Just Accidental?

[savagewind]

13.7 Billion, give or take a few. Observationally verified.


No they don't. The number of species on Earth is around 9 Million. You're the one who has brought up the overall number of organisms. 5 billion is a very small number, really. There are something like 7 billion people. Total organisms range in the trillions, if not higher.


What about the math do you actually a problem with?

A billion years is 1,000 million... Think about that for a while.

Count to a million 13,000 times. That's how old the Universe is.
Counting to a million 4 thousand times shows you how old the Earth is. It's a staggering number.

I don't understand why the math is problematic for you.
Every human event that you've ever heard about occurred less than ten thousand years ago. If you multiplied all of human history 10,000 more times, you're still only into the hundreds of millions of years. How many people do you think could exist in 100 million years? Multiply that times 10 more and you're into the 1 billions... You're not giving much thought to the actual amount of time that we're talking about here.

1 (Ones)
10 (Tens) *We exist on this timeline.
100 (Hundreds)
1,000 (Thousands)
10,000 (Ten Thousands)
100,000 (Hundred Thousands)
1,000,000 (Millions)
10,000,000 (Ten Millions)
100,000,000 (Hundred Millions)
1,000,000,000 (Billions)
10,000,000,000 (Ten Billions)

Except that I am not talking about one species. the number of "designs", which a word that no-god proponents should not use, imo, are how many? Each different one had to have had how many beneficial advancements? Each advancement would have had to be in sync with each of the other biological functions together. My math is showing that the number (and I am not including successful reproductions) is mind boggling. Can you do the math?

 

[savagewind]

I don't follow. Are you now saying that 5 billion species were designed but not created?

Yes, I believe so.

 

[ArtieE]

Yes, I believe so.

Please explain in detail how you think 5 billion species appeared on the planet.

 

[savagewind]

I think that some designs went wild and those you can have.

 

[savagewind]

Please explain in detail how you think 5 billion species appeared on the planet.

Haha. I think intelligence must exist within each DNA. The first life forms (I can't imagine only one) were created imo. A detailed account? Thanks for the laugh!

I think that DNA must have been created so the houses (the cell) came next. I think that some species probably had spot on help in their devolopement. So yes, evolution is true. I think that evolution is part of the plan. Without it, how can humankind have everything in subjection?

 

[savagewind]

Edit. All the animals and the plants. We forgot those. Heaven knows how!

 

[savagewind]

I think that designed but not created is very easy to imagine.

 

[ArtieE]

I think that designed but not created is very easy to imagine.

But we don't have just blueprints who built the house?

 

[savagewind]

But we don't have just blueprints who built the house?

Can you rephrase that?

 

[Monk Of Reason]

No I am not.

I am saying that my feelings are a factor, but certainly not the only factor as I have demonstrated throughout this thread. Design when it involves complex interactions incorporating many independent systems that are all designed to work together, does not just pop up out of nowhere. Our bodies are made of complex interacting systems that all contribute to the human being functioning at even a basic level. Take any one of them out of the equation and what happens? Each system is beautifully integrated but no one with intelligence is responsible, according to science.

Your feelings being a factor at all is terrible. You are talking about irriducible complexity. It has been debunked. Not a single proposed example remains.

What you accept as "evidence" is meaningless to me because it is not based on provable science. It is all supposition and conjecture leading to a biased interpretation of the "evidence", so it is hardly something that cancels out my Creator.
I have "evidence" too, and I accept it because I can see with my own eyes that the designs in nature are the product of a designer with a definite purpose to everything he has made.

Its meaningless to you because it goes against your already established belief system.

Laws need someone to make them. There has to be a lawmaker. How does a law that has serious consequences when it is violated, invent itself?

Why? Seems like a baseless statment. And even if true it would mean that someone had to make the lawmaker? Who created god?

The human brain is designed to last way longer that our short lifetime would suggest. We have an endless potential to solve problems, but unfortunately it has been suggested by scientists, that man uses only a tenth of the brain capacity on the average. Imagine if he had the power to unlock that potential. It appears that savants have done that in limited pockets, overcompensating for other deficits.

Savant syndrome - Wikipedia

How can science understand the brain without understanding the mind? What is the mind? Why does it take two separate branches of science to study and treat each? The mind obviously involves the brain, but how does science explain personality and how the mind affects our thoughts, emotions and actions?

Our brains can last at best 125 years. Many brains start to go as early as the 60's. Its actually rather sad and I personally don't want to live into the age of dementia.

The "mind" as expressed here is the manifestation of biological processes of the "brain". The "brain" is the organ and the "mind" is the process so to speak. Psychology deals with the study of how our though processes work and mapping out the functions of an active brain. The study of the brain itself is only interested in the physical structures and chemistry. However the two are inseperably linked forms of study as one does not make much sense without the other.

How many "right conditions" are we talking about? Would the "right conditions" have the same odds as perhaps winning the lottery millions of times in a row? Isn't the whole theory based on the possibility of winning the lottery millions of times in succession? Just lucky?

The probablity looks good considering the size and scope of the universe. Its possible its a common occurance and many believe that there could be dozens if not hundreds of developments of life just within our galaxy alone. This argument from improbability is rooted in falsehood not mathmatics.

Yes, so even if there is a beneficial genetic hiccup, there is no guarantee that it will be passed on. How does "nature" know when to select a good mutation?

Nature never knows as it isnt' a directed process. It isn't goal oriented. How did rain "know" when to fall? How does the sun "know" how to fuse hydrogen? They don't have cognitive decision making skills or directive.

If a savant manages to find a mate and produces children that are better at surviving than people without the deficites then the gene will be passed on. If they prove to be less likely to survive then they will not. That is all. Being mentally retarded in all areas except mathmatics is HUGELY problematic when you are a hunter gatherer society. They don't need high calculus to hunt Mammoths.

 

[ArtieE]

Can you rephrase that?

You said the first life forms were created. Who or what created them?

 

[savagewind]

You said the first life forms were created. Who or what created them?

The God who made the Heaven and the Earth made the first DNA with everything else to keep it viable. Everytime a new animal or plant appeared, it was started by God Almighty. I can't prove it.

God is the designer/architect. The builders are shy. I do not know them.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Adaptation takes place only within the (Genesis) "kind". As Darwin observed, the finches on the Galapagos Islands had adapted to life off the mainland and obviously a different food source....but they were still clearly recognizable as finches. The iguanas also had adapted to marine life, but they were still clearly iguanas. No one has come up with evidence for a slow morphing of one "kind" into another....no matter how many millions of years you throw at it. The evolutionary chain is based on imagination and educated guessing, not any real evidence. There are no verifiable links. You do understand this?

So, I was right about your acceptance of evolution on the population scale.
That's good. You've admitted that evolution drives speciation.

Now, please explain to me what biological barrier exists that hinders these adaptations from continuing across the "kind" or species boundaries. Expand your thought process here just a bit further and tell me what keeps one population from becoming entirely indepedent of its parent population. You mentioned the finches. At what point would you consider one finch entirely different from the original finch population?

These are two very different birds! (Warbler Finch vs. Large Ground Finch)

Did their physiological differences just magically appear, perfectly designed by God for their particular environment and diet? Or did two populations drift apart naturally and, over time, adapt to their surroundings, causing a genetic break from one another which led to their specialized differences?

It seems to me that you recognize the ability of natural selection and adaptation to "create" different types of individuals...among kinds, right? Why do you reject its ability to continue doing so, going far as to "create" new "kinds"?

The scientists who are also creationists usually have sold out by modifying their "Christianity" to blend with the science.
I won't do that. I prefer to blend the science with my Christianity. I believe the actual evidence that is available is more than enough to confirm that creation is a deliberate act, not some accidental force that produces an endless stream of beneficial mutations. That to me is the real fairy story.

I for one value that modification.

If I believed that the Moon was made of cheese, and continued doing so even after I was clearly shown that it wasn't, would you say that I sold out my faith? Or would you say that I was a reasonable man for accepting what the data suggested?

I often see these supposed succession of apes to humans, but the one thing I never see is anything between these species, (many millions of years apart) that even suggests that this is an evolutionary progression. They could just as well have been a succession of individually created species, formed at different stages of the creative "day" in which the Creator made them, (which were most certainly NOT 24 literal hours long.) You always begin all your assumptions with the premise that evolution must have happened. I begin with the premise that all creatures are the product of an Intelligent Designer. Neither of us has any real proof for our first premise. So it is a choice of belief systems at the end of the day. Neither of us has any real scientific proof.

Look at the stated time between each species pictured in your diagram....and then look at the estimated times that they lived. Then tell us how many full specimens we have for each species pictured. How many human skulls could I find now in even recent burials where shapes and sizes vary for different reasons?

Like many Creationists before you, you're shifting goal posts...
CC200: Transitional fossils

The fact that even one of those fossils exists is evidence against what you're claiming. Each new fossil is link in the chain. We admittedly do not know everything - we never will. But we do know many things, as those skulls and current timelines indicate.

I challenge you to provide an explanation for how creation occurs.
How were those creatures purposefully designed, as you put it? Was it not naturally?
You have previously admitted that new species can adapt and arise from parent populations due to environmental factors (Finches). What would keep one hominid population from diverging from another and adapting slightly different mechanics more similar to our own?

Those time periods of existence that you're questioning support everything that I'm asking you to think about. Look at them again, and think just a little bit harder on them.

And if evolutionary biology is looking for ways to substantiate something that they already believe is true, then how is the "evidence" to be interpreted? No bias? Really? If the fossils could talk, they wouldn't need an interpreter and they would in all probability be telling another story altogether.....science can make them say anything they want them to.

I'm asking you basic questions about biology using your own thought processes. You've readily admitted that adaptation occurs. Is there bias in your conclusion there? I would argue that you're not being biased at all. In fact, you're looking at the same data and information as I am and you're drawing the same conclusion - populations adapt to their environment. New features can form and populations can diverge from their parents. Does that mean you're part of the conspiracy?

Hardly.

And with that attitude, no wonder people brush creation off as a fairytale. The trouble is, you ignore your own fairytale and pass it off as science. Why is the sky blue? Outer space is all black as we can see at night when the sun is not releasing us from the darkness. Why do we have gravity? At the speed of earth's rotation, we would all be flying off into space without it. What about earth's atmosphere that contains all the necessary gasses and water so that life can be perpetuated on this planet without losing any of it? Just another fluke? If I were to make a list of all the flukes you people believe in, I'm sure you would be more embarrassed about things than you think we should be. Even the non biological things are there to enhance our lives. The sunset didn't evolve, nor did the blue sky, the sun or the rain. Do we take plain old dirt for granted too?

As for the wonders of biological creation....instead of "God did it" scientists say "natural selection did it"....is that really more convincing? Not to me.

You didn't like the flippant nature with which I referred to arguments for Creationism, but then continued using the simplicity that I was mocking.

Your argument here is "Things are complex and we function with the boundaries of Earth's environments. Surely that means that an omniscience being specifically designed everything just for us..."

How is that not what you're saying?

Huh? If there is a Creator, then his creation is not without purpose and his purpose is clearly stated in a written dialogue given to humans. There is a reason and purpose to our being and a future that is explained in detail. It requires recognition of God's existence as the first cause of everything, and faith in his promises. Those who do not meet his requirements are not going to be accepted as citizens in his kingdom, which I can see may well extend into the universe in the eons to come. If someone doesn't want what he is offering, then he will not force them to accept his terms, but citizenship will be denied.

I was mocking Pascal's Wager using a deity that I made up on the spot. If it doesn't work for Gorgon the Space Wizard, it doesn't work for Yahweh.

From your link.....
"The most pressing issue relates to the data used to average facial tissue thickness. The data available to forensic artists are still very limited in ranges of ages, sexes, and body builds. This disparity greatly affects the accuracy of reconstructions. Until this data is expanded, the likelihood of producing the most accurate reconstruction possible is largely limited.[17]


Lack of methodological standardization
A second problem is the lack of a methodological standardization in approximating facial features.[5] A single, official method for reconstructing the face has yet to be recognized. This also presents major setback in facial approximation because facial features like the eyes and nose and individuating characteristics like hairstyle - the features most likely to be recalled by witnesses - lack a standard way of being reconstructed. Recent research on computer-assisted methods, which take advantage of digital image processing, pattern recognition, promises to overcome current limitations in facial reconstruction and linkage.[citation needed]


Subjectivity
Reconstructions only reveal the type of face a person may have exhibited because of artistic subjectivity. The position and general shape of the main facial features are mostly accurate because they are greatly determined by the skull.[18]"

That says it all really....

There you go again with underlined words, embolden letters and RED type...

In the explanation of the science, they are openly telling you what their shortcomings are. I do not think I will ever understand what you find so inflammatory about that.

In my very next sentence I admitted that it was an artful science. It's not meant to be 100% accurate because it can't be. But faces can only work in so many ways. These reconstructions are based on things that we know, like muscle density & bone structure. Finding a skull answers a lot of questions about what the individual PROBABLY looked like.

This may well be the case......all humans have the same facial features, and yet we are all different. Our 'facial recognition' ability is often taken for granted but it is just one of many abilities that slide under the radar when we speak of the marvel that human beings are.

Yes - we are unique - just like everything else that ever existed.

 

[jonathan180iq]

Except that I am not talking about one species. the number of "designs", which a word that no-god proponents should not use, imo, are how many? Each different one had to have had how many beneficial advancements? Each advancement would have had to be in sync with each of the other biological functions together. My math is showing that the number (and I am not including successful reproductions) is mind boggling. Can you do the math?

Show me the math and I'll check it.

Beneficial adaptations are going to be the only ones that matter because they're going to be the only ones passed on - so your numbers are going to be slanted towards that which is beneficial. Organisms with neutral changes would not be recognized or counted. Organisms with negative changes would not have survived.

 

[savagewind]

Show me the math and I'll check it.

It is written that right now there are 8.7 million different life forms on Earth.
Some people say that already

More than 99 percent of all species, amounting to over five billion species,[2] that ever lived on Earth are estimated to be extinct

That might be the figure for animals and not plants. Earth has been home to over five billion species (I suppose that includes the plants).

Projections for the total number of species on Earth range from 2 million to 50 million.

Estimated Number of Animal and Plant Species

Beneficial adaptations are going to be the only ones that matter because they're going to be the only ones passed on - so your numbers are going to be slanted towards that which is beneficial.

which supports my point of view.

Organisms with neutral changes would not be recognized or counted. Organisms with negative changes would not have survived.

Thank you for that.

The Math

Five billion species in just five billion years. Now pay attention please. That is ONE species for every year. Isn't it?

Here is right back at you. One year is 365 days give or take one.

 

[savagewind]

God says someone will tell me the appearance of animals and plants did not happen once each year. LOL

 

[jonathan180iq]

Estimated Number of Animal and Plant Species

The Math

Five billion species in just five billion years. Now pay attention please. That is ONE species for every year. Isn't it?

Here is right back at you. One year is 365 days give or take one.

5 billion / 5 billion is 1.
Yes. Congratulations.
Now, what do those numbers mean to you? Better yet, supply a link to where you got the idea that there have only ever been 5 billion species.

Life didn't emerge on Earth for, as far as we know, roughly 1.3 Billions years (if you're going to be stuck on 5 billion as the age of the Earth). Stromatolites have been found in Australia that are 3.7 Billion years old. ( If they're the oldest, you have to calculate 1.35 species per year after that...)

But so what? Once life starts and is given an untold number of differing environments, what's to keep it from producing hundreds of new populations in a year? In a day?

From your own link "In fact, some 10,000 species of animals are discovered each year, with over one and a half million species already described."

Tell me, out of the currently 8.7 million existing species on Earth, how many new ones arise each year?

Speciation is happening all the time. You can suggest that it started ~5 billion years ago, or you can argue that it started happening ~6,000 years ago. Which side do you find more plausible?

 

[savagewind]

5 billion / 5 billion is 1.
Yes. Congratulations.
Now, what do those numbers mean to you? Better yet, supply a link to where you got the idea that there have only ever been 5 billion species.

Life didn't emerge on Earth for, as far as we know, roughly 1.3 Billions years (if you're going to be stuck on 5 billion as the age of the Earth). Stromatolites have been found in Australia that are 3.7 Billion years old. ( If they're the oldest, you have to calculate 1.35 species per year after that...)

But so what? Once life starts and is given an untold number of differing environments, what's to keep it from producing hundreds of new populations in a year? In a day?

From your own link "In fact, some 10,000 species of animals are discovered each year, with over one and a half million species already described."

Tell me, out of the currently 8.7 million existing species on Earth, how many new ones arise each year?

Speciation is happening all the time. You can suggest that it started ~5 billion years ago, or you can argue that it started happening ~6,000 years ago. Which side do you find more plausible?

No one is arguing that speciation happened 6,000 years ago.

By the way, you do my side better than I do imo.

One viable and reproductive species per year of life. This is just for fun because I know one species can seem like another species to most people. I do not know how many different forms of life exist. I think it is much less than the number of actual species.

You know that a life form might not live long enough to procreate. Put that fact into the equation.
Another factor that must be considered in the equation is the possibility that one part of a function must meet another part of a function for anything to happen in the first place.

Let's forget the species, the number is too big. Let's just consider all the different life forms, that look different.

Each one came into existence by incremental steps. Each one. How many successful incremental steps do you suppose it takes for one simplest life form to be alive, stay alive and reproduce?

Add that to the number of different life forms on the Earth. What is the answer? (my brain can not stretch that far).

 

[savagewind]

I have something funny to tell you. One bird that looks a little different than another bird is called a different species. But, one person who looks a lot different than another person isn't called a different species.

 

[Deeje]

Your feelings being a factor at all is terrible. You are talking about irriducible complexity. It has been debunked. Not a single proposed example remains.

Debunked by whom? Biased scientists with shifty explanations?
Irreducible Complexity: The Challenge to the Darwinian Evolutionary Explanations of many Biochemical Structures

Its meaningless to you because it goes against your already established belief system.

Are you hearing yourself? Are you not the pot calling the kettle black?

Why? Seems like a baseless statment. And even if true it would mean that someone had to make the lawmaker? Who created god?

"Seems like"? That sounds familiar.

Who said someone had to make the Lawmaker? He is not a biological entity and therefore not quantifiable by any human means. No one created God, he is an eternal being with as much time behind him as there is in front of him. Can anyone comprehend an infinite being?....I can't, not with a finite brain, finite experience and no real information about the subject.

Our brains can last at best 125 years. Many brains start to go as early as the 60's. Its actually rather sad and I personally don't want to live into the age of dementia.

It's a strange thing about aging......it only happens in your body and as long as your brain is not affected by dementia, age is irrelevant. Ask any older person in relatively good health how "old" they feel in their mind?
My mother is 92 and as sharp as a tack mentally, but she is physically restricted in a lot of ways.
She is very frustrated because her 'mind wants to write checks her body can't cash'.

Age is a state of being that humans find hard to deal with....it feels entirely wrong to get old. It is an indignity and even though death comes to all, it feel completely foreign to lose the ones we love. We are the only species who can contemplate our own death and losing loved ones to accidents or disease is a constant worry for us. It doesn't seem to affect animals the way it affects us.

The Bible explains why....we were not designed to die. Aging and death are not programmed into us. We were never meant to lose the ones we love.

The "mind" as expressed here is the manifestation of biological processes of the "brain". The "brain" is the organ and the "mind" is the process so to speak. Psychology deals with the study of how our though processes work and mapping out the functions of an active brain. The study of the brain itself is only interested in the physical structures and chemistry. However the two are inseperably linked forms of study as one does not make much sense without the other.

Yes, they are designed to operate that way. Having a brain can even keep a body functioning at a vegetative level, but the mind is not plugged in. Therefore the person is absent though the body is "alive" and breathing. Who is the "person" who lives in the brain? Where do they go when death happens? Why do we collectively feel like this life can't be all there is?

The probablity looks good considering the size and scope of the universe. Its possible its a common occurance and many believe that there could be dozens if not hundreds of developments of life just within our galaxy alone. This argument from improbability is rooted in falsehood not mathmatics.

"Improbable" means "not likely to be true or to happen.

synonyms: unlikely, not likely, doubtful, dubious, debatable, questionable, uncertain; More
difficult to believe, implausible, far-fetched, fanciful;
unthinkable, inconceivable, unimaginable, unimagined, incredible

antonyms: probable, certain
unexpected and apparently inauthentic.

synonyms: inauthentic, unconvincing, unbelievable, incredible, ridiculous, absurd, preposterous;
contrived, laboured, strained, forced; informalhard to swallow"

Evolution to me fits that definition. The probability of life arising by chance....is nil.

Nature never knows as it isnt' a directed process. It isn't goal oriented. How did rain "know" when to fall? How does the sun "know" how to fuse hydrogen? They don't have cognitive decision making skills or directive.

No they are just the fortunate flukes of nature that keep us alive. Not designed to promote and perpetuate life on this "Goldilocks" planet at all. Saying that "there could be dozens if not hundreds of developments of life just within our galaxy alone" is nothing more than wishful thinking. Science cannot "know" whether there is 'any' kind of life out there beyond the realms of earth...it can only speculate. But speculation has turned into possibility from a position where everything "suggested" by science is treated as likelihood. Suggestions and conjecture are turned into facts. Who said? I don't buy what they are selling.

If a savant manages to find a mate and produces children that are better at surviving than people without the deficites then the gene will be passed on. If they prove to be less likely to survive then they will not. That is all. Being mentally retarded in all areas except mathmatics is HUGELY problematic when you are a hunter gatherer society. They don't need high calculus to hunt Mammoths.

You are assuming that all humans were once primitive cave dwellers who hunted mammoths. Who said? You assume that humans have experienced progression down through time from an ape-like creature to modern man.....and we have progressed in many ways, but there is no real evidence that all humans were primitive cave dwellers in the past. Your first premise colors everything. We have primitive peoples even today who live the way they have for centuries. They co-exist with advanced societies in this world, so the only thing it proves is that isolation from the mainstream cuts people off from the progress that happens elsewhere. Many ancient cultures were very advance in certain areas, especially architecture. The cities they built with no technology are amazing.

The Bible explains everything about the situation that humans enjoyed at the beginning, how they lost it and how the Creator gets it all back. I like the logic and the hope it gives for a better future.....and it is no more a stretch of my imagination than science's theory of evolution. You can believe that creation is millions of fortunate accidents with no direction, but I cannot.