [which consisted of many hundreds of amino acids] attached to the heme, and that was what may have spiked the immune response.’

Now, when confronted with the actual researcher herself informing them they are misinterpreting her test results do they correct the information on their website? No, of course not. Instead, they just dismiss the explanation of the person who actually performed the testing and construct their own story of what the results were and what that means. It's rather fascinating to watch actually.

Also, I leave it to the reader to judge how confused or baffled the scientists are at this finding after reviewing the paper... or how much "scrambling for explanations" they were doing then.

Here's another, less known, example.

In England, there are these weird mud springs. I won't go into detail about them, because they are not as important as what they hold. They more or less spit out fossils, like those of ancient ammonites, in "pristine condition". Their condition is so pristine, in fact, that SOME HAVE THEIR ORIGINAL SHELLS AND ORGANIC LIGAMENTS. And they are supposedly 165 million years old? How did anything remain? It's not like the mud is a great preserver, as it has been tested to have bacteria and chlorine gas.

Here's a link to this story: http://www.answersingenesis.org/cre...i2/surprise.asp

Not surprisingly their source for the claim that there were 165 million year old organic ligaments is a story in the popular media... a newspaper. When I attempted to investigate this claim the only statement I could find about this Neville Hollingworth person they reference regarding the topic was in this article from New Scientist:

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg16322024.100

GEOLOGISTS have been given a rare glimpse of what lived inside the shells of ammonites over 65 million years ago. Neville Hollingworth of the Natural Environment Research Council in Swindon has found a fossil of Sigaloceras calloviense whose outer shell has dissolved away to reveal the outline of adductor muscles and tentacles in the honey-coloured calcite inside.

According to Hollingworth, these structures are very similar to those found in the nautilus, the ammonite's closest living relative. Hollingworth and his colleague Jason Hilton of Cardiff University will describe their find at a meeting of the Palaeontological Association in Manchester later this year.


No actual intact organic material. Unfortunately the people at AiG have a well earned reputation for doing this kind of thing.. I would strongly suggest that when searching for scientific information you refer to reputable scientific publications. Preferably ones that employ peer review.


For instance, say a half life is four years just for this example. You would have to wait four years to know its half life. Standard extrapilation can be done for a straight line, which this is not. This line is expointial.

Yes... but we know it's exponential. So we can still extrapolate it.

Say you only wait 2 years. 1/4 of the material is decayed, right (im not sure)?

If we were dealing with an isotope with a 4 year half life then after 2 years approximately 29.3% of it would have decayed.

So it should be easy to say that after twice as long it should be 1/2 decayed,

Only if we were in fact assuming that the decay curve did follow a straight line, which we know it does not. The decay curve follows the line described by the equation A/Ao=e^(-0.693t/T) where T is the isotope's half life. t is the length of time it has been decaying from a defined starting point. Ao is the original quantity of the isotope and A is the remaining undecayed quantity.

We know the initial quantity we place in the radiation detector, the detector tells us how much of it decays... giving us the remaining amount after any given period of time (also obviously known) leaving only one variable to solve for. T.

Any discrepency between that calculated curve and practical applications that have to deal with the fact that eventually we're going to be getting down to single atoms that have to either decay or not... forcing us to intercept the asymptote... would only be of concern if we were actually trying to measure dates once that much of the original parent element had decayed, which nobody ever tries to do. Once it gets below a certain noise threshold it's time to move to a longer ranged method using elements with considerably longer half lives.

It is still in the verification of the data that I have trouble with. I feel like I probably missed something obvious here, but the case of the Oklo fission reaction only shows that that isotope existed at that time. How is it though, that we know that decay rate remains constant over long periods of time. Whil we can observe it for a certain amount of time, it seems somewhat presumptuous to assume that the rates do not change over millions of years. Also, for these other methods you spoke of, were the initial results of these tests verified with radioactive dating, or are they justified separately? What I mean is, was the age determined by looking at radioactive dating, or was the age determined by other means?

It is still in the verification of the data that I have trouble with. I feel like I probably missed something obvious here, but the case of the Oklo fission reaction only shows that that isotope existed at that time. How is it though, that we know that decay rate remains constant over long periods of time.

It's not just that the isotopes existed then, it's the precise percentage ratios of the different isotopes to each other that act as a kind of radiometric fingerprint. The physical constants that govern decay rates also influence the isotopic signature of fission byproducts, such as those of the fission of U-235. An analysis of the fission byproducts at Oklo showed a perfect match with the isotopic signature of modern day U-235 fission... demonstrating that the decay rate is unchanged between the time the fission reaction occured at Oklo, and now. If the decay rates had been different it would have resulted in a different signature when the reaction occured. Subsequent radiometric dating of the time of that reaction, which we can be confident won't be off due to a decay rate change because we just verified the decay rate hasn't changed since then, establishes the date of the reaction at 1.8 billion years ago... giving us a 1.8 billion year time frame in which we have pretty much conclusive evidence of the constancy of radioactive decay just from this one source.

Additionally, the physical constants which govern decay rates also influence other observable phenomena. Like, for example, the fine structure of light emitted from stars. Spectrographic analysis of light from stars at varying distances from the planet... and thus light that was emitted at various different times in the past... all show the same fine structure, also indicating that decay rates were the same at each corresponding time. .Studying light from a star 4000 light years away is directly studying light as it was emitted 4,000 years ago... studying light from a star 100 million light years away is directly studying light as it was emitted 100 million years ago, etc... Every star studied is one more data point on the timeline, and they all show the same thing.

While we can observe it for a certain amount of time, it seems somewhat presumptuous to assume that the rates do not change over millions of years.

It is not an assumption, it is an empirical observation. Multiple observations actually.

Also, for these other methods you spoke of, were the initial results of these tests verified with radioactive dating, or are they justified separately? What I mean is, was the age determined by looking at radioactive dating, or
was the age determined by other means?

Thermoluminescence and Electron Spin Resonance? They're used on the same general timespan C14 dating is used on (although they're considered slightly longer ranged), and thus can also be crosschecked and calibrated against similar absolute-age calibration sites as those mentioned for C14... for example, thermoluminescence can be used on certain sediments in lake cores (whereas C14 dates organic residue in the cores). Additionally, I'd like to repeat my earlier point that in order to propose these dating methods are wrong one must have some explanation for how they can all be wrong by the same amounts when they rely on different factors to measure age.

Unless anyone else has more questions, I think all the points are clear and we can move on to the next topic now. By the way, my dad recently discovered that a tumor his doctors had told him was cancer, is not. So THANK GOD :D

Reformentia, you only addressed the first part of my post where I was setting up that the line would have to be exponential, that was simply so that everyone could follow my line of thinking. I was making the point that because of the difference of the mathematical calculations using an asymtope, and the actual scientific fact that it would eventually be all gone, its not as accurate as we would like. This is a moot point in our discussion however, becauseI realize that the adjustment is minute enough to make no difference in the dating it would actually be used for. After all, one Mol of caron (35 grams if Im not mistaken) contains 6.02 x 10^23 atoms. This means that if the adjustment for the asymtope is done correctly, when the lines reaches 1/602,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 the adjustment would be made. Since that is six hundred two sestillion, there is obviously nothing to worry about.

Unless anyone else has more questions, I think all the points are clear and we can move on to the next topic now. By the way, my dad recently discovered that a tumor his doctors had told him was cancer, is not. So THANK GOD :D

I'm already in the progress of writing up the post on the next topic, which will be a general overview of the geologic column and fossil record... but in the meantime I'm still willing to address any further questions on this topic.

Congratulations on the good news.

Edit: Acrimoni... I think we were basically just saying the same thing and talking past each other a bit there.

Hang on, before you move on, you haven't addressed perhaps the most important part of the article you summarilly dismissed. I couldn't reply earlier because the Forum couldn't be reached (did that happen to everyone?), so here's my reply.

Notice when the person actually doing the research sees the immunological response, she must rationalize it. Like she said herself, heme is too small to trigger a response. She concludes, therefore, that there must be about 3-4 amino acids attached to it. That is the only way the response could be explained and still fit her belief that the bone is millions of years old.

However, there are a few points to consider here. First, if heme is durable enough and everything else is not (according to her own admission), why would ANY amino acids survive and remain attached? How could they have possibly remained after millions of years? And why does it have to be 3-4? The fact is that that is a random number she pulled out to keep the number low and the millions of years theory believable. It is NOT based upon her experiments, which only showed a reaction. She fit the results to what she wanted them to be to support her theory.

Hang on, before you move on, you haven't addressed perhaps the most important part of the article you summarilly dismissed. I couldn't reply earlier because the Forum couldn't be reached (did that happen to everyone?), so here's my reply.

Notice when the person actually doing the research sees the immunological response, she must rationalize it. Like she said herself, heme is too small to trigger a response. She concludes, therefore, that there must be about 3-4 amino acids attached to it. That is the only way the response could be explained and still fit her belief that the bone is millions of years old.

However, there are a few points to consider here. First, if heme is durable enough and everything else is not (according to her own admission), why would ANY amino acids survive and remain attached? How could they have possibly remained after millions of years? And why does it have to be 3-4? The fact is that that is a random number she pulled out to keep the number low and the millions of years theory believable. It is NOT based upon her experiments, which only showed a reaction. She fit the results to what she wanted them to be to support her theory.
That's a very good point. It sounds a little to me like you're just proposing a way for the bones to be young, and haven't actually verified it. Not saying that you are, that's just what it sounds like to me. Maybe she DID check it out, and found those results? O well...either way, the only thing this could lead to is evidence for a young earth, and I can't imagine anyone capable of as coherent, scientific discussion as yourself actually believing the earth to be young...but if that's waht you're getting at, then let's hear it all, not just this one T-Rex bit.

Note to all participants: while I will continue to engage in discussion of the dating issue if that is desired the next topic will be posted later this afternoon.

Hang on, before you move on, you haven't addressed perhaps the most important part of the article you summarilly dismissed. I couldn't reply earlier because the Forum couldn't be reached (did that happen to everyone?), so here's my reply.

Notice when the person actually doing the research sees the immunological response, she must rationalize it. Like she said herself, heme is too small to trigger a response. She concludes, therefore, that there must be about 3-4 amino acids attached to it. That is the only way the response could be explained and still fit her belief that the bone is millions of years old.

However, there are a few points to consider here. First, if heme is durable enough and everything else is not (according to her own admission),

Her admission where? I saw no statement by Schweitzer that individual amino acids could not survive millions of years. It's the chemical bonds between amino acids that cause them to form proteins which are the more fragile parts.

How could they have possibly remained after millions of years? And why does it have to be 3-4?

I doubt it had to be 3-4, that was almost certainly a number thrown out off the top of her head as a way of saying "just a few". That said, a complete, intact hemoglobin molecule can be seen under the microscope. If it was there, it would be not too difficult to spot.

The fact is that that is a random number she pulled out to keep the number low and the millions of years theory believable.

It almost certainly was a random number used to communicate that there wouldn't have been many amino acids there all bonded together into a great big hemoglobin protein. They would have seen them if there were after all. I see no basis for your speculation that this was done to "keep the milllions of years theory believable". I suggest again that rather than reading the AiG (mis)interpretation of the work of Schweitzer's group, you instead read their original paper and try to understand what it is that has happened in this little episode:

A group of researchers published a research paper which stated that they had found some intact heme compounds inside fossil T-Rex bone which they found showed signs that it had undergone no internal permineralization. The fact that it hadn't been permineralized meant that the interior cavities of the bone had been very effectively sealed throughout the timespan from the death of the T-Rex until now... allowing no kind of seepage into those cavities that could have carried in outside minerals to cause damage. They state quite clearly in the paper that because of this they were specifically looking for things like protein remnants that might have been preserved due to the rather rare high level of preservation of those cavities... which is hardly consistent with the actions of the people you are proposing are deliberately trying to deny that that kind of thing could be found in such old fossil remnants. They also state that the spectroscopic analysis was consistent with degraded heme proteins. The discussion of the summarized results at the end of the paper lays out in clear terms that the spectrographic, analytical, and immunological tests support the presence of heme and hemoglobin breakdown products.

There is little room to misinterpret what their stated findings are.

Then after they publish this paper along comes AiG. They publish an online article (http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v19/i4/blood.asp) in which they make the following claims:

1. That the scientists who performed the study suggested that "real blood from a T-rex" had been found. A review of the paper reveals that this is untrue. Nowhere do they suggest any such thing.

2. They claim that the T-Rex bone in which this "real blood" was found was unfossilized. It was not. Another thing clearly stated in the original paper.

And instead of referencing the paper they are speaking of so that anyone reading these statements can verify their accuracy... they use as their source citation an article about the paper in a magazine.

Then when the clearly infactual claims made by the AiG article are brought to the attention of one of the researchers she even personally corrects their distortion of the published findings... and in response the only thiing AiG does is dismiss her information as some desperate attempt to explain away data which it is claimed is somehow contradictory to the idea that the T-Rex bone is millions of years old.

Just to review that.. AiG incorrectly claims the scientists said they found real blood when this is stated nowhere in their paper. AiG incorrectly claims they found this "real blood" in unfossilized bone when again, that is not indicated in the paper... quite the contrary. AiG ignores the corrections of the researcher who actually performed the testing when she attempts to point out that they are spreading false information... their only response being to question the credibility of the scientist whose work it is they're trying to use to make their case.

It is NOT based upon her experiments, which only showed a reaction.

Upon reading the original paper, which I did provide a link to, you will see that her tests did not just show a reaction. Her tests included chemical analysis. Her tests included spectrographic analysis of the compounds they are talking about which were consistent with heme molecules and hemoglobin breakdown products. To quote the paper directly:

The proton NMR spectrum of the dinosaur extracts (Fig. 2) contains peaks upfield and downfield from the standard 0- to 10-ppm window characteristic of the resonances of protons in proteins and other organic molecules. Four broad resonances at 25.0, 29.0, 45.0, and 72.0 ppm, as well as three other peaks at 29.0, 220.0, and 230.0 ppm indicate the presence of a paramagnetic atom, such as those seen in various metal-loproteins (44, 45). The spectrum is consistent with degraded heme proteins in the met (Fe+3) state (6, 45).

Unfortunately if you rely on AiG for your information you will never hear a word about any of this. They simply ignore the bulk of the testing performed, declare that one of the tests supports their claim of a young earth even when the researcher who performed the testing tells them it does not, and then dismiss any attempt to correct their misrepresentation of the data by declaring that anyone who says anything different than what they're saying is just trying to cover up evidence against an old earth, which is ridiculous.

I must repeat my earlier suggestion that if you are looking for scientific information you should get it from a reputable scientific source... which AiG most certainly does not qualify as.

Thermoluminescence and Electron Spin Resonance? They're used on the same general timespan C14 dating is used on (although they're considered slightly longer ranged), and thus can also be crosschecked and calibrated against similar absolute-age calibration sites as those mentioned for C14... for example, thermoluminescence can be used on certain sediments in lake cores (whereas C14 dates organic residue in the cores). Additionally, I'd like to repeat my earlier point that in order to propose these dating methods are wrong one must have some explanation for how they can all be wrong by the same amounts when they rely on different factors to measure age.

My question was merely if the guidelines for thermoluminescence and electronic spin resonation (as in the timeline) were extrapolated from radioactive dating. In other words, did they measure the amount of thermoluminescence in an object, date it with radioactive dating, and then extrapolate from there. If they did, then that might explain the consistency. They probably did not, but could you please clarify.

Edit: Also, do these methods have the same long range as other radioactive dating methods and can they verify them as well, and not just carbon?

My question was merely if the guidelines for thermoluminescence and electronic spin resonation (as in the timeline) were extrapolated from radioactive dating. In other words, did they measure the amount of thermoluminescence in an object, date it with radioactive dating, and then extrapolate from there. If they did, then that might explain the consistency. They probably did not, but could you please clarify.

Edit: Also, do these methods have the same long range as other radioactive dating methods and can they verify them as well, and not just carbon?

Thermoluminescence and ESR are shorter ranged than other radiometric methods (except C14). Thermoluminescence is (at least currently) useful up to a range of a few hundred thousand years... but it has larger error bars than radiocarbon dating. ESR is longer ranged than thermoluminescence, but also has similar error bars. (By "large" we're speaking of up to 10% or so...)

Since both methods operate in a relatively recent timescale they can be cross-checked in a manner similar to that of C14... for example by using them to date suitable sediment deposits in lake varve cores whose ages are easily independently determinable by the simple process of counting the annual depositions... a method not in any way dependent on rates of radioactive decay.

Since I think that everyone involved has a grasp of why radiometric dating methods are held to be reliable by the scientific community (continued questioning of those reasons not withstanding) I think it's time to introduce the next topic. The fossil record and the geologic column. I'm thinking I'll split this into two parts. A general overview, and then a more specific section dealing with example transitory fossil sequences.

When the geologic column was first being mapped out by geologists they could only establish relative dates of the position of formation of a given layer in the column based on the premise that 'layers buried further down' = 'older than newly formed surface layers'… with care being taken to ensure you weren’t analyzing something like an overthrust where one section of plate has pushed up on top of another one. Then came radiometric dating which allowed them not only to independently test that hypothesis but to assign specific age values to each of those layers… resulting in the modern understanding of the geologic column. For example, in Glenn Morton’s article on the geologic column at Talk.Origins (http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/geocolumn/) one of the references used is a well dug in North Dakota to a depth of over 15 thousand feet. The following layers were encountered at the respective depths: (Fm = Formation, Lm = Limestone, Grp = Group)

Tertiary Ft. Union Fm ...............................100 feet
Cretaceous Greenhorn Fm .......................4910 feet
Cretaceous Mowry Fm............................ 5370 feet
Cretaceous Inyan Kara Fm.......................5790 feet
Jurassic Rierdon Fm................................6690 feet
Triassic Spearfish Fm..............................7325 feet
Permian Opeche Fm................................7740 feet
Pennsylvanian Amsden Fm.......................7990 feet
Pennsylvanian Tyler Fm...........................8245 feet
Mississippian Otter Fm.............................8440 feet
Mississippian Kibbey Lm...........................8780 feet
Mississippian Charles Fm..........................8945 feet
Mississippian Mission Canyon Fm................9775 feet
Mississippian Lodgepole Fm.....................10255 feet
Devonian Bakken Fm.............................11085 feet
Devonian Birdbear Fm............................11340 feet
Devonian Duperow Fm...........................11422 feet
Devonian Souris River Fm.......................11832 feet
Devonian Dawson Bay Fm.......................12089 feet
Devonian Prairie Fm...............................12180 feet
Devonian Winnipegosis Grp.....................12310 feet
Silurian Interlake Fm..............................12539 feet
Ordovician Stonewall Fm........................13250 feet
Ordovician Red River Dolomite.................13630 feet
Ordovician Winnipeg Grp........................14210 feet
Ordovician Black Island Fm.....................14355 feet
Cambrian Deadwood Fm.........................14445 feet
Precambrian.........................................14945 feet

The article also includes 25 other sites where the entire column has been observed.

The span of ages since associated with each of those eras since the advent of radiometric dating are:

Tertiary –------------------ 1.8 million -> 65 million years old
Cretaceous --------------– 65 million -> 145 million years old
Jurassic ----------------– 145 million -> 205 million years old
Triassic ----------------–205 million -> 250 million years old
Permian –---------------- 250 million -> 290 million years old
Pennsylvanian –---------- 290 million -> 325 million years old
Mississippian –------------ 325 million to 355 million years old
Devonian –--------------- 355 million -> 420 million years old
Silurian –----------------- 420 million -> 445 million years old
Ordovician –-------------- 445 million -> 490 million years old
Cambrian Deadwood Fm –- 490 million -> 545 million years old
Precambrian –------------------------ 545+ million years old

So, the further down we go, the older the dates we see. Exactly as predicted. But that isn’t the only indicator to consider, there is also the fossil composition of the geologic column. I’ll do a quick overview of which fossils are found in which layers for now... starting with what are dated as the oldest layers and progressing through to the youngest. Note that the precise locations of many of these "earliest known fossil" finds are constantly being adjusted to some degree as more and more fossil finds come in and the body of what is known is added to.... for example, not too many years ago the earliest known multicellular fossils were early Cambrian (540 million years old) but then someone found some in layers about 20 million years older than that and the date of the earliest known multicellular fossils got shifted back a few percent into the late Precambrian. This is to be expected... and will certainly continue to happen in the future.

Precambrian
--In the oldest dated layers of rock in the Precambrian there has never been a fossil found. Of anything. Ever.
--As we move to newer layers in the Precambrian we start finding fossils of single celled organisms at about the 3.5 billion year mark. They appear to be prokaryotes. We find fossils of nothing else.
--In still newer layers we begin finding fossils of what seem to be eukaryotic single celled organisms. (Prokaryotes have cell structures that lack mitochondria and nuclei, eukaryotes incorporate mitochondria and nuclei).
--In the late Precambrian layers leading up to the Cambrian, we begin finding fossils of small, simple, multicellular organisms (for example: the Ediacaran fauna) and also fossils of what appear to be simple chloroplasts.

Cambrian
--Once we reach the Cambrian we have the “Cambrian Explosion”. Keep in mind that this “explosion” takes tens of millions of years… some people have the unfortunate tendency to think this means that: *poof*… a bunch of different animals just all showed up simultaneously.
--By the end of the Cambrian we see the emergence of the earliest representatives of most existent phyla. Note that for the most part they look absolutely nothing like modern representatives of those phyla… another point on which people have an unfortunate tendency to become confused. They think that (for example) because we have brachiopods today, and brachiopods showed up in the Cambrian, therefore modern brachiopods have been around since the Cambrian. This is just plain wrong.
--Among the organisms first appearing in the Cambrian are: Arthropods (trilobites!), Molluscs, Chordates (near the end of the Cambrian), Brachiopods, etc…

Ordovician
--The first fossil Bryozoans show up in the Ordovician, little colonies of interconnected aquatic organisms that ten to inhabit rock surfaces, etc…
--The first coral fossils.
--Earliest jawless fish, although there is some evidence they may have shown up in the late Cambrian.

Silurian
--Fossils of jawless fish are abundant and diverse. Earliest fossils of fish with jaws are found.
--The first fossil evidence of any land organisms. Fungi, and also cooksonia, the earliest known plant with a vascular network.
--By the late Silurian we also find primitive fossil arachnids and centipedes.
--Note that we have four and a half billion years of rock layers and find no evidence of anything non-aquatic until the latest ten percent of them.

Devonian
--Earliest fossils of tetrapods (amphibians).
--Towards the end of the Devonian we find the earliest fossils of seed bearing plants.

Mississippian and Pennsylvanian (Combined = Carboniferous)
--Earliest amniote fossils.
--Tetrapod fossils become increasingly diverse.
--Land based plant fossils also diversify.
--Towards the end of the Pennsylvanian the earliest diapsid fossils are found (animals with two fenestrae. Ie: reptiles)

Permian
--For most of the Permian increasingly diverse examples of the previously mentioned groups are found…
--At the end of the Permian there appears to be a large scale mass extinction event. A massive number of species found in the fossil record prior to this time cease to be found at any point later (goodbye trilobites… you had a good run…).

Triassic
--The emergence of the dinosaurs in the fossil record. The popular giant versions are not found at this point in the fossil record… Triassic dinosaur fossils consist of smaller representatives of that group.
--Towards the very end of the Triassic we find the first fossils of small mammals.

Jurassic
--Dinosaur fossils get bigger and more diverse.
--Crocodiles show up.
--By this point in the fossil record aquatic life is extremely diversified. Sharks, rays, fish, squid, ammonites, all kinds of aquatic plants…
--Land plants also become increasingly diverse, as well as mammals.
--Near the end of the Jurassic, we have Archeopteryx. Clearly reptilian… but feathered.

Cretaceous
--Fossils of flowering plants (angiosperms) appear.
--Fossils of modern looking versions of some mammals and insects.
--Dinosaur fossils continue to diversify. A crowd favorite, T-rex, makes it’s appearance in the cretaceous layers. Unfortunately for it:
--At the very end of the Cretaceous there is another apparent mass extinction event, the K-T event. No further fossil evidence of dinosaurs and many other species found previous to this point in the fossil record are found in later layers. The K-T boundary marks the end of the Cretaceous period in the geologic column, a thin layer in the column with heavy iridium concentrations, found worldwide, leading to the hypothesis that there was a massive meteor/asteroid strike at this time which kicked up enough impact debris to lay down a coating over the entire surface of the planet. This event is more well known than the Permian mass extinction, even though it appears to have wiped out a smaller percentage of the extant species than did the Permian event.

Tertiary
--Within the Tertiary layers we find fossils of modern animal forms. Modern angiosperm plants, mammals, ray-finned fish, birds, etc…
--We begin finding the first primate fossils right near the KT boundary. They’re small… in appearance they resembled something like a squirrel. The first prosimian fossils (for example: Smilodectes) show up in the early Tertiary layers. The first ape and monkey fossils begin appearing in the mid-Tertiary layers. ( Apidium, Aegyptopithecus, etc…). Ape and monkey fossils continue to diversify throughout the later layers of the Tertiary. Approaching the end of the Tertiary the first Hominid fossils are found, dating back approximately 5-6 million years. It bears thinking on that hominid fossils occupy only the upper approximate 1% of the geologic column. Fossils of homo sapiens are not found in Tertiary layers.

Note that the well mentioned earlier was dug in a basin, beginning below the very upper layers (the Quaternary layers which are dated at 1.8 million years to present) which are populated with modern looking animal and plant fossils. Hominids of varying morphological similarity to homo sapiens are found throughout these layers, with fossils classified as archaic and then modern homo sapiens found in the most recent layers, dating as far back as several hundred thousand years... a fraction of a percent of the span represented by the column.

We never find mammal fossils embedded in pre-Carboniferous layers. We never find bird fossils in Permian layers. We never find primate fossils in Jurassic layers. We never find angiosperm fossils in the PreCambrian. We never find reptile fossils in the Ordovician layers. Etc.

This kind of distribution presents quite a distinctive pattern... which will be elaborated on as the discussion continues.

That pretty much wraps up the general overview. Once discussion of this is complete (as much as can be expected anyway) the next section will focus more specifically on sample sequences within the fossil records.

Alright, I'll concede on this one. I can't seem to find anything other than circumstantial evidence to support me. This does not mean I don't think there are flaws in the dating system, but I won't outright say it's wrong either. I also won't say that researchers are purposefully concealing the truth, just that sometimes they make "educated guesses" that surprisingly coincide with their theories but can't quite be proven. Can you live with that?

I say we move on to the next point and chalk one up for you. Good debating.

Again, I see no reason to object. I would like to point out, however, that taking into consideration the fact that the Bible is not a technical document, and should not be treated as such, the order of creation fits pretty close wiht the creation story in Genisis. Taking into consideration that a "day" is not necessarily 24 hours, there is, as usual, no conflict between science and Christianity.

Again, I see no reason to object. I would like to point out, however, that taking into consideration the fact that the Bible is not a technical document, and should not be treated as such, the order of creation fits pretty close wiht the creation story in Genisis. Taking into consideration that a "day" is not necessarily 24 hours, there is, as usual, no conflict between science and Christianity.

The only problem I have with what you said is the fact that the Bible uses explicite language to say "day". The original language of the Bible used the word for a standard, 24-hour day throughout the description of Genesis. The fact that this word is repeated, and not some other word to mean a figurative day, leads me to trust in the fact that all of creation was formed in one week, not in billions of years.

However, as long as the belief in billions of years does not harm your faith, I don't see the problem with believing it. It's not the center of Christianity, anyway. For myself, I would find my faith severely shaken if I were unable to trust even the first chapter of the Bible.

The only problem I have with what you said is the fact that the Bible uses explicite language to say "day". The original language of the Bible used the word for a standard, 24-hour day throughout the description of Genesis. The fact that this word is repeated, and not some other word to mean a figurative day, leads me to trust in the fact that all of creation was formed in one week, not in billions of years.

However, as long as the belief in billions of years does not harm your faith, I don't see the problem with believing it. It's not the center of Christianity, anyway. For myself, I would find my faith severely shaken if I were unable to trust even the first chapter of the Bible.
But does not the Bible also say that a "day", still the word for a 24 hour day, to us, could be billions of years to God? I can see how it's tricky, but i have faith in both God and science, so I don't see why they have to conflict all the time.

Again, I see no reason to object. I would like to point out, however, that taking into consideration the fact that the Bible is not a technical document, and should not be treated as such, the order of creation fits pretty close wiht the creation story in Genisis.

If this was one of the Ath vs. Christianity threads I'd probably feel compelled to give you a hard time about that "pretty close" part. ;)

Not much action so far on the geologic column and fossil overview, maybe I should send a telegram whenever a fresh topic is started... Well, in any case I should probably get started writing up part 2 so it can be posted this weekend.

If this was one of the Ath vs. Christianity threads I'd probably feel compelled to give you a hard time about that "pretty close" part. ;)

Not much action so far on the geologic column and fossil overview, maybe I should send a telegram whenever a fresh topic is started... Well, in any case I should probably get started writing up part 2 so it can be posted this weekend.
Haha, ya, I bet...I always word things in just the wrong way, don't I? I don't think there's much debate because it's all straightforward, it all makes sense, none of it is based one even slightly questionalbe evidence, and, well ya.

I know the subject of geological layers has been extensively debated in other forums, so I'll present the basics of my arguments and leave it to our host to counter me as deemed fit.

Catastrophic events drastically alter surrounding geology and layering. Floods, eruptions, and the like deposit distinct layers in a short time, easily fooling geologists who base their dating solely on the depths of layers and their contents. I know it is never used alone, but geological dating can never be accurate, nor can it prove anything one way or the other about any object found in the layers. As it is inaccurate, findings should not be based in any way on the layer system.

Oh, and to avoid any embarrassing posts, can everyone identify their gender?

(I don't want to say "he said" and then get told "um, I'm a woman".)

If anyone cares about this like me, I'm a man.

Catastrophic events drastically alter surrounding geology and layering.

Over a limited depth range... on a local basis. The geologic column however is global.

Floods, eruptions, and the like deposit distinct layers in a short time, easily fooling geologists who base their dating solely on the depths of layers and their contents.

Deposit distinct layers... yes. Particular emphasis should be placed on "distinct". They are readily identifiable and do not fool geologists even with moderate difficulty, let alone easily. For example, this is the eruptive history of Mt. St. Helens over the last 50,000 years or so provided by the US Geological Survey:

http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/MSH/EruptiveHistory/summary_msh_volcanic_history.html

And of course the reason they can chart that data is that the byproducts of volcanic eruptions in the geologic column aren't sneaky things that are wont to fool geologists into thinking they're something else. They're obvious signposts in the column. The products of a volcanic eruption are somewhat distinctive... they're included in the chart on the right side.

Floods also leave distinctive traces in the geologic column, like layers of compacted silt. Very thin layers.

And as for the idea I've seen often proposed that there must have just been a really really big global flood (we all know which one) that rearranged things on a very large scale globally... to be honest I've never understood how the people at AiG and the ICR (The folks who came up with this idea that the geologic column had been rearranged by such things) were under the impression that this was accomplished**. I mean, we're talking about rearranging something like 3 miles of often very solid and large rock layers mixed with various sedimentary layers AND redistributing radioactive isotopes and their respective decay products (which in many cases would have to be somehow extracted atom by atom out of the lattices of rather solid formations) such that radiometric dating would consistently date all the lower layers as older than the upper ones even though they're supposedly not AND at the same time sorting the fossils in them as well. And not only sorting the fossils, but sorting them according to apparent progressive morphological development rather than according to size and density which is how hydrodynamic sorting works according to little things like... fluid dynamics.

You wouldn't happen to have any insight on the thought processes at work here would you? Because it sincerely stumps me. As an explanation for the fossil sorting I've actually had it proposed to me before that some kinds of animals could just outrun the rising floodwaters longer so they got buried less deeply... unfortunately that would require us to believe things like oak trees outrunning velociraptors so whatever the explanation is it's going to have to be more plausible than that.

(**Ignoring the other various effective physical impossibilities of such a flood occuring in the first place.)

Edit: Oh yes... I'm a "he".

This evidence is what got me really considering the possibility of evolution. I still don't buy into the "one day could be a billion years" bit because, it doesn't say he did this one day and this the next, it is explicitly states, "the evening and the morning were the *blank* day". Now, unless the geological record shows heavy evidence of alternately deeply scorched and long frozen earth, I don't really see how that's possible.
Now, my explanation is that the record in Genesis is not exactly "beginning," at least not after the first verse. I base this on the fact that the word "was" in "the earth was void and without form" is more accurately translated "the earth became void and without form." I'm willing to accept the possibility that evolution did occur in the past (still not a hundred percent on that), but I'm a bit more skeptical of the claim that evolution of the magnitude suggested could actually be occuring presently, especially since speciation has never been observed to the extent that the two branches are 100% inviable (except in polyploidy in plants, but I don't see the biblical objection with plants evolving).

You wouldn't happen to have any insight on the thought processes at work here would you? Because it sincerely stumps me. As an explanation for the fossil sorting I've actually had it proposed to me before that some kinds of animals could just outrun the rising floodwaters longer so they got buried less deeply... unfortunately that would require us to believe things like oak trees outrunning velociraptors so whatever the explanation is it's going to have to be more plausible than that.

(**Ignoring the other various effective physical impossibilities of such a flood occuring in the first place.)

I don't know about the "outrunning" thing, since I've never heard that one before. I can tell you why this is a belief, however, because a flood of this magnitude would release energy of approximately 1000 hydrogen bombs (which are 1000 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima). The specific numbers here may not be 100% accurate (I don't have the time right now to find the info again), but it illustrates a point. That much energy can move and destroy a whole lot of earth. That's where the flood shifting theory comes from.

And what are these other "physical impossibilities", by the way? You seem to forget that God is involved here, where there are no impossibilities.

I don't know about the "outrunning" thing, since I've never heard that one before. I can tell you why this is a belief, however, because a flood of this magnitude would release energy of approximately 1000 hydrogen bombs (which are 1000 times more powerful than the ones dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima).

Yes, and a thousand hydrogen bombs would be bad news for us people... living on the surface... but as far as the geologic column is concerned the effect would be a thousand relatively small dents. I don't think you appreciate the magnitude or complexity of the problems facing the "flood geology" explanation.

1. A flood isn't going to move around the earth underneath it to a depth of 3 miles or so. Not even a really violent hypothetical global flood.

2. Even if it DID (which it wouldn't):

--2a. The manner in which that material would become sorted due to hydrodynamics doesn't look remotely like what the geologic column looks like.

--2b. A flood has no mechanism for progressively redistributing radioactive isotopes and their decay products inside solid rock in such a manner that as you move from lower to upper layers they progressively radiometrically date as older to younger. Which is how they date.

--2c. A flood has no mechanism for sorting the fossils embedded in those same layers by morphology. Which is how they're sorted.

The specific numbers here may not be 100% accurate (I don't have the time right now to find the info again), but it illustrates a point. That much energy can move and destroy a whole lot of earth. That's where the flood shifting theory comes from.

But that's the point... there IS NO flood shifting theory. There's no explanation for how in the world a flood is supposed to account for the observed data.

It would be like saying there was the "Million rogue hippopotamus" theory of how the pyramids were constructed. That theory consisting entirely of:

"A million rogue hippo did it"
"What?"
What do you mean 'What'? A million hippo could move a lot of rock around"

Well you know, no doubt they could... but we have't exactly explained how this accounts for the actual construction of a pyramid have we? I mean sure a million hippos could move a lot of rock around, but that doesn't explain how that rock got all put together is a really rather distinctive way now does it? It doesn't explain how they moved the really big blocks up on top of each other... hippos aren't known for their cooperative engineering efforts. I mean, hippos don't do that kind of thing.

Just like floods don't do the kinds of things that results in what we see in the geologic column.

Conventional geology accounts for ALL of the geologic data. "There was a giant flood" accounts for NONE of that data. It's entirely inconsistent with that data.

And what are these other "physical impossibilities", by the way? You seem to forget that God is involved here, where there are no impossibilities.

I'm not forgetting. If you want to declare "*poof*, and a miracle happened to explain away all the evidential contradictions" there's nothing I can do about it... but I would think that the point is that the evidence is so out of whack with the idea proposed that you HAVE to hypothesize all kinds of supernatural interventions to clear all of them away.

Hey, hey, hey! Don't take my head off! You asked why people could believe in a flood theory so I explained! The energy and all makes it appealling to some! I'm not saying its absolute fact, but you wanted to know!

Hey, hey, hey! Don't take my head off! You asked why people could believe in a flood theory so I explained! The energy and all makes it appealling to some! I'm not saying its absolute fact, but you wanted to know!

I didn't intend to take your head off, I was simply explaining the problems with that explanation.

This is all very amusing...but it's not getting anywhere. By the way, this is the biggest problem with religion vs. science discussions: God is not confined by science, if He was, then He wouldn't be God. Not that I agree with the whole flood rearrangement theory thing, but I do believe there was a global flood...oh well. By the way by the way, I'm a guy.

This is all very amusing...but it's not getting anywhere. By the way, this is the biggest problem with religion vs. science discussions: God is not confined by science, if He was, then He wouldn't be God. Not that I agree with the whole flood rearrangement theory thing, but I do believe there was a global flood...oh well. By the way by the way, I'm a guy.

Yeah, it is a problem when God can change stuff at a whim and all, doing things that science can't explain. He did, however, say that His handiwork is written in creation for everyone to see, and the more we discover about science (like the perfect ratio, the perfection of symbiotic relationships, the exactness of earth's placement and features to allow life, etc.), the harder I find it to be not to believe in intelligent design. This is what really strengthens my faith in God.

Yeah, it is a problem when God can change stuff at a whim and all, doing things that science can't explain. He did, however, say that His handiwork is written in creation for everyone to see, and the more we discover about science (like the perfect ratio, the perfection of symbiotic relationships, the exactness of earth's placement and features to allow life, etc.), the harder I find it to be not to believe in intelligent design. This is what really strengthens my faith in God.
My sentiments exactly. There's a quote from the head of the History Department at Oxford University where he states that after dedicating his life to finding and evaluating the facts, there is no fact that he is more certain of being true than this: that Jesus died and rose again. Quotes like that make me happy :D
Oops, i realise this is not on topic, but what the heck.

And here's topic 3.

Having covered why radiometric dating is considered reliable, how the geologic column appears, and how the cross correlation of radiometric dates, fossil composition, and layer depth in the column all converge on expectations it’s time to take a closer look at some of the transitional sequences in the fossil record. I could just list some series of transitional fossils, but quite frankly there’s no way I could summarize that info in a manageable sized post and do it near as well or as comprehensively as the Transitional Vertbrate Fossils FAQ at talk.origins does so so I’ll leave the listing to them:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-transitional.html

Instead, here I’ll focus on just a few example transitions with some detailed discussion.

Reptiles to Mammals

The list provided at the link above for this particular transition is extensive, covering a sequence of 30 fossil species… the early quite reptilian, then reptilian but with some somewhat mammalian features… then reptilian with some more than somewhat mammalian features… then a solid mix of reptilian and mammalian features… then decidedly mammalian with reptilian features… then mammalian with some somewhat reptilian features, and finally mammalian with few if any reptilian features.

One particularly well illustrated example of what was occurring during this process is the development of the mammalian ear from reptile jaw structures… illustrated here:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/jaws1.gif

Starting at the far left side of the image we have the timescale of which periods each of the fossils are found from. As we move forward from the Carboniferous to the Jurassic we see the clear gradual change in the shape of the skeletal structure in each consecutive example. The left hand column of images if the view of the jaw from the inside. The right hand column is the view of the same jaw from the outside. The bone highlighted in yellow is the articular reptilian jaw bone, which eventually becomes the mammalian malleus (the “hammer” in the ear). The bone hignlighted in pink is the reptilian angular jaw bone, which eventually becomes the tympanic annulus in mammals. The bone highlighted in light blue is the reptilian quadrate jaw bone, which eventually becomes the mammalian incus (the “anvil” in the ear).

This particular sequence is also an excellent illustration of the gaping flaw in claims of “Irreducible Complexity”. Such arguments simply don’t understand how evolution progresses. Someone who held to the IC line of argument would look at something like the ear and say “Well, what good is an ear without the hammer? Huh? What good is half an ear? All those interconnecting bones would have to evolve all at the same time! That’s just silly... so the ear is Irreducibly Complex”. (And if you don’t believe me, read it for yourself. A group of people proclaiming themselves to be “responding to evolutionist propaganda in the media” wrote a whole big long article on how the human ear is irreducibly complex because if you take away one of it’s parts right now it’ll stop working.: http://www.darwinism-watch.com/bbc_evolutionarytales_02.php)

On the surface of it, if you don’t really understand how evolution operates, that article has a certain compelling appeal to common sense. People who haven’t been exposed to the full weight of the evidence for evolution and how it operates think that is a perfectly reasonable statement. It is however dead wrong, as we can clearly see. They look at a modern human ear, which is the product of millions of years of refinement to optimize it for operating with the structures available to it… and then just because after all that fine tuning if you suddenly come along and yank a gear out of the mechanism it stops working it couldn’t have developed gradually? Nonsense. Nobody with any knowledge of evolution would ever say that at some point in the past there was some animal with an ear that was completely missing a malleus… but otherwise was an ear exactly like a modern human with all the same bones in the same shape for no apparent reason whatsoever… just waiting around for a fluke mutation to pop that bone right in there out of nowhere. That is an absurd representation of evolutionary progression and does not remotely resemble what is encompassed by evolutionary theory. It is nothing but a flimsy strawman.

On to the next example:

Reptiles to Birds

Another of the big ones, and also another of the favorites of the Irreducible complexity crowd. “What good is half a wing?” is a question you’ll see asked quite often in Evo/Creo discussions.

Well, let’s just see about that:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/bird_forelimbs.gif

Here we have four images of different forelimbs.

At the top we have Ornitholestes. A bipedal dinosaur found in the late Jurassic.

Below that we have the rather well known Archeopteryx, found at the very end of the Jurassic. Notice the forelimb skeletal structure is practically identical… the claws are a little more hooked, the second and third digits seem to have fused, the bones are just a slightly different shape… but Archaeopteryx is feathered. Apart from that it is clearly more reptilian than bird and there’s almost no chance it was capable of flight. At best it’s modified forelimbs provided it with some extra lift while leaping.

Below that we have Sinoris. An archaic bird from the Cretaceous. It had everything it needed anatomically to be fully flight capable. That’s right… that forelimb is a an early version of a wing…. which still has the claws from when it used to be a forelimb on the end of it. I don’t exactly see a useless “half a wing” stage between those first three forms.

Below that is a modern chicken wing… which serves to demonstrate just how much a wing can change given 60 million years of evolutionary adaptation... but that’s a change between wing and wing so there’s hardly a need for a “half a wing” stage between those two. Unless of course, considering the rather unimpressive flight capabilities of the chicken, you consider them to have "half a wing".

Hominid Evolution

And for the final example… us.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/hominids2.jpg

Entries are:

(A) Pan troglodytes, chimpanzee, modern
(B) Australopithecus africanus, STS 5, 2.6 My
(C) Australopithecus africanus, STS 71, 2.5 My
(D) Homo habilis, KNM-ER 1813, 1.9 My
(E) Homo habilis, OH24, 1.8 My
(F) Homo rudolfensis, KNM-ER 1470, 1.8 My
(G) Homo erectus, Dmanisi cranium D2700, 1.75 My
(H) Homo ergaster (early H. erectus), KNM-ER 3733, 1.75 My
(I) Homo heidelbergensis, "Rhodesia man," 300,000 - 125,000 y
(J) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Ferrassie 1, 70,000 y
(K) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, La Chappelle-aux-Saints, 60,000 y
(L) Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, Le Moustier, 45,000 y
(M) Homo sapiens sapiens, Cro-Magnon I, 30,000 y
(N) Homo sapiens sapiens, modern

With the exception of the first skull, a modern chimpanzee for comparison purposes, all the skulls are arranged in chronological order. The blue pieces in the skulls are reconstructions, everything else is original fossil material. The progression should be obvious. Decreasing upper jaw protrusion, increasing brain cavity size, the changing brow ridges… on some other skulls (examples below) where dental records are more intact changing size of the canines is also evident.

I should also mention that the consensus view today I that the Neanderthal were not direct ancestors to modern humans but more like cousins. A very recent branch off of the hominid line which subsequently went extinct.

Now, if we were only to display B and N directly next to each other I doubt that there’s an anti-evolutionist on the planet who wouldn’t immediately declare something very like “Well, one’s an ape and one’s a human. They’re [i]obviously different. Don’t tell me you think we could have come from THAT”

But just put B and C next to each other and ask them if “microevolution” could change one into the other. I doubt they could deny it. And thus they would declare they were the same “kind” and this was only minor variation within kinds.

Only put C and D next to each other and ask.

Only put D and E next to each other and ask.

Etc…

This is clearly a transitional sequence between a modern human form and an early primate form… exactly the thing it is constantly being claimed doesn’t exist.

For a better of view of some of these fossils click this link then follow the instructions below it:

http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/projects/human/#

-Click on “Enter the Gallery”. Don’t have pop-ups disabled.
-Along the bottom of the window that opens click on the seconf last image that looks like a gorilla (it’s actually a chimp).
-If you click and drag on the skull that comes up you can rotate it through a full 360 degrees. This lets you get a much better look at the overall shape of the skull. Also, if you hold down the shift key then click and drag you can measure the skull since they aren’t displayed to scale
-After that move on and click on the picture of the human, the bottom sequence will zoom in to show a progression of fossil hominids. You can click on each of them and manipulate them the same way. They are also arranged in chronological order as they are dated and found in the column.

To sum up... the claim that "there are no transitional fossils" has been around for a very long time... and it has been completely wrong for a very long time. Unfortunately I don't expect to stop hearing it any time soon. These fossils provide clear indication not only that gradual change of species occurs over time, but in what manner it has done so.

I have a question:

What are the differences within species today? I mean, a lot of people have a lot of differences in their anatomy simply because there are a few billion of us on earth, some with differing proportions as well, right? So why can there not simply be differences within a species (due to AVAILABLE genetic traits) that are found and construed to be transitions between species? Why can't most of those primate skulls be simply variations within species of monkeys, gorrillas, etc.? I have to be honest, if it weren't for exact measurements and all, I could see no natural progression between the skulls. At all. And all the measurements showed me was that someone is good at sorting things by size.

I still can't undertand why you discredit irreducible complexity, though. If you want a better example than the ear, look at the flagellum. It is really a miniature electric motor (something our technology can't create). And this really is something that couldn't have developed in smaller increments. I'll find you a picture later, because I'm running out of time on-line, but it is made of only essential pieces which would not have been able to work in transition.

I have a question:

What are the differences within species today? I mean, a lot of people have a lot of differences in their anatomy simply because there are a few billion of us on earth, some with differing proportions as well, right? So why can there not simply be differences within a species (due to AVAILABLE genetic traits) that are found and construed to be transitions between species? Why can't most of those primate skulls be simply variations within species of monkeys, gorrillas, etc.? I have to be honest, if it weren't for exact measurements and all, I could see no natural progression between the skulls. At all. And all the measurements showed me was that someone is good at sorting things by size.

I still can't undertand why you discredit irreducible complexity, though. If you want a better example than the ear, look at the flagellum. It is really a miniature electric motor (something our technology can't create). And this really is something that couldn't have developed in smaller increments. I'll find you a picture later, because I'm running out of time on-line, but it is made of only essential pieces which would not have been able to work in transition.

Breaking rules for one quick jab:

Claim CB200.1:
Bacterial flagella and eukaryotic cilia are irreducibly complex, Since nonfunctional intermediates cannot be preserved by natural selection, these systems can only be explained by intelligent design.

# This is an example of argument from incredulity, because irreducible complexity can evolve naturally. Many of the proteins in the bacterial flagellum or eukaryotic cilium are similar to each other or to proteins for other functions. Their origins can easily be explained by a series of gene duplication events followed by modification and/or co-option, proceeding gradually through intermediate systems different from and simpler than the final flagellum.

One plausible path for the evolution of flagella goes through the following basic stages (keep in mind that this is a summary, and that each major co-option event would be followed by long periods of gradual optimization of function):

1. A passive, nonspecific pore evolves into a more specific passive pore by addition of gating protein(s). Passive transport converts to active transport by addition of an ATPase that couples ATP hydrolysis to improved export capability. This complex forms a primitive type-III export system.

2. The type-III export system is converted to a type-III secretion system (T3SS) by addition of outer membrane pore proteins (secretin and secretin chaperone) from the type-II secretion system. These eventually form the P- and L-rings, respectively, of modern flagella. The modern type-III secretory system forms a structure strikingly similar to the rod and ring structure of the flagellum (Hueck 1998; Blocker et al. 2003).

3. The T3SS secretes several proteins, one of which is an adhesin (a protein that sticks the cell to other cells or to a substrate). Polymerization of this adhesin forms a primitive pilus, an extension that gives the cell improved adhesive capability. After the evolution of the T3SS pilus, the pilus diversifies for various more specialized tasks by duplication and subfunctionalization of the pilus proteins (pilins).

4. An ion pump complex with another function in the cell fortuitously becomes associated with the base of the secretion system structure, converting the pilus into a primitive protoflagellum. The initial function of the protoflagellum is improved dispersal. Homologs of the motor proteins MotA and MotB are known to function in diverse prokaryotes independent of the flagellum.

5. The binding of a signal transduction protein to the base of the secretion system regulates the speed of rotation depending on the metabolic health of the cell. This imposes a drift toward favorable regions and away from nutrient-poor regions, such as those found in overcrowded habitats. This is the beginning of chemotactic motility.

6. Numerous improvements follow the origin of the crudely functioning flagellum. Notably, many of the different axial proteins (rod, hook, linkers, filament, caps) originate by duplication and subfunctionalization of pilins or the primitive flagellar axial structure. These proteins end up forming the axial protein family.


The eukaryotic cilium (also called the eukaryotic flagellum or undulipodium) is fundamentally different from the bacterial flagellum. It probably originated as an outgrowth of the mitotic spindle in a primitive eukaryote (both structures make use of sliding microtubules and dyneins). Cavalier-Smith (1987; 2002) has discussed the origin of these systems on several occasions.

# The bacterial flagellum is not even irreducible. Some bacterial flagella function without the L- and P-rings. In experiments with various bacteria, some components (e.g. FliH, FliD (cap), and the muramidase domain of FlgJ) have been found helpful but not absolutely essential (Matzke 2003). One third of the 497 amino acids of flagellin have been cut out without harming its function (Kuwajima 1988). Furthermore, many bacteria have additional proteins that are required for their own flagella but that are not required in the "standard" well-studied flagellum found in E. coli. Different bacteria have different numbers of flagellar proteins (in Helicobacter pylori, for example, only thirty-three proteins are necessary to produce a working flagellum), so Behe's favorite example of irreducibility seems actually to exhibit quite a bit of variability in terms of numbers of required parts (Ussery 1999).

Eukaryotic cilia are made by more than 200 distinct proteins, but even here irreducibility is illusive. Behe (1996) implied and Denton (1986, 108) claimed explicitly that the common 9+2 tubulin structure of cilia could not be substantially simplified. Yet functional 3+0 cilia, lacking many microtubules as well as some of the dynein linkers, are known to exist (Miller 2003, 2004).

# Eubacterial flagella, archebacterial flagella, and cilia use entirely different designs for the same function. That is to be expected if they evolved separately, but it makes no sense if they were the work of the same designer.

I have a question:

What are the differences within species today?

That greatly depends on the species in question, but there are variations within all species. Evolution requires this. Variations within a population are what natural selection acts upon.

I mean, a lot of people have a lot of differences in their anatomy simply because there are a few billion of us on earth, some with differing proportions as well, right? So why can there not simply be differences within a species (due to AVAILABLE genetic traits) that are found and construed to be transitions between species? Why can't most of those primate skulls be simply variations within species of monkeys, gorrillas, etc.? I have to be honest, if it weren't for exact measurements and all, I could see no natural progression between the skulls. At all.

I think the questions I alluded to earlier will help illustrate the nature of our problem here. Please provide answers to the following 13 questions... other participants feel free to answer as well if you're so inclined.

Referring back to the hominid fossil skull images:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/hominids2.jpg

1. Do you see the difference between B and N? Could those two skulls be examples of variation within a single species?

2. Is B more similar to A, or N?

3. Could B and C be an example of variation within a single species?

4. Could F and G be an example of variation within a single species?

5. Could I and J be an example of variation within a single species?

6. Could M and N be an example of variation within a single species?

7. Could C and D be an example of variation within a single species?

8. Could H and I be an example of variation within a single species?

9. Could E and F be an example of variation within a single species?

10. Could I and N be an example of variation within a single species?

11. Could K and L be an example of variation within a single species?

12. Could G and H be an example of variation within a single species?

13. Could D and E be an example of variation within a single species?

And all the measurements showed me was that someone is good at sorting things by size.

Nobody sorted those fossils by size... they are displayed in the order in which they are found in the fossil record.

I still can't undertand why you discredit irreducible complexity, though. If you want a better example than the ear, look at the flagellum.

While I would prefer to hold off on discussions of cellular biology until we reach that topic, for now let me ask one question:

It is really a miniature electric motor (something our technology can't create). And this really is something that couldn't have developed in smaller increments. I'll find you a picture later, because I'm running out of time on-line, but it is made of only essential pieces which would not have been able to work in transition.

How do you know they don't work in transition? When formulating your answer be careful you do not commit the exact same error the ear folks do... when we know perfectly well that all the parts of the ear do work in transition, they just don't always work as an ear.

And CSW... shame on you... what would your dear old mother think if she saw you now? "Breaking the rules for one quick jab"... :gundge:

Ok, we'll hold off on the molecular biology (but you brought it up).

Back to the skulls, there is something that not even you can probably explain. I have the same question as Darwin, who said,

..why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine graduations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?

The fact is that we see no "transitional species" in the modern natural world. Why not? According to the theory of evolution, there would be numerous species "in transit", but all we see are very well-defined species.

A good example of what I'm trying to say comes from French zoologist Pierre Grasse, who commented on the "evolution" of the dog,

In spite of the intense pressure generated by artificial selection (eliminating any parent not answering the criteria of choice) over whole millennia, no new species are born. A comparative study of sera, hemoglobins, blood proteins, infertility, etc., proves that the strains remain within the same specific definition. This is not a matter of opinion or subjective classification, but a measurable reality. The fact is that selection gives tangible form to and gathers together all the varieties a genome is capable of producing, but does not constitute an innovative evolutionary process.

We do not have new species of dog, simply the gathering of specific desirable traits in individuals. Guard dogs have been bred for millennia, but they have never surpassed the limits of the dog genome to move towards becoming a new species more capable of the task. They remain dogs. I know what you want to say, that it hasn't been given enough time. Well, how long do you give early homonids to evolve into modern man? A few tens of thousands of years? And that's with natural selection supposedly doing the dirty work. We have had the opportunity to use artificial selection and do what your theory states would take tens of thousands of years, cultivating certain traits and gathering them to individuals. And yet, no new species.

So, in light of all this, how can you justify that man evolved through transitionary species to his current state? We've unwittingly tried to prove the transitional theory since the dawn of man, but have not been able to prove anything.

Ok, we'll hold off on the molecular biology (but you brought it up).

Back to the skulls, there is something that not even you can probably explain. I have the same question as Darwin, who said,

In Darwin's time we had only a very small fraction of the fossil record we have today and had catalogued only a fraction of the modern living species that we have today. His statement is simply not true in light of modern knowledge.

The fact is that we see no "transitional species" in the modern natural world. Why not? According to the theory of evolution, there would be numerous species "in transit", but all we see are very well-defined species.

No... we don't. And we will come to discuss modern taxomonies and biogeography as well... but currently we are discussiong the fossil record. Those questions I asked in the last post were not intended to be rhetorical, I really was expecting answers. Why the change of subject?

A good example of what I'm trying to say comes from French zoologist Pierre Grasse, who commented on the "evolution" of the dog,

We've learned a few things since Grasse published L'Evolution du Vivant... over 30 years ago...

He was, quite simply, wrong.

We do not have new species of dog, simply the gathering of specific desirable traits in individuals. Guard dogs have been bred for millennia, but they have never surpassed the limits of the dog genome to move towards becoming a new species more capable of the task. They remain dogs. I know what you want to say, that it hasn't been given enough time. Well, how long do you give early homonids to evolve into modern man? A few tens of thousands of years?

About 4 to 5 million according to the fossil record.

And that's with natural selection supposedly doing the dirty work. We have had the opportunity to use artificial selection and do what your theory states would take tens of thousands of years, cultivating certain traits and gathering them to individuals. And yet, no new species.

The only reason modern dog breeds are not classified as several distinct species is because they were produced through artificial selection. A Chihuahua and a Great Dane meet every criteria under the biological species concept of being distinct species. They sure as heck don't interbreed.

So, in light of all this, how can you justify that man evolved through transitionary species to his current state?

Answers to those questions I asked in the last post would go a long way towards answering this one.

Guys, this seems to be getting dangerously close to flaming...I have two example I doubt could have arisen from natural selection, but I'll save those until we're on the topic. All we are discussing is the fossil record: that we know how old fossils are, that we have transitional fossils, etc. I have no disagreements, so if everyone understands, can we please move on to the subjects we seem so eager to discuss(or at least cease discussing them until then)?

Guys, this seems to be getting dangerously close to flaming...I have two example I doubt could have arisen from natural selection, but I'll save those until we're on the topic. All we are discussing is the fossil record: that we know how old fossils are, that we have transitional fossils, etc. I have no disagreements, so if everyone understands, can we please move on to the subjects we seem so eager to discuss(or at least cease discussing them until then)?

While some of my comments may have come across as borderline sarcastic I meant them quite seriously. The hominid fossil record presents to me a clear transitional sequence, but Falconus stated that he not only did not find it to be a clear sequence but that he did not see it as transitional at all. In order to explore why this significant discrepency exists I need to know more details of his perceptions of that fossil sequence. In short, answers to those questions I listed really would be extremely helpful.

In the meantime the post on topic 4, the nested hierarchy and why it is a pattern of biological diversity explained and predicted only as a pattern of common genetic ancestry, is already being composed. Don't worry... we'll be right into dealing with present day biology very shortly.

While some of my comments may have come across as borderline sarcastic I meant them quite seriously. The hominid fossil record presents to me a clear transitional sequence, but Falconus stated that he not only did not find it to be a clear sequence but that he did not see it as transitional at all. In order to explore why this significant discrepency exists I need to know more details of his perceptions of that fossil sequence. In short, answers to those questions I listed really would be extremely helpful.

In the meantime the post on topic 4, the nested hierarchy and why it is a pattern of biological diversity explained and predicted only as a pattern of common genetic ancestry, is already being composed. Don't worry... we'll be right into dealing with present day biology very shortly.
I'm not saying you guys were doing anything, just that if you'd been left to your own devices, you probably would have started.

Topic 4, The Nested Hierarchy.

This is one of the most fundamental concepts which needs to be properly understood if you want to properly grasp the evidence for evolution. It describes the structure of the pattern of biological diversity produced by an evolutionary process. Evolution is the only process which predicts and explains such a pattern.

The nested hierarchy is a consequence of the way in which genetically heritable traits are transmitted from generation to generation. For an illustration, see the following (animated gif):

http://img267.echo.cx/my.php?image=phyloanimated0in.gif

“NGT” represents a point at which a new genetic trait is introduced to a population which through natural selection comes to be spread throughout that population to the point where it reaches fixation in the genome. From that point on it will be heritable by all the future generations of that population. Such an event can occur at any time, in any group, but due to the nature of biological reproduction and genetic heritability it can be propagated only “downstream” of the point at which it is introduced. So, the earlier in the process a new trait is acquired, the wider a cross-section of the final population it will be present in. Any traits acquired after that point will be found grouped into smaller and smaller cross-sections of the population and always completely contained within the groupings of earlier acquired traits. For example, in an evolutionary scenario we never expect to see something like this:

http://img278.echo.cx/my.php?image=phylozoomednever0gf.gif

There is no way an “ABCF” combination could coexist with the other final products listed there. There is no evolutionary pathway for producing both that combination and the others shown. (That red dotted line does not happen in an evolutionary framework)

To contrast, if we were examining the products of a common design process we not only could, but would expect to see such outcomes all the time. If while working it’s way along those branching design paths a designer came up at some point with the “C” trait and noticed… “hey, this works better than anything I’m using over on that “AF” development line” then of course any designer would utilize that knowledge in his other designs. For example: The human eye vs. the octopus eye. The eyes on an octopus are far superior in design to our eyes. Their optic nerves attach in a manner which does not produce a blind spot in their vision, that same attachment anchors their retinas, and because all the nerve connections come in through the rear of the eye they do not degrade visual acuity. In our eyes the optics nerve pokes through the back of the eye causing a blind spot which our brains must constantly correct for, because our retinas are not anchored by the nerve attachments a sharp blow to the head can detach them, and because the nerve attachments are in the front they get in the way of incoming light screwing up our visual acuity. Any designer who knew how to build an octopus eye would know there was a better way to design an eye than that. The evidence indicates however that the octopus evolutionary path simply experienced optical development which was superior to anything that occurred in human ancestry after the two branched off from each other… and after that branching occurred there was no way in which to share the advances experienced on one line with the other. Not within an evolutionary framework.

Now, what do we see when we look at the pattern of biological diversity present today? Here’s an example using 30 major examples (animated gif, modified from the universal phylogenetic tree diagram in Doug Theobald’s “29 evidences for macroevolution”. Takes a little while to cycle through.)

http://img265.echo.cx/my.php?image=phylorealanimated24jq.gif


As you can see, a distinctive nested hierarchical pattern, precisely what is predicted and explained by an evolutionary development process. No other process has ever been proposed that would produce that particular distinctive pattern. I am quite aware that someone can now come along and say “well a designer could have designed it so that it made that pattern on purpose” but the point is that it doesn’t matter what pattern was found you could always say the same thing. It’s an unfalsifiable hypothesis... which is another way of saying a completely useless answer. It tells us nothing. At all. It’s the same as saying “I hereby predict we will find… something!” and then when we do find “something” pointing out how the findings are completely consistent with your “theory”.

Evolution on the other hand makes a very specific prediction which is a necessary consequence of the mechanisms it describes… a prediction which, if the theory were wrong, could very easily be disproven. That prediction is however specifically confirmed by the data. That’s considered very powerful evidence that a theory has it right.

What is considered even more powerful evidence is that the fossil record overlays the nested hierarchical pattern created by the phylogenetic groupings of modern species which is shown above to an extremely high degree of accuracy. The innermost (and therefore within an evolutionary framework, latest to be introduced) groupings of genetic characteristics are the latest to have representation within the fossil record… etc…

This excellent cross-correlation of data between modern biological diversity and the fossil record is known as the twin nested hierarchy.

Now this point seems pretty much invalid. On the smaller scale, it's flat out the rules of inheritence. If you introduce a new gene to a Hardy-Weinburg equilibrium, even if the gene doesn't change anything it will either die out quickly, or slowly spread out through the population. As for the larger scale, well this is one of the characteristics of life that the theory of evolution was designed to explain. It's not like this is a property of life that scientists discovered after crafting the theory, and said, "look at that, it fits!"
And, like you said, I can just say "Well, that's the way it was designed." That's the beauty of the concept; the burden of proof is on those that aren't comfortable working off faith. One of the biggest flaws I see with the intelligent design theorists is that they feel like they have to prove something. I'm fine just as long as nothing I believe is disproved.

Now this point seems pretty much invalid. On the smaller scale, it's flat out the rules of inheritence.

It's the rules of inheritance on any scale... I thought that was reasonably clear. That is the pattern formed when diverse groups of organisms inherit common characteristics from common ancestry.

If you introduce a new gene to a Hardy-Weinburg equilibrium, even if the gene doesn't change anything it will either die out quickly, or slowly spread out through the population.

Of course it will... if neutral through the action of random genetic drift and if beneficial or harmful through the steady selective pressures of natural selection...

As for the larger scale, well this is one of the characteristics of life that the theory of evolution was designed to explain.

If you mean "the diversity of life and how it arose"... yes. Which it does. Excellently. As well as predicting the nested hierarchical structure which all life would continue to fit into as it was discovered, catalogued and examined... much of which had not occured when Darwin formulated his theory (it's still an ongoing process today). There is no reason to believe that pattern would always be what was uncovered if evolution were not true.

And yet the prediction continues to hold up after over a century of data collection and the direct analysis of genetic material which was impossible to perform in Darwin's time.

It's not like this is a property of life that scientists discovered after crafting the theory, and said, "look at that, it fits!"

No... it's a pattern they are constantly revealing year after year after year... and it always continues to fit.

And, like you said, I can just say "Well, that's the way it was designed." That's the beauty of the concept; the burden of proof is on those that aren't comfortable working off faith. One of the biggest flaws I see with the intelligent design theorists is that they feel like they have to prove something. I'm fine just as long as nothing I believe is disproved.

Try to understand that this is the exact equivalent of "I predict we will find.... whatever we will find.... and no matter what it is I'm going to say it's that way because it was designed that way" ... a position that cannot ever possibly be disproven because it isn't actually a position AT ALL. There's nothing of substance there to disprove. If it actually made any kind of specific descriptive statements about this design which could even be hypothetically subjected to any kind of rational analysis and be subsequently proven or disproven or even at the very least have any kind of evidence for it's truth or falsity found... that would be something... but it doesn't do anything of the kind.

Therefore the fact that it remains not disproven is completely meaningless, that's why unfalsifiable statements are dismissed as worthless in any scientific endeavour. They tell us nothing. At all. That is not "the beauty of the concept". That is not something to be admired. That is something to be frowned upon.

I just have a simple question first:

What exactly are the blue dots on the hierarchy? Just wondering.

Ok, now this "hierarchy" that's been put together here is quite interesting. Comparing species based upon their similaritites, creating this great explanation of your point. But, I was just wondering, why one trait? Why fewer than 30 species? A lot easier, right? But aren't there some points that just don't fit in on this hierarchy? A lot of animals and a lot of traits that seem to cross over this established pattern? Like the fact that hemoglobin is found in not only vertebrates, but also in a few species of mollusks, earthworms, crustaceans, and others. However, it's not in even close to all of the categories listed in your nice little hierarchy that a "common ancestor" with hemoglobin would indicate. Did it just miss some?

The fact is, you seem to ignore a very simple fact about intelligent design: it does predict remarkable similarities between species. You recognize the works of various artists and architects because of the similarities between the projects. Same with God, who said He wrote His existence in nature. I would predict, even if there were no contemporary evidence to support my theory, that God made many species incredibly similar as an illustration of His influence. Evolutionists are not the only one's with that theory.

I just have a simple question first:

What exactly are the blue dots on the hierarchy? Just wondering.

They’re markers for where a new genetic trait of interest was introduced to a given population.

Ok, now this "hierarchy" that's been put together here is quite interesting. Comparing species based upon their similaritites, creating this great explanation of your point. But, I was just wondering, why one trait?

There are actually 18 traits tracked in the graph.

Why fewer than 30 species? A lot easier, right?

Well, trying to visually depict the nested hierarchy of the individual species making up the entire animal and plant kingdom would be a bit of an effort… so yes. That general level treatment only covering some of the really major traits was sufficient to introduce the concept of the nested hierarchy and make it understandable. However it should be noted that the chart contains considerably more than 30 species. One of the entries for example is “amphibians”. Another is “fish”. Another is “palms”… etc... Each of these encompass hundreds or thousands of species. And of course, for each of these you could “zoom in” (so to speak) and break the group into it’s component species and the hierarchies they form.

For a considerably more comprehensive cladogram, which includes a considerably more “zoomed in” mapping of those groups, I suggest the Tree Of Life web project:

http://tolweb.org/tree?group=life_on_earth

It’s navigable, just click on a branch to further explore it. Click on the left pointing arrow to back up a level. For those who want to trace all the way through to us humans… just follow the following sequence:

Eukaryotes -> Animals -> Bilateria -> Deuterostomia -> Chordata -> Craniata -> Vertebrata -> Gnathstomata -> Sarcopterygii -> Amniota -> Synapsida -> Therapsida -> Mammalia -> Eutheria -> Primates -> Catarrhini -> Hominidae -> Homo -> Homo Sapiens

As you will see while making your way through that progression… the hierarchy has been mapped out in just a little more detail than the graph I displayed (If anyone thinks I was going to create an animated gif in that kind of detail they’re nuts). Each of those categories represents progressively narrowing group of organisms defined by specific genetic characteristics.

Kudos go to all of these biologists:

http://tolweb.org/tree/home.pages/participants.html

For compiling all that data in a single navigable source. It’s quite handy.

But aren't there some points that just don't fit in on this hierarchy?

Not really, no. There are some grey areas where it’s still unclear where a species should be placed within a branching or two on the tree… but that’s about it. Which would be kind of like complaining that we “only” experimentally know the value of the magnetic moment of the electron to a dozen or so decimal places.

A lot of animals and a lot of traits that seem to cross over this established pattern?

Nope...

Like the fact that hemoglobin is found in not only vertebrates, but also in a few species of mollusks, earthworms, crustaceans, and others.

Actually, it’s not the same as the hemoglobin in vertebrates. Vertebrate hemoglobin is contained in red blood cells… invertebrate hemoglobin is free floating in the blood. And they’re a different structure. All hemoglobin means is a heme (iron compound) contained in a globular protein. Anything that meets that criteria is “hemoglobin”. Vertebrate hemoglobin is a tetramere molecule made of four different subunits… Invertebrate hemoglobin has a couple of different compositions, some of them contain multiple heme compounds, etc…

It’s not a single molecule… it’s an entire category of molecules. It also happens to be one of the best characterized groups of molecules within the field of molecular biology. In fact, the comparative analysis of the differences between the genetic sequences for hemoglobin production in different species is yet another piece of evidence in evolution’s favor.

For example: The hemoglobin in chimpanzees is pretty much identical to that of humans... and other phylogenetic analysis just happens to show that chimps are the closest living relatives to humans. As we progress to more distantly related species the differences accumulate proportionally. Gorillas produce hemoglobin that differs from ours by an amino acid or two… cow hemoglobin is different by about 17 amino acids... horse by 18 amino acids... donkey by 20… rabbit by 25…. fish (very distantly related) by 70+ amino acids. Over half the amino acid of their hemoglobin molecule is different than ours which is an indication of just how many different ways these kinds of molecules can be altered and still perform a function. There are a LOT of different hemoglobin molecules.

As a note, another good molecule for this kind of analysis is cytochrome c… since pretty much everything utilizes a form of it… and there are literally billions of hypothetically possible functional cytochrome c sequences. I’ll dig up some of that data later on…

The fact is, you seem to ignore a very simple fact about intelligent design: it does predict remarkable similarities between species.

And how does it do this? What specific patterns does it predict these similarities will fall into and for what reason does it make the prediction?

You recognize the works of various artists and architects because of the similarities between the projects.

Yes… because we observe that a specific artist or architect produces work with a distinctive signature to it, and then we can compare that signature to other works to look for similarities. However, in this case we already know there was an artist and that that artist was responsible, through the technique he employed, for the work possessing that signature… and so we are justified in drawing certain conclusions when that same signature is subsequently observed.

ID simply says “whenever anything looks similar that’s because it’s commonly designed… no matter in what manner it looks similar… and no matter if we can’t explain why it should look similar (in whatever way it is we discover it’s similar) as a result of this design process we are claiming exists but can’t describe.”

In other words... ID tells us nothing at all. It just makes a substanceless declaration

Same with God, who said He wrote His existence in nature. I would predict, even if there were no contemporary evidence to support my theory, that God made many species incredibly similar as an illustration of His influence. Evolutionists are not the only one's with that theory.

There is no theory presented there to contrast with that of evolution.

It's the rules of inheritance on any scale... I thought that was reasonably clear. That is the pattern formed when diverse groups of organisms inherit common characteristics from common ancestry.



Of course it will... if neutral through the action of random genetic drift and if beneficial or harmful through the steady selective pressures of natural selection...

My point is, the same effect is present with or without evolution.

If you mean "the diversity of life and how it arose"... yes. Which it does. Excellently. As well as predicting the nested hierarchical structure which all life would continue to fit into as it was discovered, catalogued and examined... much of which had not occured when Darwin formulated his theory (it's still an ongoing process today). There is no reason to believe that pattern would always be what was uncovered if evolution were not true.

And yet the prediction continues to hold up after over a century of data collection and the direct analysis of genetic material which was impossible to perform in Darwin's time.

No... it's a pattern they are constantly revealing year after year after year... and it always continues to fit.

There was enough categorizing and examining when greeks went out and looked at shrubs to make out a pattern. The thing about patterns is, it's not surprising if they are consistent. The property of consistency in all life just means that all life came to be through the same process, be it creation or evolution (or even some combination of both, since the same creator would oversee it).
You realize, consistency isn't even very good circumstantial evidence if it's only consistent because it was designed to be.

Try to understand that this is the exact equivalent of "I predict we will find.... whatever we will find.... and no matter what it is I'm going to say it's that way because it was designed that way" ... a position that cannot ever possibly be disproven because it isn't actually a position AT ALL. There's nothing of substance there to disprove. If it actually made any kind of specific descriptive statements about this design which could even be hypothetically subjected to any kind of rational analysis and be subsequently proven or disproven or even at the very least have any kind of evidence for it's truth or falsity found... that would be something... but it doesn't do anything of the kind.

Therefore the fact that it remains not disproven is completely meaningless, that's why unfalsifiable statements are dismissed as worthless in any scientific endeavour. They tell us nothing. At all. That is not "the beauty of the concept". That is not something to be admired. That is something to be frowned upon.

I understand what you are saying, but I disagree. There is something to disprove, since a lot Christians use the bible as a sort of fact book to check validity of scientific statements. If you can truly prove something that contradicts the bible, you have disproved my ideology. Nothing about the observed order of life disproves my ideology, and nothing about the observed order of life proves evolution.

My point is, the same effect is present with or without evolution.

How exactly does a pattern of inheritance among seperate species come to be present without them evolving from common ancestry?

There was enough categorizing and examining when greeks went out and looked at shrubs to make out a pattern.

To make out limited patterns, on a local scale.

The thing about patterns is, it's not surprising if they are consistent.

It's not the point that they're consistent... the point is they're consistently the specific pattern produced by the process of inheritance from common ancestry. A pattern produced by no other known or proposed process. A process we know occurs. A process we are observing to occur even now.

I understand what you are saying, but I disagree. There is something to disprove, since a lot Christians use the bible as a sort of fact book to check validity of scientific statements. If you can truly prove something that contradicts the bible, you have disproved my ideology.

The bible says remarkably little if anything about anything resembling a modern understanding of biology. What exactly would I be expected to disprove in this scenario? Could you give me an example perhaps?

and nothing about the observed order of life proves evolution.

The observed order of life is, excuse the courtroom analogy, one giant evolutionary fingerprint with accompanying DNA evidence and time lapse security camera footage (the fossil record) of the 'crime' in progress thrown in for good measure. And while there is never any such thing as "proof" in science... there is really, really solid evidence and this is a prime example.

You recognize the works of various artists and architects because of the similarities between the projects. Same with God, who said He wrote His existence in nature. I would predict, even if there were no contemporary evidence to support my theory, that God made many species incredibly similar as an illustration of His influence. Evolutionists are not the only one's with that theory.

And yet that sounds very much like evolution....


You recognize the works of various artists and architects because of the similarities between the projects.

This looks like a very good place for me to jump in; I can tie this in with my beliefs quite nicely. You can identify artists by their work, yes, but what say an artist produces only one work? He tells you he created it and others around you, knowing the artist no better than you, tell you how it was done, though you do not hear confirmation from the artist. If the style actually used differs from what others say was used make the picture a fake? Does it disprove the artist? No, you conclude that the artist simply used the technique that the painting displays.
Same with God.
I believe God created the earth and all things in it. How he did it, I do not care. Whether he just said "poof" or if he was the unexplained force behind the big bang and evolution as the origin, he did it and that is what I believe. Humans who tell me that God and evolution cannot coexist know NOTHING more than I do about God! After all, one of the proverbs says "Know well what men are wiser than you, but do not be led astray by mans wisdom. The wisdom of God is over all." If I had to believe that evolution and God could not coexist, I would simply have to stop believing in God.

The one problem I have with evolution is accepting evolution as the origin of the species. Im sure that is another topic, however, so lets cross that water when the bridge is over it.

The one problem I have with evolution is accepting evolution as the origin of the species. Im sure that is another topic, however, so lets cross that water when the bridge is over it.

Could you clarify what you mean by "the origin of species"? Do you mean the origin of life itself... or the origin of diverse species groups among living things? Because if the latter, we're kind of halfway across that bridge at the moment. If the former... wrong field. Evolution only takes over once imperfect self-replication becomes a factor, it has no bearing on the origins of those first self-replicators since evolutionary mechanisms would not be in operation during such a process.

That's abiogenesis. Not so much biology, heavy on the chemistry. I suppose we could discuss that too once we get through the evolution material. It's a younger field than evolutionary biology, there's still several competing theories fighting it out to see which (if any of the current ones) survives testing and verification.

How exactly does a pattern of inheritance among seperate species come to be present without them evolving from common ancestry?

To make out limited patterns, on a local scale.

It's not the point that they're consistent... the point is they're consistently the specific pattern produced by the process of inheritance from common ancestry. A pattern produced by no other known or proposed process. A process we know occurs. A process we are observing to occur even now.

The bible says remarkably little if anything about anything resembling a modern understanding of biology. What exactly would I be expected to disprove in this scenario? Could you give me an example perhaps?

The observed order of life is, excuse the courtroom analogy, one giant evolutionary fingerprint with accompanying DNA evidence and time lapse security camera footage (the fossil record) of the 'crime' in progress thrown in for good measure. And while there is never any such thing as "proof" in science... there is really, really solid evidence and this is a prime example.
We seem to be talking in circles here, so I'm going to let most of this stuff go. What I will say is, you seem to be dismissing the whole "that's just the way God made it" idea a little out of turn. Now I'm not saying you can predict anything this way (with they whole "I predict we will find... something!" bit), I'm just saying it's possible. God could have just as easily arranged life in any manner he chose, but he chose to arrange it into the phylogenetic tree that we observe today. The nested hierarchy could be used as evidence against the whole "life originated randomly from pods that fell from the sky" group, but the fact that there's order to species doesn't hurt the creationist or intelligent design perspective at all. If you want to convince the intelligent design group, you'll have to prove that, for instance, all humans don't have a common ancestor just 6000 years back.

Topic 5.

Alright… so we’ve covered radiometric dating and why it’s considered reliable, the geologic column and the fossil record conforming to overall evolutionary expectations, the existence of transitional sequences within the fossil record showing evidence of past evolutionary events, and the distribution of genetic characteristics among modern life that conforms to the pattern produced by a biological evolutionary process in which traits are inherited from common ancestry. We’ve covered that the fossil record also overlays that distribution to a high degree of accuracy with characteristics in inner groups having their first representations later in the fossil record.

Next piece of evidence. Vestigial and other non-coding genetic characteristics.

Vestigial genetic sequences.

Looking at the nested hierarchy shown in the previous post we can see humans and chimps (along with the rest of the primates) are grouped inside a larger group of animals. Their grouping also indicates a recent evolutionary divergence from that group. This is corroborated by the fossil record. Now… the members of this larger group of animals are capable of synthesizing ascorbic acid, also known as vitamin C. Humans and primates are not. As our little evolutionary branch of the tree only recently diverged from the rest of the group, and since large scale gene deletions are extremely rare (usually a gene is disable because of a disabling mutation… it is not deleted from the genetic code), if evolutionary theory is correct we should expect to still be able to find clear evidence of the genetic sequence responsible for the synthesis of ascorbic acid in humans and primates (even though we are not capable of such synthesis) and subsequently compare it to the functional sequence in other animals and determine what alteration made to it caused it to become non-functional. This is a prediction unique to evolution, relying entirely on the premise that we inherited our genetic material from an ancestral source we share in common with those other animals in the larger group.

This prediction was confirmed in the early 1990s with the identification of the L-gulano-gamma-lactone oxidase genetic code in humans and primates. Subsequent analysis showed it had experienced a frame shift mutation that had caused it to become non-coding.

Let me summarize this again to ensure it is fully understood.

1. Humans and primates do not produce their own ascorbic acid. From simple direct observation there is NO reason to think they would have the genetic code required to do so.
2. The nested hierarchical structure humans and primates fit into within an evolutionary framework however indicates that they diverged from a wider group at a time when ascorbic acid synthesis was already present in the genome of the group, and thus that genetic information should have been inherited.
3. Since we do not produce ascorbic acid, and since it would be unusual to have an entire gene simply deleted in entirety from the genome, evolutionary theory and evolutionary theory alone predicts we should find vestigial genetic code for the production of ascorbic acid which was inherited from an earlier common ancestor in the human and primate genomes… and which has since been deactivated by mutation.
4. They looked for it. They found it. Deactivated by a frame shift mutation that wiped out the end of the sequence on that gene. Prediction confirmed.

Once again… I can’t stop someone from looking at this clear example of evidence of common evolutionary descent and declaring “it just looks that way because it was designed that way” but at this point, whether it’s impossible to disprove that statement or not, it would be beginning to get silly… proposing that the same non functional section of genetic code would be designed into humans and primates… and in such a way that it looked just like a functional piece of code in other animals that had undergone a mutation. If you want to design an organism that doesn’t synthesize its own ascorbic acid you sure as heck don’t need to give it most of the genetic code to do so only to make it not do so!

And this is hardly the only example of a vestigial genetic sequence that fit this pattern…. Olfactory receptor genes, RT6 protein genes, etc… the genetic code of all kind of organisms is packed with pseudogenes that used to code for something in an ancestor… still codes for that same function in related organisms, but has been disabled in one particular group by a crippling mutation while the bulk of the genetic code remains present.

Continuing on that line, there is also the matter of endogenous retroviral insertions... some of you may recognize the next section. I’ve posted most of it previously in another thread.

Endogenous Retroviral Insertions

Retroviruses contain viral RNA, as opposed to the DNA in humans and other animals and plants… and they also contain a reverse transcriptase. What this means is that they have the ability to insert the complimentary DNA sequence of their own RNA genetic code into the genetic code of the host organism they infect. It’s how they reproduce. Example of a retrovirus: HIV.

Here’s how it works in a little more detail.

The virus infects a cell. It then releases the reverse transcriptase. The reverse transcriptase makes a copy of viral DNA from the viral RNA. The viral DNA then gets spliced into the DNA of the infected host cell, at a random location… so from now on every time that cell’s DNA is replicated the viral DNA gets replicated right along with it. In the meantime the viral DNA in the cell serves as the template for producing new copies of viral RNA. Now, while the initial insertion point of the viral DNA is random, in any subsequent copies made when the cell reproduces the exact same location of the viral DNA will be copied as well.

(Side note: The random nature of the retroviral insertion is one well known hurdle faced by researchers of genetic therapies, since if they attempt to engineer a retrovirus to deliver their developed therapy to their patient a random insertion could place it in the middle of DNA that was already coding for something else that was fairly important)

When a retrovirus infects a host’s reproductive system - and thus the copies of the host’s DNA which will be passed on to it’s offspring - it becomes heritable by the host organism’s offspring, passed onto them just like any gene would be. And again, the location of the viral DNA within the genetic code will be the same as in the parent organism the DNA was inherited from.

The human genetic code is huge. It’s over 3 billion base pairs long. The genetic codes of the other primates (chimps, gorillas, orangutans, gibbons, etc…) are similarly massive. The odds of a single retrovirus infecting two of these individual species independently and just happening through pure coincidence to randomly splice themselves into the exact same location in their DNA are, obviously, not good.

So if we were to find, for example, that an analysis of human and chimp DNA revealed a single identical retroviral genetic sequence at an identical location that would be extremely solid evidence that they had both inherited that genetic sequence from a common ancestor who was originally infected by the retrovirus… thus also inheriting it’s common location in their genome. Not only is this a similar type of evidence that is possible from analysis of other genetic information… but this information in particular is completely immune to being hand-waved away as being somehow due to “common design” of similar appearing animals or functions as IDers and creationists attempt (and I stress “attempt”) to do with other findings. There is no rational way to argue that a viral infection was an element of the design of an organism.

So, in all of our studying of the genetic codes of humans, chimps, and other primates have we found a case of a retroviral insertion in an identical location in both humans and another primate? No…

We’ve found multiple cases.

The odds of finding a single example occurring by coincidence are mind bogglingly bad. The odds of finding multiple examples occurring by coincidence are exponentially worse. They defy description. And for the final nail in the coffin (as if we needed it), there’s the pattern we find these common insertions in:

So far (with the sequencing of the human and primate genomes still far from complete) the primate species we share the most common insertions with are chimps, which all other genetic evidence says are the most closely related primates to humans. We share the second most common insertions with gorillas… the second most closely related primates. Third and fourth most common insertions = orangutans and gibbons respectively… also the third and fourth most closely related according to the other genetic evidence. Fifth most = old world monkeys… sixth most = new world monkeys… fifth and sixth most closely related groups, respectively, according to the other genetic evidence.

A diagram of the pattern of insertions in question, courtesy of talk.origins:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/retrovirus.gif

(Edit... fixed link)

The arrows show where the evidence indicates the original retroviral infection occurred. Again, it’s impossible to prevent a claim that this is the case “just because God made it that way”… but again, it’s getting silly when the alternative hypothesis to what has been presented is that God deliberately designed identical remnants of past genetic infections into different species in a nested hierarchical structure in just such a way that it would really really look like they evolved from common ancestry.

Hey guys. I've got bad news. Though I would love to debate on this topic and respond to you guys regarding the last one, I was in a car accident yesterday. I probably won't be in debating condition for a little while. I'll keep you guys posted, but just know I'm OK, just confined to bed for some time. Christians, I would appreciate your prayers.

Be back on soon.

Hey guys. I've got bad news.

No problem... keep rested and heal up.

I thought I should include some additional information on the retrovirus evidence... just so it's fully appreciated.

The odds of the virus integrating in identical locations in two or more independent genomes is one consideration, and a major one. However, it is not the only one. Before even considering those odds we should also evaluate the odds of a retrovirus reaching fixation in the genome of two different species at all.

First a given individual has to encounter the virus. THEN that virus has to successfully infect that individual. THEN that infection has to be in a germline cell. If it infects a cell in the liver, or lungs, or skin, or heart, etc... the individual will still experience whatever effects may result from the infection but it won't be heritable. So if it infects a male it has to also infect a sperm cell. In females, it has to infect an ova. THEN it has to infect THE sperm cell or ova which actually gets used to create an offspring in the next generation. THEN that DNA carrying that insertion has to be successful enough that it eventually spreads it's genes, and the inserted retroviral DNA right along with it, throughout the ENTIRE species in subsequent generations.

And THEN we start considering the odds of that happening multiple times... in independent species... with a retrovirus that inserted at an IDENTICAL site both times... and just happened to infect species in a nested hierarchical pattern... and then finding multiple other viruses that did the same... in not just a nested hierarchical pattern but the SAME nested hierarchical pattern... and you can start to get a handle on why these observed common ERVs are such strong evidence for common ancestry.

this may sound a little strange, but while i was away for the week, i broke my left arm. this makes for some rather slow typing and a lack of capitals, so i think i am going to have to drop out of the discussion. i'll still follow it, but don't expect to hear from me for a while.

this may sound a little strange, but while i was away for the week, i broke my left arm. this makes for some rather slow typing and a lack of capitals, so i think i am going to have to drop out of the discussion. i'll still follow it, but don't expect to hear from me for a while.

Wow... two casualties in as many posts... if I hadn't fractured my elbow in advance of this thread I might be looking over my shoulder for an oncoming truck right about now, but I figure I'm covered already.

Hi!

I wonder if I could fill any vacancy now that two participants have left?

Hi!

I wonder if I could fill any vacancy now that two participants have left?

I think we could allow that... as long as you can catch up on the topics up until now.

In other news, since Topic 5 has elicited no response in almost 3 days topic 6, which will be looking in more detail at phylogenetic analysis and it's reliability in accurately reconstructing proper cladistic trees, will be on it's way probably by late tomorrow.

You recognize the works of various artists and architects because of the similarities between the projects. Same with God, who said He wrote His existence in nature. I would predict, even if there were no contemporary evidence to support my theory, that God made many species incredibly similar as an illustration of His influence. Evolutionists are not the only one's with that theory.
I'd like to note that such similarities are relatively plain to see. Things such as the fact that the vast majority of creatures have 4 limbs, 2 eyes, 2 ears, 1 nasal cavity, consume oxygen during respiration, etc. All plants have roots, most use photosynthesis to create food and consume Carbon Dioxyde during respiration, etc. All fish have fins, extract oxygen from water, etc. Whenever we find a species that breaks such a rule, we find it to be strange, just as you would find a work of art not characteristic to the artist strange, even is many others had done similar things. The only difference is, there ARE no other artists. I think the problem is that these patterns are so easy to see that we forget about them. I would say things such as "Orange juice will never come from animals, snakes will never fly," etc, but I would be dismissed as an idiot because these things are obvious. You don't need to understand the hierarchy to know them. Lol, this seems to have been a relatively pointless post. Oh well...

I understand what you are saying, but I disagree. There is something to disprove, since a lot Christians use the bible as a sort of fact book to check validity of scientific statements. If you can truly prove something that contradicts the bible, you have disproved my ideology. Nothing about the observed order of life disproves my ideology, and nothing about the observed order of life proves evolution.
Paul says that if Jesus' resurrection can be disproven, then faith is pointless, useless and stupid, the Bible cannot be trusted, and all those who died Christians wasted their lives. That sounds like something to disprove to me. If you disprove that, then every other point of the Christian faith would fall apart, and I would become an atheist. If the Bible cannot be trusted then their is no reason to be a creationist, and you win. I like it how despite the fact that all depends on His resurrection, the most evidence I've ever heard against it is "People don't rise from the dead. It just doesn't happen."

By the way, I'd like to apologize for being so far behind, my internet has been cut off for no apparent reason, and today's the first day I managed toget onto the school computers.

I'd like to note that such similarities are relatively plain to see. Things such as the fact that the vast majority of creatures have 4 limbs, 2 eyes, 2 ears, 1 nasal cavity, consume oxygen during respiration, etc. All plants have roots, most use photosynthesis to create food and consume Carbon Dioxyde during respiration, etc. All fish have fins, extract oxygen from water, etc. Whenever we find a species that breaks such a rule, we find it to be strange, just as you would find a work of art not characteristic to the artist strange, even is many others had done similar things. The only difference is, there ARE no other artists. I think the problem is that these patterns are so easy to see that we forget about them. I would say things such as "Orange juice will never come from animals, snakes will never fly," etc, but I would be dismissed as an idiot because these things are obvious. You don't need to understand the hierarchy to know them.

I would note that you do not need to understand the heirarchy to observe such obvious points as those listed here. You do need to understand the heirarchy to understand the data such as that listed in topic 5, and much of the data which will be presented moving forward. The posession of an inactive ascorbic acid producing pseudogene in primates is something which is predicted and explained only by the evolutionary hierarchy. The pattern of inherited endogenous retroviral sequences in the genome of diverse species is, similarily, something predicted and explained only by the evolutionary hierarchy. You need to understand the hierarchy to understand the significance of the congruence between the modern distirbution of biological diversity and the structure of the fossil record. Etc...

And as for Jesus' resurrection.... it may be an example of something to disprove in order to disprove Christianity (although I'm not certain how one would be expected to go about disproving a 2 thousand year old miracle claim that by it's nature would have left no objectively verifiable physical evidence) but it is certainly not something we should expect the evidence surrounding evolutionary theory to disprove since they're not exactly related topics.

Topic 6 on it's way later this afternoon.

Topic 6. Phylogenetic Analysis.

Previously we kind of skimmed over the creation of a phylogenetic tree with a very simplified example of how they are constructed using only some selected major genetic characteristics. In the last post we touched on how even much less obvious genetic characteristics can also be analyzed for phylogenetic relationships… like ERVs. As th discussion progresses the importance of the nested hierarchy and it’s very nontrivial nature will continue to become more apparent. Like in the case of ERVs it goes significantly beyond such superficially obvious observations as “we never expect to find snakes producing orange juice”. It applies right down to the molecular level even to genetic sequences which have absolutely no reason, from the standpoint of observing the “obvious” groupings of organisms, to display nested hierarchical patterns... except that evolutionary theory says they should because of their patterns of common ancestry.

When actually constructing a consensus phylogenetic tree such as the one shown at (http://tolweb.org/tree?group=life_on_earth ) not only are a great many genetic traits taken into account, but a rigorous mathematical analysis of the actual DNA sequences of the organisms in question (where such DNA is available) is done to create cladograms (the branching diagrams showing patterns of descent) with the highest possible percentage confidence. These techniques have been tested in situations where the correct evolutionary relationships are already independently known for an absolute certainty to verify that they do in fact not simply produce an evolutionary relationship but the correct evolutionary relationship to within a very low margin of error..

One example:

http://www.unifesp.br/dmip/Sanson-etal,2002.pdf

In the paper above the researchers started with an original sample of DNA from Trypanosoma cruzi. They bred it over successive generations and allowed it to continually mutate, and every 70 generations 2 of the resulting DNA sequences were isolated at random and then used to found new populations. This process was repeated 4 times until 16 different ancestral DNA sequences had been generated. A rough diagram illustrating the process is shown in Figure 1 on page 2 of the paper.

Now this might not sound like much… but the number of possible phylogenetic trees that can be generated for a group of N different related genetic sequences increases in a steeply exponential manner as N increases. That number is described by the equation: (2N-3)!/((2^(N-2)) (N-2)!).

For 2 organisms this gives us only 1 possible tree (which should be obvious).

For 3 organisms it gives us 3 possible trees.

For 5 it gives us 105.

For 10 it gives us over 34 million.

For 16 organisms that gives us a total of (29!)/((2^14)(14!)) = 29!/1.428x10^15 = 6.19028x10^15 possible phylogenetic tree diagrams that can be generated. Picking the correct one isn’t something you can do by luck... unless of course you can beat better than 6 quintillion to 1 odds. If you have mathematical routines that can, when applied to genetic sequences from those 16 organisms, subsequently generate the correct tree or even a very close approximation of it, it can safely be concluded that it’s because the routine works and works well.

So, they subjected the 16 final (terminal) sequences to phylogenetic analysis to see what the calculated highest likelihood phylogenetic tree for the organisms was. The result is displayed in figure 3 on page 5 of the paper. The top tree is the actual observed branching pattern during the experiment. Each of the circles represent a point at which sample sequences were isolated to found new populations… ie: an evolutionary branching of the population into two separate groups. They are numbered to correspond to the illustrated points in figure 1. The numbers along each branching line along the diagram represent the “branch length”. A value that can be used to represent either time between nodes… or amount of genetic sequence changes between nodes. In this case, the latter. For example, between node 2.1 and 3.1 the sequence undergoes 5 changes… while between node 2.1 and 3.2 it undergoes 6. T1 through T16 are the final 16 sequences generated as the end result of the process.

Displayed below that is the highest probability tree returned by the phylogenetic analysis of the sequences. Note that not only is every single node and branch correctly placed but the predicted length of each branch is also found in 29 out of 30 cases to within the calculated margin of error (on the branch linking the 2.2 and 3.3 nodes it missed the branch length by 1 sequence change more than it’s calculated margin of error.)

The entire evolutionary history of all 16 terminal sequences back to their common ancestor… reconstructed completely starting only from the end product and working backwards. Just as we can do with any other living things we have DNA samples from.

In short, the method works. Very well.

As noted in discussion of the previous topic there are, occasionally, some grey areas where it is not clear where a species should be placed in the tree to within a node or so due, in most cases, to some small scale discrepancy between phylogenies based on morphological data and phylogenies based on molecular or genetic data. An example will follow further down the post.

Evolution critics will often point to these regions of uncertainty as some kind of indication that evolutionary theory is incapable of explaining the evolutionary origins of some species… that evolution is “stumped” by certain species and should therefore be rejected. This is ludicrous. Even in a cladogram of only 16 organisms if this had been true of one of them… and a single branch had been mis-located by one node… given the amount of possible trees that had to be eliminated to arrive at the correct location for each of those nodes and branches it amounts to the equivalent of a margin of error in the results of 1 part in roughly 3x10^15…. or a measurement inaccuracy once we reach the equivalent of the 14th decimal place. An incredibly tiny margin of error if ever there was one.

To contrast … last I checked the charge of the electron has been measured reliably to 7 decimal places. G, the gravitational constant, to 3 decimal places. Nobody in their right mind suggests that this means we need to toss out physics and start from scratch because G and the charge of the electron “stumps” us through our inability to achieve a 100% perfect correlation between experimental results. 99.99% is pretty damn good too.

99.999999999...% is extraordinary. (They don’t say that evolutionary theory is one of the (if not the) most strongly evidentially supported scientific theories in the history of science just because they think it sounds good.)

Is it frustrating on those occasions when there is one branch on the tree with a positioning uncertainty of one branch... or maybe even two on sufficiently zoomed in scales? Yes. Ideally we would like to have absolutely every last detail right down to every single individual species nailed down with absolute certainty. It is why scientific research always continues to try to narrow those uncertainties... to add just that one more decimal place to that correlated value…

Is it somehow fatal to evolutionary theory that we still require some more data and better measurements to get that one branch position nailed down once and for all? Ridiculous.

Actual example of discrepancy between two phylogenetic analyses:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/images/croc.gif

These are two different phylogenies for species of crocodile. One based on the morphological data, one based on a molecular analysis of the c-myc proto-oncogene… taken from this study:

http://163.238.8.180/~fburbrink/Courses/Seminar%20in%20Systematics/gharials.pdf

Morhohological data will under almost any circumstances be considered secondary to molecular and genetic analysis... this being because the units of biological inheritance are the genes themselves. Analyzing morphology is observing a secondary characteristic of inheritance and thus has an expected slightly larger margin of error which can occasionally cause minor discrepancies in the two phylogenies like this one. If you scan down to the figure on page 8 of the linked paper you get a slightly better picture of the extent to which the sequences are analyzed to establish the tree in a genetic analysis. The chart shows the multiple mutations which were experienced along each branch to arrive at the final c-myc sequences.

The two charts created differ only on their placement of Gavialis. Based on the morphological data it was expected it would be less closely related to Tomistcoma than to other crocodiles… but the genetic analysis says they’re more closely related than other crocodiles. Notice that with the exception of the single Gavialis branch both trees are identical.

Note that even if we are to consider only these 8 species in isolation from the much larger tree into which they fit, and in which their position is well established, a difference of a single branch position for a single member of the group between one measurement and the other is miniscule. There are over one hundred and thirty five thousand possible phylogenetic trees for a group of 8 organisms… having the morphological and genetic sequence data correlate to this degree is an impressive level of agreement. Resolving that last branch position is the same as resolving a measurement out at the 4th or 5th decimal place. We still want to do it, but it’s not bringing the theory crashing down while we’re waiting for the call to be made. It’s not causing any difficulty to the theory at all.

There have been no questions or comments on either topic 5 or topic 6 for a combined total of almost 6 days... bumping because the thread fell off the last page.

I'll give it another day or two then post topic 7... but if I get no response there I'm probably going to consider the point firmly made that the evidence for evolution is rather overwhelming and leave it at that.

At that point I would probably open the thread for general participation. For those reading along, I stress at that point. Not open yet.

I'm a bit short of time at the moment, and I do have a lot of reading to do on these subjects, but here is an interesting article concerning phylogenetic analysis:

http://www.theburkelab.org/reprints/Genetica2004.pdf

ABSTRACT

Until recently, parallel genotypic adaptation was considered unlikely because phenotypic differences were thought to be controlled by many genes. There is increasing evidence, however, that phenotypic variation sometimes has a simple genetic basis and that parallel adaptation at the genotypic level may be more frequent than previously believed. Here, we review evidence for parallel genotypic adaptation derived from a survey of the experimental evolution, phylogenetic, and quantitative genetic literature. The most convincing evidence of parallel genotypic adaptation comes from artificial selection experiments involving microbial populations. In some experiments, up to half of the nucleotide substitutions found in independent lineages under uniform selection are the same. Phylogenetic studies provide a means for studying parallel genotypic adaptation in non-experimental systems, but conclusive evidence may be difficult to obtain because homoplasy can arise for other reasons. Nonetheless, phylogenetic approaches have provided evidence of parallel genotypic adaptation across all taxonomic levels, not just microbes. Quantitative genetic approaches also suggest parallel genotypic evolution across both closely and distantly related taxa, but it is important to note that this approach cannot distinguish between parallel changes at homologous loci versus convergent changes at closely linked non-homologous loci. The finding that parallel genotypic adaptation appears to be frequent and occurs at all taxonomic levels has important implications for phylogenetic and evolutionary studies. With respect to phylogenetic analyses, parallel genotypic changes, if common, may result in faulty estimates of phylogenetic relationships. From an evolutionary perspective, the occurrence of parallel genotypic adaptation provides increasing support for determinism in evolution and may provide a partial explanation for how species with low levels of gene flow are held together.

I'm a bit short of time at the moment, and I do have a lot of reading to do on these subjects, but here is an interesting article concerning phylogenetic analysis:

http://www.theburkelab.org/reprints/Genetica2004.pdf

Sorry for the lag responding, last minute business trip came up and I've been scrambling the last couple days.

Basically this article is discussing one of the potential complications in properly determining a phylogeny that can be encountered during a genetic analysis. It's one of those factors that exist in any scientific analysis which give us a percentage confidence in the results that is lower than a perfect 100% and which must be taken into account and corrected for to as great a degree as possible.

That's why we don't rely exclusively on the analysis of a single isolated genetic sequence as the absolute last word in determining a final phylogeny. There are numerous such sequences in the genome all of which can be subjected to the same analysis and this isn't going to be a factor in all of them. We can also cross check against the morphological phylogeny as an additional sanity check. And then we can additionally check both of those against the hierarchy preserved in the fossil record for a three way check.

All three of these data points have incredibly high percentage correlations to each other. And individually, as was shown in the topic 6 post, genetic phylogenetic analysis on it's own regardless of the complicating factors is still capable of astoundingly accurate phylogenetic reconstructions. A method that can analytically isolate the single exact correct phylogeny of a group of organisms out of over 6 quintillion possibilities isn't something that can be dismissed without a really good reason. Is it going to be able to do that flawlessly well in absolutely 100% of it's applications? Of course not, it would be naive to think we ever could find such a method in the real world... no method is ever completely immune to a margin of error due to some factor... but it's one of the most accurate analytical tools we have by a long, long margin and the results it AND every single other scientific analysis we've performed gives us are crystal clear. That being that all life on earth is biologically related through common ancestry.

Edit: When I get a little more free time topic 7 will be coming... but if after that participation continues to remain at the level it's been the last week or so then I'll consider the point about the mountainous support for evolution to have been made and open the thread.

Sorry for the lag responding...
No worries, I've been away over the weekend. No internet access...

Basically this article is discussing one of the potential complications in properly determining a phylogeny that can be encountered during a genetic analysis. It's one of those factors that exist in any scientific analysis which give us a percentage confidence in the results that is lower than a perfect 100% and which must be taken into account and corrected for to as great a degree as possible.

One of the potential complications?

Let me emphasise two sentences from the above abstract:
In some experiments, up to half of the nucleotide substitutions found in independent lineages under uniform selection are the same.
Constructing a phylogenetic tree without knowing this, up to half of those lineages could wrongfully be considered to have aquired this nucleotide substitution from a common ancestor.

The finding that parallel genotypic adaptation appears to be frequent and occurs at all taxonomic levels has important implications for phylogenetic and evolutionary studies. With respect to phylogenetic analyses, parallel genotypic changes, if common, may result in faulty estimates of phylogenetic relationships. From an evolutionary perspective, the occurrence of parallel genotypic adaptation provides increasing support for determinism in evolution...
If the same single nucleotide substitutions can be caused by uniform environmental selection, it casts doubt on both your topics 5 and 6.

Did you read my last posts in the ERV-thread? (#239 and 240)

The point I am trying to make is that there actually exists targetting mechanisms for the specific insertion of retroviruses (Although the Gypsy isn't a human retrovirus). Since the HERV's you mention seem to be extinct, how do we know that they didn't have a similar targetting mechanism?

You mention HIV and other disease-causing viruses. From a creationist/ID perspective, viruses should from the beginning have had a benign purpose. Disease-causing viruses would then have lost that purpose, perhaps through detrimental mutations.

The site-specific Gypsy virus, if I understood the article right, inserted preferably in germ-line cells and caused an infertile fruit-flie breed to become fertile.

The HIV is inserting very randomly, and is causing mortal illness.


(I also read an article stating that retroviral vectors showed less target specificity than whole viruses. Can't find the link right now though...)

What do you think of this?

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i4/geologictime.asp

(Yes, I know you don't like AIG. Hope you can bear with me.)

One of the potential complications?

Yes, potential. As in, in any given phylogenetic analysis we may potentially encounter this issue.

Let me emphasise two sentences from the above abstract:

The first sentence says that in some of those experiments the rate of common nucleotide substitutions was up to half. This occured in cases where microbial populations were exposed to identical artificial selective pressures where single, simple substitutions of as little as a few nucleotides were required to give them resistance to those new pressures and any populations which never had any members experience this mutation had those members die off. It is citing a worst case scenario for phylogenetic analysis, from the single most extreme result of any of the studies it is speaking of, not a commonly encountered situation.

Constructing a phylogenetic tree without knowing this, up to half of those lineages would wrongfully be considered to have aquired this nucleotide substitution from a common ancestor.

No... up to half the phylogenetic markers in that lineage would introduce a complicating factor to the calculation of the placement of that branch in relation to the others... assuming this worst case scenario.

If the same single nucleotide substitutions can be caused by uniform environmental selection, it casts doubt on both your topics 5 and 6.

No, it doesn't... because topic 5 had little to do with nucleotide substitutions. The evidence from vestigial genetic structures and endogenous retroviral insertions is an entirely seperate analysis and is immune from the type of complicating factor discussed in the article you linked here. The L-galuno-gamma-lactone-oxidase gene isn't just a common nucleotide substitution...it's an entire common vestigial gene. It's thousands of nucleotides long! And evolutionary theory predicted it was there based on our common ancestral relationship with other mammals even though superficial observation of humans and primates would tell us we didn't have it because we don't synthesize ascorbic acid. The fact that it was ALSO disabled by the same mutation in primates and humans... a mutation which would not be subject to active positive selection driving it to be spread to fixation upon it's occurance in independent populations... is simply additional corroborating evidence of evolutionary theory.

I would also like to point out that I did request that you catch up on all the previous topics. The reason I did this is because I am not discussing individual isolated cases of what seem to be evidence for evolution, but a single cumulative presentation. The phylogenetic analysis of topic 6 corrolates with the analysis of vestigial genetic structures and ERVs of topic 5, which both cross correlate with the nested hierarchical structure of modern biological diversity from topic 4. All three of these additionally correlate with the chronological distribution, nested hierarchical structure, and transitional sequence evidence of the fossil record and geologic column from topic 3 and 2 which are checked yet again against the radiometric dating methods detailed in topic 1.

So as I was saying, this paper discusses a potential complicating factor which can be encountered during phylogenetic analysis. Scientists are perfectly well aware that such complicating factors exist (the paper you linked points out itself on page 5 that the issues that can be caused by homoplasy are widely known in the field of phylogenetic analysis) and must be taken into account and corrected for to as great a degree as possible. Of course we're capable of doing that because we aren't relying on a single line of evidence to establish the phylogenies. First of all phylogenetic analyses can be performed on a great many different genetic sequences in the genome and not all of them, by a large margin, are going to exhibit this complicating factor. And we have seperate methods of genetic analysis available for which this simply is not a factor. And we have all the other lines of evidence detailed above.

And they all agree. In order to cast any serious doubt on their findings one would need to come up with an explanation for how every one of these diverse methods is somehow not only being thrown off from the correct conclusion... but being thrown off such that they all somehow come up with the SAME wrong conclusion.

Did you read my last posts in the ERV-thread? (#239 and 240)

Nope, missed them... post 239:

The point I am trying to make is that there actually exists targetting mechanisms for the specific insertion of retroviruses (Although the Gypsy isn't a human retrovirus).

The point I am making is that there are an awful lot of known retroviruses and ONE which has been fond to display target specific insertion. In invertebrates. And it's so different from other retroviruses that up until recently it wasn't even classified as a retrovirus.

Since the HERV's you mention seem to be extinct, how do we know that they didn't have a similar targetting mechanism?

We conclude it with high confidence based on:

1. The fact that there has never been a retrovirus found capable of target specific insertion in humans.
2. The fact that even after decades of active genetic research there has never been a retrovirus modified to be capable of target specific insertion in humans even when we're trying to force them to insert in a targetted manner so they can be used as gene therapy delivery systems.
3. If those retroviruses were capable of target specific insertion then we would expect to see their insertions in different species correlate to the possession of the target sequences. We don't. Instead...
4. The ERV insertions, while not conforming to patterns expected simply due to target specific insertion, DO conform to the exact same nested hierarchical structure of common inheritance revealed by other genetic studies, by morphological analysis, and by analysis of the fossil record.

You mention HIV and other disease-causing viruses.

I used the insertion maps of three different viruses as an illustrative example of the randomness of tier insertion point... however all known human retroviruses have non-site specific insertion.

From a creationist/ID perspective, viruses should from the beginning have had a benign purpose.

And how is this conclusion reached? What evidence was examined to conclude that viruses should have originally had a benign purpose? What theoretical framework was used that resulted in this conclusion being drawn?

post 240:

It's all quotes from the linked article (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6WSN-49TP1CG-5&_coverDate=10%2F17%2F2003&_alid=270827043&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=7051&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=dbcfec428f26908cb6e8315b46398138) which I won't duplicate, but I will point out you neglected to quote the opening statement of the paper:

Retroviruses are distinguished from other viruses by two characteristic steps in the viral life cycle—reverse transcription, which results in the formation of a double-stranded DNA copy of the viral RNA genome, and integration, which results in the covalent attachment of the viral DNA to host cell DNA (for reviews, see Bushman 2001 and Coffin et al. 1997). The choice of integration target sites has a decisive influence on retroviral growth. Integration is not sequence specific, so many chromosomal sites can host integration events.

The rest of the article, including your quoted material, is discussing an analysis of any kind of statistical correlations which might be found between retroviral insertion point and the local genetic sequence composition. "Such and such percent of this virus' integration sites were within so many hundred nucleotides of this type of coding sequence/terminal repeat/etc... somewhere in the genome...". None of it mentions actual sequence (let alone site) specific targetted insertions.

What do you think of this?

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i4/geologictime.asp

(Yes, I know you don't like AIG. Hope you can bear with me.)

Where to begin...

The collapse of 'geologic time'
Tiny halos in coalified wood tell a story that demolishes 'long ages'.

by Steve Taylor, Andy McIntosh, and Tas Walker

Well, let's start there. Three authors setting out to write an article that is supposed to demolish well over a century of findings from thousands of PhD geologists... and we have a mechanical engineer with a bachelor's degree in Earth Sciences (Walker), a guy with a degree in Aerodynamics (McIntosh) and I have no idea what Taylor's qualifications are but from what I can gather he appears to be a filmmaker. I see AiG has assembled their usual damn near trademark panel of experts.

The age of things is crucial in the debate over the authority of the Bible.

And of course this is an indication of the problem with AiG. They don't consider this a scientific debate, they consider it a theological debate. One in which they simply cannot be wrong no matter what the evidence says because that would mean the bible was wrong and that's God's word (considering that it's their personal interpretation of the bible that is wrong never seems to cross their minds for more than a second or two). If the evidence contradicts their position it must therefore be the evidence that is wrong and in need of reinterpretation no matter how drastic.

Most methods that could be used for calculating the Earth’s age, even though still based on unprovable uniformitarian1 assumptions, give upper limits much less than the billions of years required for evolution.2

Oh yes... want to see some examples of these methods they're talking about? They're a laugh riot. That "2" on the end there refers to this note at the bottom of the article:

E.g. the amount of helium in the atmosphere, the decay and rapid reversals of Earth’s magnetic field, the salinity of the oceans, lack of continental erosion, and population statistics. A good summary is given by Morris, J.D., The Young Earth, Master Books, Arizona, 1994.

Thier "Helium in the atmosphere" argument says that because helium is constantly being produced by radioactive decay of certain elements it should have built up in the earth's atmosphere to higher levels than we see today if the earth was really billions of years old. Neglecting of course that helium also escapes the atmosphere and is constantly released into space.

The magnetic field reversal explanation is hilarious. First these guys were trying to claim that the field was simply decaying, extrapolated it back a couple billion years, said that would result in way too strong a field, and declared that therefore the earth was young. Of course, the field isn't decaying, it's fluctuating. And occasionally reversing. The evidence for the reversals is too strong to deny, so now they try to fit every single reversal into a few thousand years by saying they ALL happened during the flood! Now, we've mapped one hundred and seventy magnetic field reversals over the last 100 million years alone. Taking only those reversals into account AiG's model has the field reversing itself practically daily. And EVERY TIME it reversed itself there also somehow managed to form entire massive strips of seafloor on either side of the mid atlantic ridge that immediately solidified into solid rock before the next reversal occured which trapped the iron molecules in them in an orientation parallel to the direction of the field at the time.

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to how dumping a bunch of water on the ground is supposed to accomplish all this?

Neither does AiG, but that doesn't stop them from saying it... because the Earth HAS to be young you see. They can't possibly be wrong. And little things like evidence and blindingly obvious logical impossibilities are just inconveniences to be casually dismissed.

The salinity of the oceans arguments completely misrepresents the inflow and outlfow rates of salts. And of course even ignoring this if we use AiG's exact same argument but apply it to different minerals in the ocean we get MAXIMUM ages of the Earth as low as 100 years which might just possibly clue a person into the fact that there's something wrong with their reasoning... assuming that person doesn't do work for AiG.

The population statistics argument is a howler. you can find it here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v23/i3/people.asp. It's just precious when they say that if the Earth had been around for even a million years there would be some ridiculously huge number of people around.
Of course if we accept the reasoning they use here if the Earth had been around for a few thousand years we would be literally up to our necks in rats... therefore the Earth must only be a few hundred years old.

Those of us who know better than to accept this kind of reasoning know about little things like disease, occasional negative population growth, etc... populations don't just follow a constant upward progression indefinitely!!!

All of the above is indicative of the quality of argument that can be found at the AiG website. These people are laughably incompetent.

As for the radioactive halos they're speaking of in this particular article: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html. ...details the many and varied errors in Gentry's work on the subject. Gentry and AiG have been making this and similar claims for decades, and it's been solidly refuted for the same amount of time.

Topic 7. Compilation of additional information.

Since topic 7 is looking like it will be the last official topic post in the thread I’ll try to cover a little wider range of additional points in this one.

Chromosome Fusions

A lot of animals have different numbers of chromosomes. An often raised objection to evolution is that this means at some point an organism would have been born with a different number of chromosomes from the rest of the population but it wouldn’t have had anything it could mate with that had the same number of chromosomes so the mutation wouldn’t have been preserved. This objection is based on the false idea that animals with different numbers of chromosomes are incapable of interbreeding.

If this was true the existence of modern domesticated horses would be something of a genetic miracle. Domestic horse populations have 64 chromosomes… wild horse populations have 66.

In reality chromosome fissions and fusions are hardly an unknown phenomenon.

One such fusion clearly occurred after the hominids branched off from the rest of the primates. Humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes, all the rest of the primates have 24. Evolutionary theory and the nested hierarchy then tells us this means there was a fusion event which reduced the number of chromosomes in humans to 23 after their ancestors split off from the wider population. If this prediction is true, we should be able to see clear evidence of it in a chromosomal analysis.

Lo and behold:

http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

There is overwhelming evidence that human chromosome 2 is the product of the fusion of two chromosomes which just happen to look basically identical to two chromosomes found in chimpamzees… as seen in the image included in the above link.

Note that this is not just evidence that human and chimp genetic sequences kind of look the same. The telomere and centromere sequences in the middle of human chromosome 2 are clear indication that that chromosome is the product of the combination of two different pre-existing independent chromosomes. If humans had been independently created in their modern form rather than having evolved into it from a common ancestor with other animals there is no reason to expect find something like this in the human genome… but there it is.

Biogeography and Paleobiogeography

Biogeography is the mapping of spatial patterns of biodiversity. Ie: which animals and types of animals are found in which geographic regions. Combined with paleobiogeography, which is the mapping of the same in the fossil record, this presents us with yet another piece of corroborating evidence for evolution. Fossil forms which are morphologically transitional stretching back from modern animals back to earlier ones are found in geographically contiguous locations throughout the record. Obviously this is something which is to be expected if all those transitional forms were to have evolved one from the other. If they were not transitional ancestral organisms but rather just completely independent separately created lineages of some kind there would be no reason to expect the geographical distributions we do observe that they fall into.

Properties of DNA Replication

DNA is the genetic identity of an organism; it’s the primary factor in making an organism what it is biologically. The DNA changes - the organism changes.

It is a well established property of DNA that it undergoes mutation during replication on a fairly regular basis. Different nucleotides are substituted for each other, new nucleotides are inserted in or deleted from a sequence resulting in shifted reading frames, entire genes are occasionally duplicated and subsequently subjected to independent mutation events, chromosomes split and fuse… and over time those changes spread even as they continue to accumulate. There’s no avoiding that simple fact.

The genetic code of all living things is in a constant state of change and thus all living things are changing. Generation, after generation, after generation.

Another simple fact is that, unless under the influence of some restraining factor which places boundaries on the absolute range of change achievable, this fact presents us with a very simple equation:

Constant Change + Time = Greater Change.

And in dealing with the history of biological life on Earth we are considering a very, very great length of time indeed.

As for that “restraining factor”, this is one place you’ll see a great deal of anti-evolutionists try to take a stand… if you can call it that. You’ll see them say things like ”Oh sure, evolution can happen… but only microevolution that produces variation within species. Evolution doesn’t make new species.”

Of course they’re quickly forced to retreat from this claim as soon as the numerous examples of observed speciation events are called to their attention demonstrating quite unequivocally that evolution not only can but does produce new species.

The fallback position from that point is usually to say that evolution can’t produce new “kinds” of organisms. Even a cursory examination of this position topples it in short order as well. When asked to define how to recognize what a “kind” is so that this claim can be put to the test no answer ever seems to be forthcoming. When asked the nature of the genetic barrier somehow preventing genetic changes from crossing the threshold between “kinds” no answer ever seems to be forthcoming. When asked for an example of which genetic code would be preserved by this barrier they can’t describe no answer ever seems to be forthcoming. When asked on what possible other basis the claim that evolution doesn’t result in these new “kinds” is made no answer ever seems to be forthcoming. When asked how exactly a person can claim that “A” never happens when they can’t explain why it is that “A” never happens or even worse, define what “A” is in any detail whatsoever … well, just guess.

Rates of Genetic Change

Another claim you’ll see sometimes made against evolution is that there hasn’t been enough time for all the observed “microevolution” to produce the degree of biological diversity we see today. Again, a claim that is quickly debunked.

Multiple studies have been done measuring average rates of mutation within species, average genetic divergence between species, and amount of time since divergence of those species ancestral lines indicated by the fossil record in which that genetic divergence had to occur. Despite the vague claims against evolution in this respect every time an actual objective measurement is performed it somehow fails to turn up any kind of problems.

For example: the fossil record indicates the ancestors of chimps and humans diverged approximately 6 million years ago. Based on analysis of the regions of the human and chimp genomes with the highest divergences from each other today (worst case scenario from the evolutionary perspective) and using that as the basis for calculating how fast mutation would have had to occur to produce the differences between those sequences if starting from a common genome the required rate of mutation arrived at is approximately 2x10^-8 nucleotide substitutions per site per generation… taken from Futuyama’s ‘Evolutionary Biology’, Third Edition. Current measurements of the average rate of mutation of human and chimp genomes gives a figure somewhere between 1x10^-8 and 5x10^-8 nucleotide substitutions per site per generation… right where it should be.

Conclusion

Every way we can think of to look at the data it comes out supporting evolutionary theory. Geology... Biology and Molecular Biology... Paleontology... Genetics... every way we have of approaching this issue gives us the same answer. That evolutionary theory has it right.

There have been no posts with either question or comment from a single one of the original thread participants in a week... even with the inclusion of a new replacement poster we simply aren’t maintaining a level of participation that warrants keeping this thread closed. Therefore, as of now I'm considering the limitted participation discussion complete and this thread is now open to all posters. I’ll be editing the opening post to reflect this change of status.

Have fun everybody.

Not really an addition to any real form of the debate, but I wanted to congratulate you on being such a methodical and reasoned force for logic and science. We need more of your ilk.

Thanks Falhaar... and *bump* to give people a chance to realize this is no longer a closed thread and anyone who wants to post can now do so...

And a final bump...

No questions? No comments? Nobody with anything to add? Once again, the thread is now open to all...

I don't see much activity, so I'm guessing that the post is dead. I'm sorry for that. Reformentia, very nice hosting and a very good idea. Sorry it couldn't work out.

Even if you do revive it, however, I will be unable to participate. With my accident and then other personal complications, I can't get involved in any internet activity for some time to come. It was a pleasure debating with you.

I don't see much activity, so I'm guessing that the post is dead. I'm sorry for that. Reformentia, very nice hosting and a very good idea. Sorry it couldn't work out.

Even if you do revive it, however, I will be unable to participate. With my accident and then other personal complications, I can't get involved in any internet activity for some time to come. It was a pleasure debating with you.

Yeah, well, it was interesting while it lasted anyway. I might consider kicking off the same project again with a fresh group of posters in a couple months if I'm still hanging around these boards. Maybe increase participation by a couple posters to keep things moving.

Anyway, stay rested and heal up...

Thank you Reformentia, some VERY interesting things you said. I really enjoyed reading your posts.