re: Impressive support for Intelligent Design

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And no one expects to observe a fish giving birth to an amphibian. Evolutionary biology, like other historical disciplines, infers past change from present evidence using known mechanisms. Independent lines of evidence, genetics, fossil succession, comparative anatomy, and biogeography converge on the same branching patterns. That convergence is what gives the model its strength.

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Yep.

You made this point earlier with a different example, but after the Chicxulub impact 66 million years ago most existing species were wiped out. The age of mammals followed, with an explosion of subsequent species. Many of those species gave way to better adapted ones over time. Sans macroevolution, those facts are really inexplicable.

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The age of mammals followed, with an explosion of subsequent species. Many of those species gave way to better adapted ones over time. Sans macroevolution, those facts are really inexplicable.

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This is why I have asked at least twice how species are introduced in an ID/creationism model.

Did the Earth at one point have no Bison and then an eye blink later a breeding population of them just appeared out of thin air? And then the same thing with Hyenas, Green Anacondas, and Kangaroos at other points in time? Should we not be surprised if herds of new species of megafauna just show up in various ecosystems tomorrow?

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What is said is pretty obvious. Nothing about macroevolution is contradictory to the Bible. I see people claim it is all the time. They just never are able to support that statement with any evidence whatsoever. It's a pretty elementary and obvious thought process, but I'll spell it out for you:

1. God creates the heavens and the earth
2. To us, that can look like a process that took millions of years and developed from multiple stages.
3. Trying to pretend this somehow disproves the creation story only proves the goals of the person making such claims, nothing more.

As for macroevolution in general, it simply has no evidence. I used to be a firm believer in it, because that's what we were taught in school, but then I started actually reading what scientists were saying and looking at the fossils they claimed showed their conclusions. The stone cold reality is they have no discovery whatsoever that would lead someone to the conclusion that macroevolution is the origin of our species, or even any evidence of one animal having ever evolved into another. It's clearly nonsense. The burden of proof here is on the people who believe it, not on the people who cleary see the "evidence" is completely devoid of any substance.

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There are two separate issues being blended together here, and they should be kept distinct.

One is theological. Whether macroevolution contradicts the Bible is a question about interpretation and authority. If someone believes God created through a long process, that is a coherent theological position. Evolution does not require atheism and it does not attempt to address ultimate causation. That is philosophy or theology.

The other issue is empirical. The claim that macroevolution has “no evidence whatsoever” is not theological. It is a factual claim about biology. And it is simply incorrect. Evolution is supported by converging lines of evidence from fossils, comparative anatomy, genetics, and observed population change. If by “creation” you mean ultimate authorship, that is a different discussion. But if you are asserting that macroevolution lacks evidence, that is a scientific claim and it requires specifics.

“No discovery whatsoever” is not an argument. It is a declaration. If there is truly zero evidence, it should be straightforward to explain the following:

1. The hominin fossil sequence. We have a graded series from Australopithecus to early Homo to archaic Homo sapiens showing progressive changes in cranial capacity, dentition, and bipedal structure, appearing in stratigraphic order. Which fossils are misdated or misidentified, and how?

2. Whale evolution. Fossils such as Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, and Rodhocetus show a transition from terrestrial mammals to fully aquatic whales, including predictable changes in ear structure, limb reduction, and nostril position. Where does that anatomical progression fail?

3. Endogenous retroviruses. Humans and other primates share identical viral insertions at the same chromosomal locations. Common ancestry predicts that pattern. Independent creation does not. What is the alternative explanation?

4. Human chromosome 2. Humans have 46 chromosomes while other great apes have 48. Human chromosome 2 contains internal telomere sequences and a vestigial second centromere consistent with a fusion of two ancestral ape chromosomes. If that is not evidence of common ancestry, what is it?

None of this involves a dog giving birth to a cat. Evolution describes populations diverging over generations. The evidence is in shared genetic architecture and nested patterns that independently converge.

So if your position is that there is zero evidence, let’s get specific. Which of these lines of evidence fails, and why?

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imjustafatkid

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Just wanted to give you another chance to back up your claim before I assume you abandoned thead:

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As for macroevolution in general, it simply has no evidence. I used to be a firm believer in it, because that's what we were taught in school, but then I started actually reading what scientists were saying and looking at the fossils they claimed showed their conclusions. The stone cold reality is they have no discovery whatsoever that would lead someone to the conclusion that macroevolution is the origin of our species, or even any evidence of one animal having ever evolved into another. It's clearly nonsense.

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Respectfully, a significant portion of your post reads less like a critique of evolutionary biology and more like a reaction to how you think Christians are perceived by “evolutionists.” Assertions that science necessarily rejects God or treats believers as ignorant are cultural claims about attitudes. They aren’t arguments about mutation, selection, or genetic change. I’m only focused on the biology.

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This is partially true. However, my point is that no one neutral, not even supposed neutral scientists who claim to merely be neutrally interpreting data and evidence. Everyone has an inherent set of presuppositions regarding what they believe about the world that acts like a pair of glasses by which they interpret the evidence they see. Many scientists assume there is no God, or at least there is no God that has worked within history in any non-natural way, and so therefore, all evidence is interpreted through that lens, which then results in many conclusions that would be different given a different set of presuppositions.

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I’m not arguing that science disproves God or that materialism is a metaphysical truth. I’m defending this: evolutionary biology explains biological change through observable, testable processes. Its limits are methodological. They describe how the method works, not what ultimate reality must be.

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Again, because it assumes that there are not supernatural interventions in history by God that would change the results, evolutionary biology as a discipline results in conclusions that impact how people think about ultimate reality. Not only that, the fact that it leads to any conclusions at all means that it's more than just the method. Assumptions really do matter.

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If someone believes revelation overrides scientific conclusions, that’s a theological commitment. It doesn’t demonstrate that mutation rates, population genetics, or phylogenetic patterns are incorrect. It simply places authority elsewhere. That’s a separate discussion.

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It is and it isn't. Again, assumptions matter, and different assumptions may result in different conclusions, especially when drawing conclusions about claims about non-observed history.

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Science does not reject one-off events because they aren’t repeatable. The Big Bang, the Chicxulub impact, and the formation of the Moon were singular events. They are accepted because they leave measurable, converging lines of evidence. The standard is testability and predictive power, not whether we can rerun history.

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I didn't say it was because of repeatability alone, however Christians believe that the evidence is not the issue, but the assumptions that feed the conclusions of the evidence. If there were a global flood, there would be evidence. I believe there is a lot of evidence for it, including the fossil record, itself. Again, evidence is not the problem, but the interpretation of it, which has many assumptions behind it.

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Uniformitarianism doesn’t mean the past was identical to the present. It means the underlying physical laws are consistent. If gravity or radioactive decay behaved arbitrarily in the past, geology, cosmology, and archaeology would all collapse. Evolution relies on the same assumption every historical science does.

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It's not just the underlying physical laws are consistent, but the natural processes are, too.

Natural laws don't have to behave arbitrarily in the past, but they could have been interfered with at times due to God's decree. That's actually my point: if God can and has interjected Himself into history in a way that impacted natural laws or processes, then modern assumptions that history has always acted a certain way would be false, impacting our conclusions.

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And no one expects to observe a fish giving birth to an amphibian.

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I agree. I was mentioning the bigger picture change, not the supposed microchanges and variations within a particular species. I know that a monkey did not give birth to a man in evolutionary biology. I'm talking about the changes from one type of organism to another, like an amphibian and a fish.

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Evolutionary biology, like other historical disciplines, infers past change from present evidence using known mechanisms. Independent lines of evidence, genetics, fossil succession, comparative anatomy, and biogeography converge on the same branching patterns. That convergence is what gives the model its strength.

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Yes, and yet all those independent lines utilize the same underlying assumptions. The model can be very strong, and yet still be wrong.

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None of that settles theological questions. If you’re interested in exploring the metaphysical implications of evolution, that’s perfectly fine. It’s just not within the scope of my argument, nor something I’m trying to prove disprove. I have no animosity toward religious faith, and those broader interpretations don’t affect the scientific soundness of the evolutionary framework itself.

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The problem with scientists and many atheists who trust all to science is that they tend to focus on science alone rather than philosophy, theology, or other non-scientific disciplines that speak to truth claims. Science is very limited, yet is relied upon by many as the answer to all necessary questions in life, including where we came from, using assumptions that could impact behaviors beyond science, itself, such as moral implications of wiping out entire people groups of the "unfit", which are guided by conclusions pertaining to evolutionary biology. It does not good to pretend that science is in a bubble.

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We cannot observe the types of informational changes needed to increase in complexity from one organism to another

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We cannot observe historical figures who died before we were born, including Christ himself. In fact, there was a nitwit on this board a while back claiming Christ never existed because there is no evidence outside of the Bible that he did.

I'll keep this in laymen's terms as much as possible. Evolution derives from random genetic mutations stacked over inconceivably large expanses of time. Mutations can be helpful, harmful, or relatively unimpactful in their expressions. Lack of reproduction (death, weakness, etc) weeds out harmful mutations, while the others are passed on.

Over tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of generations and millions upon millions of stacked mutations, in cases when populations are separated. speciation occurs. At first, speciation may not totally inhibit cross-breeding (e.g., Polar Bears & Grizzlies => Fertile hybrids). Continued evolution crosses a threshold where male hybrid offspring are sterile (Lions & Tigers => Fertile Female hybrids only). Then finally where male and female hybrid offspring are sterile (Horses, Zebra, Donkeys => M/F Hybrids all infertile).

There are also genetic mutation markers. For example (bear with me), chromosomes have end caps to protect their tips. The end caps basically serve no other purpose. Chromosomes sort of look like an "X". Thats because they are essentially an "H" were the "bar" of the H cinches down pulling the two arms (chromatids) together. There is a small area on the chromatid arms whose only purpose is to tie those arms together.

Subhominids (referring to apes in this case, as opposed to marxists) have more chromosomes than humans. However, humans have an unusual chromosome #2. It has both "end caps" and a vestigial "cinching area" inside the chromatids. If two chromosomes fused end-to-end, you'd expect to find "end caps" in the interior of the resulting chromosome. The vestigial "cinching area" maps to exactly it would appear on the #2Bchromosome in chimps. The rest of our chromosome 2 bears incredible genomic sequence comparison to chimp's chromosome2A.

When the asteroid hit 66 Million yrs ago, it basically killed off all land-based animals except for those that could burrow. Nothing larger than my shih tzu survived. We know that absolutely. From there, millions of species evolved, then became extinct as others took their place. God saying "poof" there will be saber toothed tigers. God saying "poof" they gone. God saying "poof" there will be mammoths. God saying "poof" there be 20ft sloths. God saying whoops "poof" they gone.

I believe God is an organic mathematician. Evolution here was God's goal. Allowing us the gradual precept of analysis was as well.

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Whether macroevolution contradicts the Bible is a question about interpretation and authority.

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It also depends on how one defines "evolution". Some definitions exclude any intentional design aspect whatsoever, others don't.

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You are trying to marry a belief in a creator with evolutionary theory proposed by those who reject the biblical narrative.

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That is an absurd, and frankly insulting, statement. I'd encourage you to reconsider it.

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It also depends on how one defines "evolution". Some definitions exclude any intentional design aspect whatsoever, others don't.

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I’m sure "some" definitions do. The common biological one used by science doesn’t, and that’s the limit of what I’m arguing.

In mainstream biology, evolution is defined as descent with modification from common ancestors. That definition is operational. It focuses on mechanisms like mutation, natural selection, genetic drift, and gene flow. It does not include an intentional design component because intention is not something biology can measure.

That omission is methodological. Science defines evolution in terms of processes it can observe, model, and test. Whether someone believes those processes are ultimately guided is a separate layer added on top of the biology, not part of the biological definition itself.

Any broader meaning belongs to philosophy or theology, not to the biological model. How could a scientific definition include the study of something untestable by science?