Creationists: Describe The Theory of Evolution, properly (And Why You Disagree)

[median]

Two things here for Creationists/ID Proponents:

1) Properly articulate the Theory of Evolution (what it is, what it's main claims and evidences are, etc). This requires you to do your homework in order to meet this challenge. You must rightly, accurately, and correctly represent the Theory of Evolution as it is described by those in the professional field who maintain it. So you are going to have to do some research by studying those resources that understand and support the concepts.

PLACES TO START:

-talkorigins.org
-http://anthro.palomar.edu/evolve/evolve_3.htm
-http://evolutionlist.blogspot.com/2009/02/macroevolution-examples-and-evidence.html
-http://phylointelligence.com/observed.html#speciation


2) Once you have fully met condition #1, then describe why you disagree with the theory (TOE for short) and what your disagreement actually means to you.

[skeptic54768]

No creationist I know disagrees with microevolution. it's the magical macro that we have a problem with.

Like I said, according to evolution, simple cells formed billions of years ago and were on the ground just hanging around. Yet, they want us to believe we can get insects, animals and mammals from these cells lying on the ground.

That is what the absurd part of it is. Even Richard Dawkins can't explain it.

I would just like an Darwinist to explain what the next species was after the first simple cells.

So the timeline is:

Simple cells = billions of years ago
then we get......what species?

Explain this and I will believe in macro.

[median]

You didn't meet the challenge of the OP. Start there. Until you do so you will continue in ignorance of the science. You are building up Straw men arguments and trying to knock them down. Please describe what the Theory of Evolution states (in your own words) and thoroughly explain it's main evidences.

p.s. - The only difference between "micro" and "macro" is time! There is simply no sound reason for thinking that "micro" has limits that will not allow for divergence (you lost yet?). We have observed speciation in many instances. It's a done deal. You just need to catch up by doing your homework in the related subjects.

[One Above All]

BM
This should be fun.

[Jag]

BM

[Foxy Freedom]

No creationist I know disagrees with microevolution. it's the magical macro that we have a problem with.

Like I said, according to evolution, simple cells formed billions of years ago and were on the ground just hanging around. Yet, they want us to believe we can get insects, animals and mammals from these cells lying on the ground.

That is what the absurd part of it is. Even Richard Dawkins can't explain it.

I would just like an Darwinist to explain what the next species was after the first simple cells.

So the timeline is:

Simple cells = billions of years ago
then we get......what species?

Explain this and I will believe in macro.

Shep, The demon in your head is forcing you to make false claims about a subject you have never studied. You know you don't understand this. Why are you allowing your demon to make false claims?

[Nam]

BM

-Nam

[jaimehlers]

Skeptic, it's very important that you take some time to understand what the theory of evolution is really about.

Here's a point which should help clarify things.  Each individual genetic changeis like a penny, thus 'microevolution' is like collecting a lot of pennies.  Each one is practically worthless on its own.  But when you get enough pennies, you can buy something with them.  In effect, the individual genetic changes add up and can be exchanged for a larger genetic change.

Now, when these organisms reproduce, they bequeath any changes they've managed to get to their offspring (as well as a number of the unspent pennies).  Like an inheritance.  Of course, each offspring inherits different things, so they earn their own pennies and exchange them for larger genetic changes of their own. 

Now, another thing to remember about the larger changes is that they're not finished structures.  It would be better to think of them as larger units of money, which can themselves be exchanged for larger units of money.  Not only that, but there are many different currencies - so an organism might get a cent, then get a yen, a franc, a mark, and so on.  But as they collect them, they can exchange them for larger units of money and ultimately trade their way up to very large changes - which is 'macroevolution'.

[Antidote]

The moment I see someone say "I believe Microevolution happens, but macro is a myth" I facepalm.

Seriously skeptic, do some elementary research.

EDIT:
As median has stated, the ONLY difference between macro and micro is TIME, and lots of it in most cases, however there are occasions where it happens relatively quickly, i.e the Cambrian explosion, or ring-species.

[Deus ex Machina]

No creationist I know disagrees with microevolution. it's the magical macro that we have a problem with.

It's not "magical". It's essentially the same as "micro" - but invariably involving some situation where a population group finds itself in a new ecological niche towards which its prior morphology is not so ideally suited: whether by predators, available food, or climate, nature will select for traits that are more suited to the altered circumstances of the population group in question. That, plus a bit of time (think how much we've modified the shapes of dogs in just 10,000 years - some of which to the point where they cannot interbreed without human medical intervention) is essentially what's required.

Like I said, according to evolution, simple cells formed billions of years ago and were on the ground just hanging around. Yet, they want us to believe we can get insects, animals and mammals from these cells lying on the ground.

I'm not sure what you mean by the idea that cells were "on the ground just hanging around".

Simple cells are thought to have arrived not long after the Late Heavy Bombardment - around 3,900mya. Those simple cells may have resembled prokaryotes, though probably not as complex as modern prokaryotes and certainly not as complex as even unicellular eukaryotic cells.

The last universal ancestor - the most recent common ancestor of all extant living things - is thought to have existed around 3,500mya, but though that universal common ancestor would have been a single-celled organism, it was probably itself rather more sophisticated than the earliest living things, which had - after all - been around for about 400mya before then.

Cyanobacteria are thought to have appeared around 3,000mya, and given that they produce oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis, are thought to have been responsible for the ensuing Oxygen Catastrophe and the "Great Oxidation Event" around 2,500mya.

Eukaryotic cells - which are the ancestors of all plants and animals - are thought to have appeared by around 1,850mya - that's more than 1.5 billion years after the last universal ancestor, and following the Oxygen Catastrophe which - while bad news for many early bacteria - was a big boon to eukaryotes. And it was another 800 million years or so before it's thought that multicellular life appeared - and that multicellular life was initially much more basic than insects, mammals and other animals (and plants) - we're talking algae here. The ozone layer is thought to have formed around 600mya - due to the large accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere - and most of the modern phyla of animals are believed to have appeared between 500-600mya.

That is what the absurd part of it is. Even Richard Dawkins can't explain it.

The problem with questions like this is that they're easy to ask, but as above, the answers are not in fact as simple as the wording of the questions would imply. (Anyone have a child who constantly asks "Why?" Simple question, isn't it? The answers... not so much.) I am not sure that people know for sure what the "first cells" truly were, which makes it all that much harder to say what the "second cells" (or the first speciation) would have entailed. Paleontologists and geologists have discovered, at least in broad-brush terms, somewhat of the history of our planet, and of life on it; but not all living things leave traces in the rocks, and single-celled organisms that lived more than three billion years ago are especially hard to find.

It's also assuming that such a speciation event would have been the first: if one delves into abiogenetic hypotheses, one may postulate "speciation events" in there where certain biochemical processes worked better than others, and one group became the "first cells", and the other(s) didn't make it. So the question itself may contain a false premise - but I digress.

So the timeline is:

Simple cells = billions of years ago
then we get......what species?

Explain this and I will believe in macro.

You might find this a more useful timeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

[ParkingPlaces]

The moment I see someone say "I believe Microevolution happens, but macro is a myth" I facepalm.

Seriously skeptic, do some elementary research.

EDIT:
As median has stated, the ONLY difference between macro and micro is TIME, and lots of it in most cases, however there are occasions where it happens relatively quickly, i.e the Cambrian explosion, or ring-species.

It needs to be pointed out, to people who don't know anything, that by relatively quickly, we mean it took 70-80 million years, not three weeks. But creationists cannot think about both 'quick' and 'millions of years' in one fundy lifetime, so they just ignore that little detail and ask things like "how could those changes happen so fast?"

The Cambrian Explosion happened relatively fast, when compared to the fossil record for other periods. But not really really really fast, like the frickin' roadrunner.

[jaimehlers]

The Cambrian Explosion happened relatively fast, when compared to the fossil record for other periods. But not really really really fast, like the frickin' roadrunner.

Would you say it was fast compared to plate tectonics?

[skeptic54768]

No creationist I know disagrees with microevolution. it's the magical macro that we have a problem with.

It's not "magical". It's essentially the same as "micro" - but invariably involving some situation where a population group finds itself in a new ecological niche towards which its prior morphology is not so ideally suited: whether by predators, available food, or climate, nature will select for traits that are more suited to the altered circumstances of the population group in question. That, plus a bit of time (think how much we've modified the shapes of dogs in just 10,000 years - some of which to the point where they cannot interbreed without human medical intervention) is essentially what's required.

Like I said, according to evolution, simple cells formed billions of years ago and were on the ground just hanging around. Yet, they want us to believe we can get insects, animals and mammals from these cells lying on the ground.

I'm not sure what you mean by the idea that cells were "on the ground just hanging around".

Simple cells are thought to have arrived not long after the Late Heavy Bombardment - around 3,900mya. Those simple cells may have resembled prokaryotes, though probably not as complex as modern prokaryotes and certainly not as complex as even unicellular eukaryotic cells.

The last universal ancestor - the most recent common ancestor of all extant living things - is thought to have existed around 3,500mya, but though that universal common ancestor would have been a single-celled organism, it was probably itself rather more sophisticated than the earliest living things, which had - after all - been around for about 400mya before then.

Cyanobacteria are thought to have appeared around 3,000mya, and given that they produce oxygen as a waste product of photosynthesis, are thought to have been responsible for the ensuing Oxygen Catastrophe and the "Great Oxidation Event" around 2,500mya.

Eukaryotic cells - which are the ancestors of all plants and animals - are thought to have appeared by around 1,850mya - that's more than 1.5 billion years after the last universal ancestor, and following the Oxygen Catastrophe which - while bad news for many early bacteria - was a big boon to eukaryotes. And it was another 800 million years or so before it's thought that multicellular life appeared - and that multicellular life was initially much more basic than insects, mammals and other animals (and plants) - we're talking algae here. The ozone layer is thought to have formed around 600mya - due to the large accumulation of oxygen in the atmosphere - and most of the modern phyla of animals are believed to have appeared between 500-600mya.

That is what the absurd part of it is. Even Richard Dawkins can't explain it.

The problem with questions like this is that they're easy to ask, but as above, the answers are not in fact as simple as the wording of the questions would imply. (Anyone have a child who constantly asks "Why?" Simple question, isn't it? The answers... not so much.) I am not sure that people know for sure what the "first cells" truly were, which makes it all that much harder to say what the "second cells" (or the first speciation) would have entailed. Paleontologists and geologists have discovered, at least in broad-brush terms, somewhat of the history of our planet, and of life on it; but not all living things leave traces in the rocks, and single-celled organisms that lived more than three billion years ago are especially hard to find.

It's also assuming that such a speciation event would have been the first: if one delves into abiogenetic hypotheses, one may postulate "speciation events" in there where certain biochemical processes worked better than others, and one group became the "first cells", and the other(s) didn't make it. So the question itself may contain a false premise - but I digress.

So the timeline is:

Simple cells = billions of years ago
then we get......what species?

Explain this and I will believe in macro.

You might find this a more useful timeline: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_evolution

Yes! Yes! Now we are getting somewhere! Nice post!

In that link about the timeline of evolution it says that 1 billion years ago, there was multicellular life. Then 600 million years ago, there was simple animals.

So in 400 million years we went from clumps of cells on the ground to simple animals. How did that happen? That is mind-boggling.

[skeptic54768]

As median has stated, the ONLY difference between macro and micro is TIME, and lots of it in most cases, however there are occasions where it happens relatively quickly, i.e the Cambrian explosion, or ring-species.

Yes, Kent Hovind mentioned that in one of his lectures on Creation Science. He said, "Time is the evolutionist's God. They need it to make the belief work."

[skeptic54768]

It's not "magical". It's essentially the same as "micro" - but invariably involving some situation where a population group finds itself in a new ecological niche towards which its prior morphology is not so ideally suited: whether by predators, available food, or climate, nature will select for traits that are more suited to the altered circumstances of the population group in question. That, plus a bit of time (think how much we've modified the shapes of dogs in just 10,000 years - some of which to the point where they cannot interbreed without human medical intervention) is essentially what's required.

They are still dogs though. That's the point. We accept this already. We know small changes can even form a new species of dog that can't mate with the other dogs.

But the main point is that they are still dogs. This is not empirical evidence of macroevolution.

[Azdgari]

So in 400 million years we went from clumps of cells on the ground to simple animals. How did that happen? That is mind-boggling.

In the water, not on the ground.  And it happened because they stuck together in colonies that had a simple structure.  The earliest fossils we have of multicellular organisms with a definite structure are of things called Rangeomorphs.  Here is a post I made on the topic some time ago:

I actually just attended a colloquium presentation on a topic related to this.  The earliest fossils of multicellular animals were Rangeomorphs.  These were fractal organisms, to 4 fractal iterations:



A collection of populations of these were preserved in a very fine-mud turbidite nearly 600 million years ago, in rocks that are now a part of Newfoundland here in Canada (the turbidite was buried shortly afterward by directly-dateable volcanic ash):



They were buried in-situ, preserving excellent detail and allowing scientists to see where members of these species were placed in relation to each other.  This information allows us to get an idea of what that pre-Cambrian ecology must have looked like:



These organisms would have been absorbtion and/or suspension feeders, much like today's sponges and corals but without the same degree of tissue or structural specialization, and certainly no vascular system[1].  Their fractal shape allowed their cells to remain sessile[2] while maximizing their cellular colony's surface area.

Taxonomically, they fall somewhere between fungi and sponges, and are the earliest examples of animal life ever discovered.  They are also an evolutionary dead-end[3], as no subsequent organisms show any evidence of descent from these ones.  But they're still the first multicellular life ever found, and the benefits of multicellularity are evident from what we've learned about their structure and mode of life.

1.	A water-vascular system is present in both sponges and corals, and some sort of vascular system is present in absolutely every animal species.  This is one of the qualities that distinguishes the simplest animals from fungi.
2.	Able to stay in the same place rather than being swept away with whatever current came along.
3.	This makes sense when you consider their body-plan.  Really, where do you go from there, in evolutionary terms?  The fractal body-plan, efficient though it may have been at what it did considering its simplicity, just doesn't allow for the specialization of body parts that characterizes all other animal species.

[Azdgari]

Yes, Kent Hovind mentioned that in one of his lectures on Creation Science. He said, "Time is the evolutionist's God. They need it to make the belief work."

Fortunately, time on Earth really has passed.  It's a "god" we know exists.  Though, calling it a "god" is kind of silly because time lacks the qualites one would normally associate with a god.

[skeptic54768]

The "precambrian ecology" does not look anything like animals to me. Where's the paws and legs and teeth?

[Azdgari]

The "precambrian ecology" does not look anything like animals to me. Where's the paws and legs and teeth?

Probably in the same place they are on this animal:

[median]

Yes! Yes! Now we are getting somewhere! Nice post!

In that link about the timeline of evolution it says that 1 billion years ago, there was multicellular life. Then 600 million years ago, there was simple animals.

So in 400 million years we went from clumps of cells on the ground to simple animals. How did that happen? That is mind-boggling.

Is it "mind-boggling" enough for you to concoct irrational arguments as an excuse for believing your religion (for which you have no evidence)? See, I don't believe for a second that your How did that happen? statement is actually sincere. What you've shown thus far is that you personal 'require' an alternative that sounds better before you will even consider that your position is in error. And that is plain faulty thinking. Errors do not need alternatives. Irrational religious arguments don't need replacement. They simply need to be retracted. In this case, letting go of irrational arguments should lead you to the most honest position - the one where you admit the statement, "I don't know"

[skeptic54768]

The "precambrian ecology" does not look anything like animals to me. Where's the paws and legs and teeth?

Probably in the same place they are on this animal:

Dogs don't live underwater. Neither do giraffes.

[Azdgari]

Dogs don't live underwater. Neither do giraffes.

Very true.  I'm glad you paid attention in Kindergarten.

Now, what does this have to do with the first animal life on Earth?

[Nam]

Skeptic,

You are so moronic THAT is mind-boggling.

-Nam

[median]

As median has stated, the ONLY difference between macro and micro is TIME, and lots of it in most cases, however there are occasions where it happens relatively quickly, i.e the Cambrian explosion, or ring-species.

Yes, Kent Hovind mentioned that in one of his lectures on Creation Science. He said, "Time is the evolutionist's God. They need it to make the belief work."

And you just believed him on faith when he said that, didn't you? Without even critically analyzing that statement, you bought it (hook, line, and sinker) without ever attempting to look at both sides before making a quick judgment.

FYI, reasonable expectations based upon evidence is NOT faith. Faith is believing something when you have no evidence or good reason.

[Nam]

Faith is the absence of evidence.

-Nam

[skeptic54768]

Dogs don't live underwater. Neither do giraffes.

Very true.  I'm glad you paid attention in Kindergarten.

Now, what does this have to do with the first animal life on Earth?

How did we get those kinds of animals from the early "precambrian ecology?" Seems like a big stretch.

[median]

Skeptic,

You are so moronic THAT is mind-boggling.

-Nam

It's pure comedy to watch crazy willfully ignorant Christian Creationists pretend that they are smart (faking like they know the science and can 'just figure it out' from Wikipedia and Kent Hovind.

Hovind has been refuted long since! Search YouTube - Kent Hovind Owned. At least 3 different evolutionary biologists rip him to shreds (where he has nothing to say but repeating his refuted beliefs).

[skeptic54768]

Skeptic,

You are so moronic THAT is mind-boggling.

-Nam

I suppose if I said this to an atheist, I would get scolded and get called intolerant and judgmental.

But when an atheist says it to a Christian, it's A-OK, I suppose....

[Azdgari]

How did we get those kinds of animals from the early "precambrian ecology?"

Slowly.  You do know what "precambrian" means right?

Seems like a big stretch.

Poofing them into existence in the space of an instant doesn't?