Jeff's Lunchbreak

Mr. Buckna,

In response to the first site you linked to, it reminds me of a written version of the Gish Gallop. You list many arguments, but none stand up to scrutiny. Almost all of them have already been covered, mostly in the TalkOrigins Index to Creationist Claims, so I'm simply going to include a link counter each of your claims. Sometimes more than one entry in the Index would have been appropriate, but I tried to keep this reply short. If you really want, just browse through the entire list.

I'm sure your also aware of the series of pages, Dinosaurs and Evolution, written by Jeff Poling in resopnse to your article submitted to Journal of Dinosaur Paleontology. It covers in detail some of the claims you had on that site.

1. CE420. The big bang theory is wrong.
2. CE260.1. Retrograde motion of planets disproves the big bang.
3. CE261.1. Oort cloud and Kuiper belt are ad hoc fantasies of astronomers.
4. not exactly on diamonds, but: CD011.6. Ancient coal and oil are C-14 dated as only 50,000 years old.
   See also my own page, Book Review - Thousands, Not Billions, Part II
5. CD001. Radiometric dating falsely assumes rocks are closed systems.
   CD002. Radiometric dating falsely assumes initial conditions are known.
   CD015. Zircons retain too much helium for an old earth.
6. CB050. Abiogenesis is speculative without evidence.
7. Wikipedia - Evolution of ATP synthase
8. CI100.1. Look; is design not obvious?
9. CB102. Mutations do not add information.
10. CB901. Macroevolution has never been observed.
    or CB300. Complex organs couldn't have evolved.
11. CC341. Recent pollen has been found in old rocks.
12. CC300. The Cambrian explosion shows all kinds of life appearing suddenly.
13. I haven't found a good source on this, yet, but trilobites weren't living at the 'earliest stages of life'. They were already fairly complex organisms, with a long history of evolution leading up to them.
    Wikipedia - Evolution of the Eye
14. FossilMuseum.net - Soft Tissue Fossilization
15. Wikipedia - List of transitional fossils
16. CC371.1. Soft tissues from a Tyrannosaurus bone indicate recent burial.
17. CC215. There are gaps between reptiles and mammals.
18. These are legitimate gaps in our knowledge, but ignorance of how exactly those traits evolved is not evidence that they did not evolve.
    Wikipedia - Pterosaur Origins
    Berkely - Chiroptera Fossils
19. Dinosauria - Dinosaurs and Evolution: Archaeopteryx, dinosaur skin, and the progression of evolution.
    Book Review - Archaeopteryx: The Icon of Evolution
20. This is also a legitimate gap in the fossil record, but there are plausible scenarios for how wings might have evolved.
    Origins Blog - How Did Insects Get Their Wings?
21. CB311. Butterfly metamorphosis is too complex to have evolved.
22. Wikipedia - Bee Evolution
23. Darwin himself credited Blyth in The Origin, but it's also obvious that it was The Origin that presented natural selection in such a way, with supporting evidence, that it was truly accepted. Besides, if it wasn't for Darwin, someone else would have discovered natural selection.
24. CB601. The traditional peppered moth story is no longer supportable.
25. CC201.1. Punctuated equilibrium was ad hoc to justify gaps.
26. The Loom - A Career Among The Finches
27. CB200. Some systems are irreducibly complex.
28. CC052. Laetoli footprints were human.
29. The Loom - Skull Caps and Genomes
30. CA610. Evolution is a religion.
31. CA211. Evolution can not be falsified. (again)

The second article you linked to confuses methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism (or metaphysical naturalism). Methodological naturalism deals with evidence, no matter where the evidence comes from, even if it's something that would be considered supernatural (such as fairies, if they existed). The only things that can't be studied with methodological naturalism are those things that leave no evidence, and the only way to leave no evidence is to not interact with the universe at all, making those things irrelevant to study of this universe.

If you come back here and really want to make a point, I'd suggest picking one or two arguments that you think are the best to discuss in detail.

Mr. Buckna,

I asked that if you come back, that you pick what you thought were your strongest arguments and to go from there. The 4 links you provided are all down to semantics, and I think I already covered the argument pretty well in my previous reply to you. But let me reiterate. Ignore the term 'methodological naturalism' for now. Anything that leaves evidence can be studied through science. Whether the Earth orbits the sun, battles of the Civil War, even what I ate for breakfast or whether or not I love my wife - these are all things that leave behind evidence, meaning they can be studied scientifically.

Most Christians aren't deists. Most believe that the Bible is the divinely inspired word of God, and others believe that it's at least a human written description of interactions with the divine. In other words, most Christians believe in a god that interacts with the universe and leaves behind evidence, and therefore, those things can be studied through science.

Prior to Darwin, creationism was the dominant theory for life's diversity. Most scientists accepted creationism. Additionally, most European scientists of the time were Christians. They didn't accept evolution via natural selection because they were looking for a way to reject God. They accepted it because that's where the evidence pointed.

So, if you wish to discuss this further, let's stay out of arguments over semantics. Please present me with the strongest evidence based arguments that you have. And please provide a bit of your own commentary, not simply links to other people's articles.

Oh, I nearly forgot to include this link. I already have written on this particular semantic issue in another blog entry, Scientific Facts

Richard Dawkins has, in fact, already addressed this issue, in the article, The Information Challenge.

There's also a good discussion in the Index to Creationist Claims, under claim CB102. Mutations do not add information.

Personally, I like Richard Lenski's experiment, where e. coli developed mutations that gave them the ability to digest a new food source (citrate). This certainly shows that random mutations can result in new functions (unless people want to argue that an Intelligent Designer manipulated the bacteria in Lenski's lab).

While the Dawkins link I included mentioned the interview, it was only in the introduction, and the point of Dawkins' article was information in the genome, not the interview itself. I don't see what your first link has to do with evolution.

You quoted Dr. Lightner as writing, "It is worth noting that mutations produce new alleles (variant forms of a gene) and certainly add variety." I don't see how you can admit that, and then deny that mutations can add information. That's practically the very definition of adding information.

Are you instead trying to argue, that rather than mutations not being able to add information, that they can't generate the specific types of mutations needed to create "new, complex, interdependent biochemical pathways"? That's a different claim, but still one that's been addressed. I just did a Google search for "evolution of new biochemical pathways", and the first result was this article, Biochemical Pathways in Prokaryotes Can Be Traced Backward through Evolutionary Time. This is also covered, as most of your claims have been, in the Index to Creationist Claims, in Claim CA350. No gradual biochemical evolution models have been published.

Here are two good article on Lenski's experiment from Carl Zimmer's The Loom blog - A New Step In Evolution and E. coli Evolution Follow-up. I think it's rather clear that this does constitute a new ability.

And, as I included in my first response to this point, there are more examples in the Index to Creationist Claims, under claim CB102. Mutations do not add information.

And just doing a Google search on "evolution of novel genes", I found this - The evolution of the novel Sdic gene cluster in Drosophila melanogaster. And there were many, many other articles on the evolution of new genes.

I'm not a biologist - just a reasonably well informed layman. But it's not hard to find this information that you're asking for. Perhaps next time, before asking me to provide a bit of information, you might want to do your own Google search, first. I don't mind answering honest questions, but I know that you're not naive on these issues. You've been mentioned on the blog Pharyngula, not to mention Jeff Poling's response to you that I mentioned early on in this comment thread. This blog is only a hobby of mine, and while it might be fun for a while, I don't have enough time to answer every creationist canard. Unless you're presenting a novel argument that hasn't already been covered in the Talk Origins Index to Creationist Claims, I feel I'm wasting my time.

I'm only addressing your first comment for now (10:53 pm), since I don't have time to address your second one.

I linked to a paper by Rita Ponce and Daniel L. Hartle that had to do with the Sdic gene cluster. You linked to an article on a paper by Molly K. Burke, Joseph P. Dunham and others about "selection for accelerated development." I fail to see how your link addresses the paper I linked to originally. The only superficial resemblance is that both articles deal with fruit flies.

The Burke, Dunham, et al paper was focused on a narrow subject, and it did show that there was resistance to change for that particular trait. I'm not sure I would have predicted that, but I don't see it as a major surprise, either. Organisms are not infinitely malleable. There are certain changes to organisms that are extremely unlikely, because the genes involved are so critical to the basic functioning of the organism. Apparently, the genes involved in the development time of fruit flies are of that type, so attempts to breed flies that develop faster won't have much luck. It would be like trying to breed a chicken with extra wings to satisfy all of us hot wing lovers. It's just very, very, very unlikely to ever happen.

There have been other fruit fly experiments, focused on evolution of other traits or other aspects of evolution.

• Wing Spots
• speciation
• sexual preference
• converting halteres to wings

I'm not sure why the author of the article you quoted would draw such sweeping conclusions from a study so narrowly focused. And it's not as if the study lasted long enough for any huge changes, anyway. It was 600 generations. To put that in perspective for humans, assuming an average of 25 years per generation, 600 generations of humans would only cover 15,000 years. On an evolutionary timescale, that's pretty short. It's been 6 million years since chimps diverged from us, and look how similar we both still are to each other. Would you really expect evolution to produce new, complex organs in that amount of time?

Plus, it's not as if fruit flies are the only animals used to study evolution. What about fox domestication (near the end of that entry). They've gotten developmental, behavioral, and morphological differences in a few decades.