The Bible, Creationism, and Prophecy (part 1)

postcynical

AtomicHorror wrote: »

<snip>

On the day that the missing link was announced in the newspapers, I'd like to go back to this one again. (Took me ages to find it, this thread moves quickly)

AH, does the cross-breeding of plants break the nested structure of this tree? I'm guessing it does. What with humans being part of the tree does this cause any philosophical difficulties?

AtomicHorror

postcynical wrote: »

On the day that the missing link was announced in the newspapers, I'd like to go back to this one again. (Took me ages to find it, this thread moves quickly)

What was this comment in response to? I'm not sure what your point is. That missing link is not a missing link (that always suggests some relation to humans) for certain, we just know it fits into the tree with the the primates in a predicted gap.

postcynical wrote: »

AH, does the cross-breeding of plants break the nested structure of this tree? I'm guessing it does.

No it doesn't, because that represents a lower level structure than what we're looking at in the tree. To extend the analogy (awkwardly), you're asking me about cell division in leaves and suggesting it breaks the tree.

The nodes of the tree represent populations which can interbreed to produce fertile offspring. The colloquial term for such a population being "species", a group which may contain subspecies in which large scale morphological differences are apparent but interbreeding is still viable. So on my tree, the node AB represents a large group of individuals (which may display sexual dimorphism) all possessing traits A and B. Traits A and B may themselves exist as multiple alleles (versions), which we could call A1, A2, B1, B2, B3 and so on. We see this in humans in the classic examples of the alleles for eye colour and hair colour. The same gene in the same place, but with several options circulating in the species pool. The members of the population AB are all tied together by the fact that they all posses an A and a B. The matching number of traits is part of what allows reproductive compatibility, though that is a simplification.

Of course individuals within a species are interbreeding to produce offspring with traits from both parents, and members of subspecies can interbreed at the species level too. That interbreeding pool evolves as a group. If selection is acting differentially on some part of a breeding population, a subgroup may become reproductively isolated, and event called speciation. That will represent a new node on our tree.

Typically breeding between different species produces sterile offspring (think mules), so that represents a dead end and does not break the tree. In a way it's a sort of matter of semantics, boarders and definitions. Nodes of the tree are reproducing populations, but what we define as species is based on a much older system and does not always match up with reproductive capacity.

postcynical wrote: »

What with humans being part of the tree does this cause any philosophical difficulties?

In what way?

postcynical

AtomicHorror wrote: »

What was this comment in response to? I'm not sure what your point is. That missing link is not a missing link (that always suggests some relation to humans) for certain, we just know it fits into the tree with the the primates in a predicted gap.

Sorry, I'll reproduce the thread of the argument again in a moment. My point had nothing to do with this "missing link" at all. I had just been glancing at a newspaper before posting.

Thank you for the detailed reply, I think the idea I'm trying to explain is called heterosis (from a quick wikipedia search).

Here's the argument again:

Originally Posted by AtomicHorror
Perhaps F and G simply appeared together, but if the tree holds the existence of ABFG now permits the existence of a hypothetical species ABF, though it does not demand it. It also forbids the existence of combinations such as ACEF. So, out of interest, we go dredging the bottom of the pool to look for remains and fossils. We find fossils of ABF, meaning that the tree survives but must be modified.

######

---

A

---

######|###########|
###----AB--#######----AC----
###|#####|######|#######|
###|###---ABF---##ACD#####ACE
###|###|######|
###ABX#ABFX###ABFG

We can still find no living or dead examples of combinations forbidden by the tree, and there are yet more permissible new combinations (X), though we haven't found them.

postcynical: Is it obvious why combinations like ACEF are forbidden by this model? Why could a descendant of ACE not acquire trait F? And can the unknown trait X be identical to traits found in another branch, say X=E for instance?

Originally Posted by postcynical
And can the unknown trait X be identical to traits found in another branch, say X=E for instance?
AH: Nope, though it could be a trait that has similarities to E in terms of form and function. In the real world you could take dolphin fins and shark fins as an example. Superficially quite similar and performing the same function, but when you look deeper it becomes clear that this is due to convergence. The same solution to the same problem but from completely different starting points, thus we know they are not the same trait and the tree is preserved.

I know that certain traits in plants for food or flowers are desirable. Two different plants can be joined in ways that desirable traits from one (eg resistance to blight) can be combined with the other (eg edible). This can be done with animals too with those well known ligers and tigons being popular examples but as you said above with mules, these "species" are dead ends.

However, what about these plants that can be made which are hybrids of other plants and which can then survive and reproduce as a new entity? Their parentage would seem to represent a crossing of this tree diagram.

In your reply above, you mention that this is a lower level structure than the tree. Do you mean that only plants within certain boundaries (species?) can be successfully hybridised or that the tree structure is a large scale structure and that there are localised aberrations to this tree structure? I'm guessing that's what the leaf analogy meant. If such a hybrid/aberration were more successful, I gather that in nature they are not so successful, would that present a problem for the tree?

*edit: In summary, to return to your original diagram above. Under appropriate circumstances, if it were possible to form a hybrid of ABF and ACE, we could conceivably arrive at the contradictory ACEF.

AtomicHorror

postcynical wrote: »

Sorry, I'll reproduce the thread of the argument again in a moment. My point had nothing to do with this "missing link" at all. I had just been glancing at a newspaper before posting.

Thank you for the detailed reply, I think the idea I'm trying to explain is called heterosis (from a quick wikipedia search).

Here's the argument again:
I know that certain traits in plants for food or flowers are desirable. Two different plants can be joined in ways that desirable traits from one (eg resistance to blight) can be combined with the other (eg edible).

Let's take the blight resistance trait R and the edible trait E. When breeding plants in this way what you're really talking about is breeding some plant which is resistant but inedible (RiEi) with a related plant that is non resistant and edible (RiiEii) to give you a plant RiEii. In other words, what you're describing as traits are actually variants of traits that the plants already possess, and breeding that's occurring within a node of our tree that does not produce a new node. I'll come back to that.

postcynical wrote: »

This can be done with animals too with those well known ligers and tigons being popular examples but as you said above with mules, these "species" are dead ends.

Since this does not result in the creation of a new node, there's no violation of the tree.

postcynical wrote: »

However, what about these plants that can be made which are hybrids of other plants and which can then survive and reproduce as a new entity? Their parentage would seem to represent a crossing of this tree diagram.

Well not really because of what the nodes represent, I'll deal with that now.

postcynical wrote: »

In your reply above, you mention that this is a lower level structure than the tree. Do you mean that only plants within certain boundaries (species?) can be successfully hybridised or that the tree structure is a large scale structure and that there are localised aberrations to this tree structure?

In a manner of speaking, yes. The nodes represent breeding populations, whether that be what we'd colloquially describe as a species or some superset or subset of that. The breeding capacity is the boundary, the rule that defines the node.

postcynical wrote: »

I'm guessing that's what the leaf analogy meant. If such a hybrid/aberration were more successful, I gather that in nature they are not so successful, would that present a problem for the tree?

Well, when you accept that breeding may only occur within a node, this doesn't present a problem to the tree. Any new breeding populating derives from a single node and thus the nested structure is maintained. This may sound like a "just so" definition at first glance, but really that definition is a lot sharper than the rather nebulous efforts at looking at relatedness on the species, superspecies or subspecies levels, which are really just labels we have in the past applied to things that "look alike".

postcynical wrote: »

*edit: In summary, to return to your original diagram above. Under appropriate circumstances, if it were possible to form a hybrid of ABF and ACE, we could conceivably arrive at the contradictory ACEF.

The nodes by definition represent reproductively isolated populations and thus, by definition, we cannot breed ABF and ACE together. In the real world, organisms differing by the existence of minor traits would represent elements of a single node, my version of the tree merely simplifies because nodes featuring tens of thousands of letters would not help my point much.

The logic you're following is what eventually leads us from the tree itself (a thing that we observe) to the meaning of it. In other words, that it exists because of variation accumulated over time via descent and the resulting reproductive isolation.

postcynical

AtomicHorror wrote: »

The nodes represent breeding populations, whether that be what we'd colloquially describe as a species or some superset or subset of that. The breeding capacity is the boundary, the rule that defines the node.

OK, well in that case the tree structure cannot be undermined:pac: With technology though, could it turn out that all of life falls into one big node? Can the technical barriers that prevent different species reproducing (together) be overcome?

I know Chemistry developed when people tried to convert lead into gold. Even though we'd know (in theory) how to do that now, it would be technically difficult to remove the protons and neutrons from the nucleus of the lead atom. Would cross-nodal reproduction be a similar technical challenge? Do any serious scientists attempt this?

wolfsbane

Helix wrote: »

what is the bible (or any religious text) if not man's word? unless of course you believe god physically wrote them all?

No, God inspired by His Spirit the men to communicate His message accurately, but in their own words.

For it to be the word of men, the message would have to arise from their imaginations, not from God the Holy Spirit.

wolfsbane

robindch wrote: »

Not at all.

The earliest editions of the first few tales from the bible appear to have been written sometime between 900BC and 450BC. The earliest versions of the Epic of Gilgamesh date from way, way before that -- around 2,000BC.

Later generations have concluded, quite safely, that the first one committed to clay tablets is the original, from which the later religious stories derived.

.

As I said, careless thinking. If they said it was a possible explanation, that would be fair enough. But they appear to discount, or not be aware of, the other possibility: that Moses had access to the original account, passed down orally and also revealed by God.

Being the first in print is no proof of authenticity.

wolfsbane

robindch wrote: »

I'm not too worried what you call it standing by and doing nothing when one can easily help is the prerogative of the moral derelict.Er, so creating "new genetic information" (what you need for speciation) is possible for mosquitoes, but not for humans?

Heavens, creationists really need to spend a bit more time keeping their story straight! :rolleyes:

I'm not aware new genetic information is needed. I thought a rearrangement of existing stuff is sufficient. Mutations, deletions?

wolfsbane

Wicknight wrote: »

There is no such thing as evolutionary cosmology related to Darwinian evolution (ie theory of evolution). The cosmos is not a replicating system (at least not that we are aware of).

This usage of the term "theory of evolution" (which means the theory of neo-Darwinian biological evolution) to describe the vast array of scientific theories governing the cosmos, from Inflationary theory to General Relativity, is just silly.

It is a nonsense Creationist tactic of trying to make it sound like there is only one theory that is in conflict with them, where as in fact there are thousands of scientific theories that are in conflict with them.

You will need to that the terminology up with the cosmologists who speak of the evolution of the cosmos - they are mostly adherents of Darwinian evolution too. I see their point - the development of the universe from the supposed Big Bang to its present state is considered to follow a course of nature.

I also understand it is embarrassing for biological evolutionists to be reminded of the pre-biotic universe, for it brings abiogenesis to the fore. Great faith is needed.

AtomicHorror

postcynical wrote: »

OK, well in that case the tree structure cannot be undermined:pac:

You mean it's hypothetically unfalsifiable? Not so. If you find identical or clearly related traits in two populations that cannot interbreed and which do not share an ancestor population, you falsify the tree. That would be evidence that the trait had been somehow placed into the population.

postcynical wrote: »

With technology though, could it turn out that all of life falls into one big node? Can the technical barriers that prevent different species reproducing (together) be overcome?

Yes, which is why a broken tree would be evidence of something weird going on. It's broken in a couple of places that we now know are evidence of HGT. Aside from that, it's all as expected.

postcynical wrote: »

I know Chemistry developed when people tried to convert lead into gold. Even though we'd know (in theory) how to do that now, it would be technically difficult to remove the protons and neutrons from the nucleus of the lead atom. Would cross-nodal reproduction be a similar technical challenge? Do any serious scientists attempt this?

Reproduction not so much. Why would we need to do that when we can do genetic engineering? We can make bacteria, viruses, rats, rabbits, mice and various plants that express genes from pretty much any source. These break the tree because they are- shock- intelligently designed.

postcynical

AtomicHorror wrote: »

You mean it's hypothetically unfalsifiable? Not so. If you find identical or clearly related traits in two populations that cannot interbreed and which do not share an ancestor population, you falsify the tree. That would be evidence that the trait had been somehow placed into the population.


Reproduction not so much. Why would we need to do that when we can do genetic engineering? We can make bacteria, viruses, rats, rabbits, mice and various plants that express genes from pretty much any source. These break the tree because they are- shock- intelligently designed.

OK, so not only is this possible but it can actually be done. I didn't realise there was a distinction between reproduction and genetic engineering. Interesting. So the distribution of species falls into a regular tree structure right up to the advent of humans, and in particular, humans with our technical capabilities? But from here on in, the species on Earth need not obey this tree pattern?

Also, what is HGT?

Mickeroo

postcynical wrote: »

Also, what is HGT?

I think it means Horizontal Gene Transfer, as to what that means I have no idea

But heres the wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horizontal_gene_transfer

AtomicHorror

postcynical wrote: »

OK, so not only is this possible but it can actually be done. I didn't realise there was a distinction between reproduction and genetic engineering. Interesting. So the distribution of species falls into a regular tree structure right up to the advent of humans, and in particular, humans with our technical capabilities? But from here on in, the species on Earth need not obey this tree pattern?

Yes. Should humans become extinct and another intelligent species arise with no knowledge of us in any other sense, they'd know some intelligence had been around before them screwing with the gene pool because species exist that break the tree.

postcynical wrote: »

Also, what is HGT?

As Mickeroo says, it means horizontal gene transfer. This is when genetic material is passed between two organisms without one being the descendant of the other. Inheritance is "vertical", see? It's common enough in bacteria but rather rare in species that are eukaryotic (have cell nuclei) and multicellular. That's why the tree is so clear in eurkaryotes, but messy as hell in prokaryotes.

AtomicHorror

wolfsbane wrote: »

I'm not aware new genetic information is needed. I thought a rearrangement of existing stuff is sufficient. Mutations, deletions?

Why do point mutations, insertions or deletions not constitute "new information"? If function changes, is that not new information? Or what would fulfil your definition of new information?

The Mad Hatter

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Why do point mutations, insertions or deletions not constitute "new information"? If function changes, is that not new information? Or what would fulfil your definition of new information?

I think (and correct me if I'm wrong, wolfsbane) that he's thinking of a gene popping into existence without any precursor.

If I'm not mistaken (and I am speculating a lot here), that would be creation, not evolution. Or can that happen?

AtomicHorror

The Mad Hatter wrote: »

I think (and correct me if I'm wrong, wolfsbane) that he's thinking of a gene popping into existence without any precursor.

If I'm not mistaken (and I am speculating a lot here), that would be creation, not evolution. Or can that happen?

No it would violate what we understand about genetics and evolution entirely. New genes arise when existing genetic material is duplicated, moved to a new location and then modified. The precursor genetic material may be from a gene or it may be non coding "junk" DNA.

Genes popping out of nowhere would be improbable enough to be impossible in practical terms.

CDfm

But some are suggesting the evidence points towards evolution but in a general sense -so what you see are theories about the origan of primates rather than the origans of man.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article6350095.ece

Well thats my understanding.

Are we getting join the dots science here.

Ida appears not to be a hoax - but could she be hype?

If the building blocks of life are all so similar anyway you will get some crossovers but isnt it more a general rather than a specific theory applicable to the human species. Nothing wrong with that and admiring life and its origans for what it is.

wolfsbane

AtomicHorror said:

Originally Posted by wolfsbane
I'm not aware new genetic information is needed. I thought a rearrangement of existing stuff is sufficient. Mutations, deletions?
Why do point mutations, insertions or deletions not constitute "new information"? If function changes, is that not new information? Or what would fulfil your definition of new information?

Yes, you are correct. I was imprecise in my original reply to Robin. He used the term new genetic information and I carelessly treated that as increased genetic information.

Of course any change in information makes the information 'new'. Losing information causes genetic change.

My point to Robin was that God is not creating new mossies, they are arising from the operation of His existing laws.

wolfsbane

Regarding the supposed evolutionary nested tree:

The evolutionary biologist W. Ford Doolittle says "the history of life cannot be properly represented by a tree." And it is not just bacteria that present the problem to the universal tree - does not the debate about which group of mammals were most closely related to the whales indicate this? Whether one says the mesonychids or the artiodactyls, one is left with either the early whales evolving their artiodactyl-like heels independently from the artiodactyls, or the mesonychids evolving their whale-like teeth independently from the whales.

Either disrupts the nesting, hence some evolutionists using ring or net rather than tree to describe the relationships.

Anyway, that's as much as I can follow of the scientific end. Logically however, it seems to me that the idea that life is nested in orchards of trees is just as plausible as the concept of one universal tree.

(The orchard is the necessary model for Biblical creation - all deriving from original 'kinds'.)

wolfsbane

2Scoops wrote: »

Tried 'em. Essays or irrelevancies. No science. Which one do you think provides the scientific case for creationism? Seriously. We were making excellent progress on this a few months ago; I remember when you even found a report of an actual investigations (albeit nothing to do with creationism). Now you've withdrawn and are reposting the same stuff from before. Please identify a single example of creation science and shut me up for good!

Even the first one seems good to me:
Using Numerical Simulation to Test the Validity of Neo-Darwinian Theory
http://www.icr.org/article/neo-darwinian-theory-numerical-simulation/

But I'm sure you classify that as an essay. So let me suggest something involving research:
Mendel's Accountant: A New Population Genetics Simulation Tool for Studying Mutation and Natural Selection
http://www.icr.org/i/pdf/technical/Mendels-Accountant.pdf

wolfsbane

AtomicHorror wrote: »

Hilarious articles. Simultaneously pointing to many examples of speciation whilst trying to stress that evolution "adds no new information" (whatever that means). The second one was clearly written in response to a Science paper that showed guppy evolution in action, demanding a creationist hijack (I predict something about Darwinius masillae any day now). I particularly love the frequent references to "surprised evolutionists". Anyway, what the article describes here is mostly adaptation, not speciation. Adaptation is known to happen on a much shorter timescale than reproductive isolation. We have indeed directly observed speciation many times, but even including these examples it does not occur at anything like the rate required to produce the known living and extinct species in 4000 years.

How about, instead of linking us yet another an essay filled with anecdotes and rhetoric, you give us a research paper with some numbers? What is the modern rate of speciation? What is the average rate required to generate the current pool of species from the post ark kinds? And remember, it's one thing for rapidly-reproducing organisms to undergo rapid speciation, quite another large animals.

I can give you some numbers. There is a minimum of 1.2 million animal species currently living. The majority of these are terrestrial and would thus require saving from the flood. If the rate of speciation was a constant over the 4000 years between the flood and whenever people started apparently paying attention, 300 new species would need to have appeared every year to give the current number of living species.

It's estimated that there may be closer to 10 million animal species (again, majority land species). These are almost entirely insect species, so we could forgive the ancients for failing to notice new kinds of bugs appearing all the time, especially since we're still identifying them ourselves (mind you the ancients sure knew their scarabs from their locusts, so they were looking). But this would still leave creationists needing to explain how speciation could occur at a rate of 2,500 new species a year. There's just no known means by which any kind of evolution, whether you call it macro or micro, could pull that trick off.

But let's throw out all the insects for a moment. Maybe they've been speciating away unknown to science or even the casual observer for millenia. How about just large land vertebrates. Ballpark figure on that would be about 30,000 living species. Are we to believe that in the centuries just following after the flood, when life was radiating from a single location, that nobody noticed and recorded that 7-8 new land vertebrate species were appearing every year? And we're ignoring all the insects and all the species that have gone extinct since the flood here. Does that really sound more plausible to you than an old Earth?

You still haven't answered my other question. Why, with many eukaryotic species being discovered alive or in the fossil record each year (and that's not because they just speciated!), why oh why do all of them fit perfectly into the nested tree structure predicted by evolution? Why do none of them exhibit combinations of traits which break the tree? Where are the rodents with chitin exoskeletons? Where are the arthropods with lens eyes? Or where is any animal species at all that lacks nucleated cells? If we eukaryotes are not all inter-related, why won't that darn tree go away?

I've posted recently on the tree issue, so let me deal with the number of species and rate of speciation.

Let me take your higher figure for land animals species as a round 10M. Getting that in c.4000 years from one couple would indeed be a remarkable task. But what if we started with, say, 8K species? Have you the figures for that? If so, we can take it from there.

BTW, it is likely insects were not included in the 'breathe of life' category that was limited in numbers on the ark. So if you can offer any figures for non-insect animals, that would be good.

wolfsbane

CDfm wrote: »

I suppose we come from different Christian traditions and mine puts more of an emphasis on the moral, philosophical and ethical message.

“We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are unseen. The things which are seen are temporal and the things which are not seen are eternal.” (1 Corinthians 4:18 NIV)

I accept you have your beliefs and respect them but I also repect scientists explaining the world and universe as it is and cant see that as being incompatable with my beliefs.

OK, but it means understanding many of the comments of Christ and the apostles as erroneous and the result of ignorance of the facts. They were just men of their time, giving their best attempt at stating the history of the world.

Why anyone would pay heed to their moral, philosophical and ethical ideas above Buddha or Marx, I can't see.

2Scoops

wolfsbane wrote: »

But I'm sure you classify that as an essay.

More like a brochure in this instance. :pac: They certainly wrapped some code together... but what exactly did they do? Hypothesis test? Experiment?

marco_polo

wolfsbane wrote: »

Regarding the supposed evolutionary nested tree:

The evolutionary biologist W. Ford Doolittle says "the history of life cannot be properly represented by a tree." And it is not just bacteria that present the problem to the universal tree - does not the debate about which group of mammals were most closely related to the whales indicate this? Whether one says the mesonychids or the artiodactyls, one is left with either the early whales evolving their artiodactyl-like heels independently from the artiodactyls, or the mesonychids evolving their whale-like teeth independently from the whales.

Either disrupts the nesting, hence some evolutionists using ring or net rather than tree to describe the relationships.

Anyway, that's as much as I can follow of the scientific end. Logically however, it seems to me that the idea that life is nested in orchards of trees is just as plausible as the concept of one universal tree.

(The orchard is the necessary model for Biblical creation - all deriving from original 'kinds'.)

How does the mesonychids evolving their whale-like teeth independently disrupt the tree.

I remember 'chimeras' were laughably mentioned in that whale article. How do they fit into the orchard, two different trees trunks merging into one I suppose. :rolleyes:

CDfm

wolfsbane wrote: »

OK, but it means understanding many of the comments of Christ and the apostles as erroneous and the result of ignorance of the facts. They were just men of their time, giving their best attempt at stating the history of the world.

Why anyone would pay heed to their moral, philosophical and ethical ideas above Buddha or Marx, I can't see.

I think it means that you are allowed to observe and reflect that some comments have a wider application.

Render unto Caesar in Matthew draws a line. It doesnt stop a person applying their religious beliefs in context.

AtomicHorror

wolfsbane wrote: »

Regarding the supposed evolutionary nested tree:

The evolutionary biologist W. Ford Doolittle says "the history of life cannot be properly represented by a tree." And it is not just bacteria that present the problem to the universal tree - does not the debate about which group of mammals were most closely related to the whales indicate this? Whether one says the mesonychids or the artiodactyls, one is left with either the early whales evolving their artiodactyl-like heels independently from the artiodactyls, or the mesonychids evolving their whale-like teeth independently from the whales.

Well, firstly Doolittle's thoughts on the tree of life are not supported by the evidence cited. Ambiguity in some part of the tree does not falsify the tree- only evidence of contradiction does. As I understand the argument at hand (and I don't know much about it), the features mentioned might consist of:

1 trait acquired by inheritance and 1 trait acquired by convergence (tree is safe)
2 traits acquired by convergence (tree is safe)
2 traits acquired by inheritance (tree is broken)

It must be the third for the tree to be broken, it does not appear to be so.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Either disrupts the nesting, hence some evolutionists using ring or net rather than tree to describe the relationships.

Rings and nets can be used to describe the relationships within breeding populations, not the relationships between breeding populations.

wolfsbane wrote: »

Anyway, that's as much as I can follow of the scientific end. Logically however, it seems to me that the idea that life is nested in orchards of trees is just as plausible as the concept of one universal tree.

But it's not at all plausible and I have to wonder if you've grasped the argument I was making with the tree. The orchard simply doesn't gel with our most basic observations. The observations that first forced the Christian biologist Linnaeus to arrange the known species in a nested tree pattern. You can pick out some ambiguities in that tree, but no evidence of actual contradiction. Any chimeric species would do it.

The implications of an "orchard", which would be several dozen independent trees is also not supported by the evidence. We'd expect traits to be dropped into these trees based on "best trait for the job", or to show evidence of independent emergence, but instead we see "good-enough adaptation of some existing trait".

wolfsbane wrote: »

I've posted recently on the tree issue, so let me deal with the number of species and rate of speciation.

Let me take your higher figure for land animals species as a round 10M. Getting that in c.4000 years from one couple would indeed be a remarkable task. But what if we started with, say, 8K species? Have you the figures for that? If so, we can take it from there.

The starting pool of 8000 makes basically no difference. Take 8000 from 10 million and then divide the number of species by the number of years.

wolfsbane wrote: »

BTW, it is likely insects were not included in the 'breathe of life' category that was limited in numbers on the ark. So if you can offer any figures for non-insect animals, that would be good.

Read back over my post, my calculation for the terrestrial vertebrates made that assumption. Insects are not vertebrate. Anyway, most insects could not have survived the flood. So if they were not amongst those species on the ark, then God created several new Kinds after the flood and you're still left to explain how so many species emerged in 4000 years.

Morbert

PDN wrote: »

No, not at all. I see neither plant death nor animal death as evil.

I've been meaning to come back to this but never got the chance.

You don't see animal death as evil. That's fair enough. What about animal suffering though?

The close relationship between nature and animal suffering is one of the main reasons I'm an atheist.

wolfsbane

AtomicHorror said:

The starting pool of 8000 makes basically no difference. Take 8000 from 10 million and then divide the number of species by the number of years.

I'm no mathematician, but that seems strange to me. Would the number of speciations not be 8000x greater? So if one species pair led to 100 species in 100 years, 8000 species pairs would produce 800,000 species in a similar time.

Or is my basis maths confused?

wolfsbane

AtomicHorror said:

Well, firstly Doolittle's thoughts on the tree of life are not supported by the evidence cited.

OK, but he is an evolutionary biologist - not a creationist. So it seems your tree is not the stuff of scientific certainty you assume it to be.

wolfsbane

CDfm said:

Originally Posted by wolfsbane
OK, but it means understanding many of the comments of Christ and the apostles as erroneous and the result of ignorance of the facts. They were just men of their time, giving their best attempt at stating the history of the world.

Why anyone would pay heed to their moral, philosophical and ethical ideas above Buddha or Marx, I can't see.
I think it means that you are allowed to observe and reflect that some comments have a wider application.

Render unto Caesar in Matthew draws a line. It doesnt stop a person applying their religious beliefs in context.

I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean Christ and the apostles were ignorant of how mankind started out and were only repeating what they read in the OT? Or do you mean they knew the OT account of Creation, the Flood, the plagues in Egypt, Jonah in the fish, etc. were fables/metaphors?