I am not in favor of public schools teaching creation, simply because one has no idea from what perspective the teacher may be. But what I would so wish to see is that they would teach the problems that evolution has, the data that just does not fit, the questions that are not faced. After all, science is built on the back of unanswered questions – it is the unanswered questions that drive the search for knowledge. Rather than to present evolution as a impregnable monolith, let the flaws be seen. I would think that that would encourage the curiosity of the students for science, rather than being given the idea that the last word has been stated.
And problems there are, as mentioned in previous posts, and there are more. For instance, “Index fossils” can sometimes present an interesting challenge. The reason for a fossil being an “index fossil” is because, according to evolution, that animal had risen at a certain point when evolution “needed” it, and then became extinct as evolution passed “on to better, more “advanced” things. So when a certain index fossil is present, the rock has got to be from a certain age.
It is embarrassing that some “index fossils” have turned up still living. The coelacanth is one: it is a fairly sizeable fish that has stumps for legs/fins upon which fish began to transition from sea to shore at about 80 million years ago. However, a couple decades ago, Asian fishermen began to pull up live coelacanths from the deep waters (not mud flats) around the Indian Ocean. Obviously this poor fish has been demoted from the index fossil honor.
The real problem though is that in spite of 80 MILLION years, the coelacanth has basically not changed at all. Now, evolution is automatic and relentless; it is random, not controlled nor guided – yet apparently the light-switch was turned off for this fish. Within those millennia, in a world flooded with mutations all over the place, during which time the dinosaurs came and went, during which time the mammals have come and have branched out enormously, during which time plesiosaurs and other great sea creatures have come and gone, the coelacanth has not significantly changed. How can this be?
The same problem presents itself with the horseshoe crab which has not materially changed for “450 million years.” Blithely they are referred to as “living fossils,” yet why isn’t there the question raised as to how this can be, given that evolution has wreaked relentless change everywhere else, mutations have been occurring constantly in every other species both in the sea – no matter what depth – and on land, but by golly, for 450 million years nothing of great consequence has ever happened in this organism?
Is it not a bit “fishy” that we must suspend credulity in order to allow evolution to go on an almost half a BILLION year vacation? But then, as identified in the last posts, there is a major problem with the conjectured long ages of evolution which were fixed before there was any scientific ability to determine them, and with the ancient dates based upon radioactive decay, which are made impossible by evolution’s own presuppositions.
They suggest that as no two men are alike, so there is also great disparities in viagra no prescription overnight djpaulkom.tv both techniques and occurrences of this practice. The condition it is not easily or openly discussed. The pill helps achieve excitement with your wife during an intimacy. Never put your cash previously health You may run into the risk of impotency. Then there is the problem of “genetic load.” Of the mutations that are observed to happen, the vast majority are either immediately harmful, eventually harmful, or neutral. Beneficial mutations are extremely rare. The immediately harmful usually get weeded out in very short order. But the eventually harmful mutations hang around and multiply – in humans: the “blue bloods” of European aristocracy, sickle cell anemia, predispositions to some cancers, some diabetes, as well as other genetic diseases. As time goes on these latent bombs build up in the “gene pool” of a species.
So when a species transitions to a new species, would they not be carrying the “load” from the old species, or do they miraculously end up with a brand new “pool”? In creationism, every species does start with a “clean” gene pool, but how does that happen in evolution? And what about when the second species transitions into a third, and then into the fourth species, and onward down the perhaps hundreds of species generations until today? One would expect to find a lot of harmful bombshells in the end specie’s genome, unless mutations in the past were a lot kinder than have been observed today.
The problem of reduced genetic flexibility also raises its head. Dogs are a good example: the canine family has been specially bred to enhance desired characteristics, whether it be for hunting, shepherding, or whatever. But once bred in a certain direction, it can be almost impossible, for example, to turn a great dane into a dachshund (and vice versa) without first having to revitalize the gene pool through interbreeding. Many purebreds also have “breed” problems, for example, weak hips or bad backs or even temperament problems, which brings us back to “genetic load.” In other words, the adaptability of a species can be severely reduced when “selection” – whether artificial or natural – preserves only a segment of the species. Despite beneficial mutations being vastly in the minority, is it to be assumed that any benefit will really make up for the loss of flexibility? Is an evolutionary “improvement” ultimately really a total biological improvement?
Darwin once remarked that if all the pigeon breeds were allowed to intermingle, that they would probably result back to the rock pigeon. Just like the wolf is said to hold all dog breeds in its genetic structure, so also the rock pigeon would hold countless variations in its genetic structure. Yet selection, natural or artificial, reduces such versatility – so how then do these animals’ genetic structures acquire such richness of potential diversity each time a new species is introduced?
One might claim that from the time of the species initiation until now, mutations have been occurring to allow that flexibility, yet in the world of observed mutation, one would expect the gene pool to be “loaded” in the opposite direction – not toward greater adaptability, but rather to far more “bombshell” mutations, that is, actually toward a greater fragility. And yet the coelacanth and the horseshoe crab are virtually unchanged for 80 millennia to half a billion years – a much greater time span than the wolf and the pigeon are said to have existed. Where have the good and the bad mutations, indeed evolution itself, been all this time in regard to them?
And it is said that believing in a Creator is a leap of faith.