Sorry, Gaz, when I wrote I didn’t see your previous question about chimps.  When I said “we split off from the chimps”, that was sloppily put. What I meant is that we have a common ancestor with the chimps that existed about five million years ago, and that both humans and chimps have evolved from that ancestor.  Presumably the chimps have changed less than we have, because they look a lot more like all the other apes.  But there’s no fossil evidence for chimp ancestors (yet).

Whether you consider chimps to be “distant” relatives or “close” relatives is, well, relative.  But of course all living things are our relatives.  And chimps are the closest to us.

what difference would it make to you if it was directly from Nature?

anyway, I await an answer to my previous question

The difference it would make is context.  It might well be that there is some trivial way in which the chicken genome is closer to the human than the mouse genome is, exactly in the same way that taxonomies based on, say, cytochrome C, mostly agree with fossil evidence, but with some funny inconsistencies: rattlesnake cytochrome C is closer to human cytochrome C than to any other!

Does this disprove evolution?  No.  It just shows that isolated evolved features, while indicative of relationships in general, have quirks that show differential rates of evolution, or macromutations, or whatever.  However, the big taxonomic picture, when one compares all the evidence, is remarkably consistent: the tree of life shows up in almost exactly the same form, whether drawn with the evidence from fossils, or comparative anatomy, or cytochrome C, or whatever else.

We would only expect perfect concordance if the world were a lot simpler than it is; in fact, only if the world were as simple as the Bible would have us believe.  Luckily, and unluckily, the world is a lot more complex than that.

Apologies for this double dipping.  You want fossil evidence for the less-evolved ancestors of “missing fossils”?  Hard to know where to start, there’s so much.  Here’s something about shark evolution for starters.

And I just dug up some info about rattlesnake cytochrome C, considerably newer than my recollections from the university paleo classes, but reaching the same conclusion: an interesting fluke.

I meant I was waiting for the answer to this question:

if so, then where is all the evidence of their less-evolved predecessors? if they were so evolved back then, show me fossil evidence of what they were like before they became “perfect”.

heh, seems like my replies came in too late - twice

That’s because “Austria” comes before “England” alphabetically, I bet…

hmm, uh huh, oh sure that’s evidence. Quoted from your site:

“Despite an abundant fossil record, how ancient sharks are related to each other and to their modern descendants is far from clear”

“Most of what we know about the evolution of lamnoid sharks comes from detailed studies of their fossilized teeth. Yet with only teeth to go on- no matter how beautifully preserved - it is extremely difficult to trace the evolutionary history of lamnoids”

and

In the shark fossil record, huge sections of the story are missing, distorted, or out-of-sequence and each specimen is more like a single frame from a very long movie

very sceptical, is it not? no surprise to me there, whatsoever

Double dipping is habit forming.  I can’t resist adding my favorite example of a surprising quirk, a disagreement between comparative anatomy and fossil/DNA analysis:  it was long thought that hippos were closely related to pigs.  It now turns out that hippos are more closely related to, wait for it…
whales!.  This is a good caveat for those who would depend upon just one line of evidence to put together the family tree.

Crossed again!  No, the quotes you give about shark evolution are not “sceptical”.  They just point out that the fossil record is incomplete, as might well be expected for animals whose skeleton is larely cartilaginous.  So what?

Gaz, you’re in over your head. Go read Talk Origins for a bit and then try again.

WE’LL I HAVE MET DR. BAUL, AND HE IS A VERY GOOD CHRISTIAN MAN.  I KNOW THAT MOST OF THE BRIGHTEST DOCTORS IN PHSYICS, MATHMATICS, ARCHEOLOGY, ECT. AROUND THE WORLD AGREE WITH HIM....THEY TEACH IN OUR BEST SCHOOLS...THANKS FOR LETTING ME SPEAK MY MIND AS YOU ALL HAVE...IT IS GREAT WE CAN VOICE OUR OWN OPINIIONS.

I KNOW THAT MOST OF THE BRIGHTEST DOCTORS IN PHSYICS, MATHMATICS, ARCHEOLOGY, ECT. AROUND THE WORLD AGREE WITH HIM....THEY TEACH IN OUR BEST SCHOOLS

Bullshit ... but you made me laugh. 

Excuse my intrusion after reading a few months of blather from the beginning of this blog, and the last few comments, only.  I got tired of the foul language and ignorant, dogmatic tirades, so I may have missed something significant (any hope of that here?) in the middle.

Can someone with a basic high school education with a basic understanding of the laws of physics explain to my simple A.S. in Computer Science how you get an amino acid to “evolve” into a 46-chromosome, extremely complex being with a highly developed sense of morals, the ability to reason, and with the total inability to accept that there is something or someone greater than himself who had something to do with him coming into existence?  How can simplicity become intelligently complex?  The second law of thermodynamics vetoes the concept.  Or do you not accept the laws of thermodynamics any more?

Is it even remotely possible that the processes we observe in our scientific laboratories did not always proceed in the same fashion or at the same rate as they do now?  Perhaps C-14 was not always infused at the same rate as it does now? Remember, I am not proclaiming that I know everything, or that I am even very knowledgeable in this area.  I just cannot see how you can get order out of chaos without the input of intelligence.  The supposed “Big Bang” would have “created” chaos, and proponents of evolution claim that out of that chaos came order.  That is what I call backward!  I tell you, if that were true, nothing we trust in to restrain the decay of matter (e.g., food preservation, lead shielding of atomic reactors) would be reliable.  Why does not life appear out of the organic soups we can and bottle by the zillions of containers?  Because we trust that the input of energy from Sun and man-made sources cannot ever cause the dead matter to become alive again.  How hypocritical of us!

Someone much more intelligent than I once wrote a very simple allegory to make this profound truth understandable to uneducated, normal people (like children, even).  The book is called He Who Thinks Must Believe, by Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith.  His credentials are very impressive, too.  I don’t think you all could dismiss him as easily as you do Baugh.

Can someone with a basic high school education with a basic understanding of the laws of physics explain to my simple A.S. in Computer Science how you get an amino acid to “evolve” into a 46-chromosome, extremely complex being with a highly developed sense of morals, the ability to reason, and with the total inability to accept that there is something or someone greater than himself who had something to do with him coming into existence?

Simple: one tiny step at a time.

How can simplicity become intelligently complex?  The second law of thermodynamics vetoes the concept.  Or do you not accept the laws of thermodynamics any more?

That’s not what the second law says at all.

Is it even remotely possible that the processes we observe in our scientific laboratories did not always proceed in the same fashion or at the same rate as they do now?  Perhaps C-14 was not always infused at the same rate as it does now?

It’s certainly possible, but improbable, not to mention there is more than one type of radiometric dating.

Remember, I am not proclaiming that I know everything, or that I am even very knowledgeable in this area.  I just cannot see how you can get order out of chaos without the input of intelligence.

Argument from incredulity.

he supposed “Big Bang” would have “created” chaos, and proponents of evolution claim that out of that chaos came order.

Evolution no more refutes ideas of chaos than water flowing over a stone refutes gravity.

That is what I call backward!  I tell you, if that were true, nothing we trust in to restrain the decay of matter (e.g., food preservation, lead shielding of atomic reactors) would be reliable.

Yet it is true.

Why does not life appear out of the organic soups we can and bottle by the zillions of containers?

Because that’s a straw man you’ve set up?

Because we trust that the input of energy from Sun and man-made sources cannot ever cause the dead matter to become alive again.  How hypocritical of us!

While the sun does provide energy, a lot of organisms didn’t evolve to process it into energy, so of course it wouldn’t be a cure for death. There’s more than one thing at work in the expiration of life.

I hope that helps.

Thus spake FriedBrains:

The second law of thermodynamics vetoes the concept

It does nothing of the sort. If you are genuinely interested in the nature of evolution and the Second Law of Thermodynamics, check this, this, and this out.

Or do you not accept the laws of thermodynamics any more?

I accept them just fine. There’s no reason not to.

Remember, I am not proclaiming that I know everything, or that I am even very knowledgeable in this area.  I just cannot see how you can get order out of chaos without the input of intelligence.

Just because you don’t envision yourself capable of understanding something does not make it any less of a reality. I personally don’t understand how anyone of reasonable intelligence could buy into creation theory, yet there is little denying that millions upon millions of people (many of them far more intelligent than myself) adhere to “Godidit” beliefs.

How hypocritical of us!

I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.

The book is called He Who Thinks Must Believe, by Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith.  His credentials are very impressive, too.  I don’t think you all could dismiss him as easily as you do Baugh.

From what I’ve gathered, Wilder-Smith was a renowned and learned chemist, but not a biologist. That immediately calls into question his level of expertise in evolutionary theory. Though I’m not sure why you think that having impressive credentials necessarily makes one an expert or factually unassailable. Being a creationist (or a flat-earther, or a Holocaust-denier, or a UFO nut, etc.) is a choice that one makes, and all the reason and logic in the world count for very little when one is determined to believe something contrary to logic and reason.

FriedBrains: how you get an amino acid to “evolve” into a 46-chromosome, extremely complex being with a highly developed sense of morals, the ability to reason

It probably wasn’t spontaneous, and evolution is a statistical effect of genetics, something that makes complete sense given our current model. What you should really be asking is how self-replicating molecules came about - these tend to be elaborate but can be made from simpler molecules under special conditions, however you would have little control of stereochemistry before chiral enzymes came about, ask how that happened in an environment with no reason to have initial prefrence for chirality (wikipedia chirality/stereochemistry if you’re not sure, I can’t be bothered to link it)

FB: and with the total inability to accept that there is something or someone greater than himself who had something to do with him coming into existence?

What made that supreme being come into existence? It’s existence would need to be accomodated somehow (ie in unobserved dimensions- which are statistically allowed), and note that any interactions with the physical world would violate thermodynamics, but hey, who’s to say rules can’t be broken when people aren’t looking, which though speculation is unprovable. If energy could transcend between physical dimensions and non-physical ones to us, only observing the physical end, it would appear as a violation, but it may be balanced on the other end, maybe not, we don’t know whether thermodynamics would apply to those dimensions too, but on earth we observe a closed system

Also ask yourself why a hypothetical god would want to make people? Was he lonely or wanted people to exist in pleasent conditions? If so why should he have those directions of feelings - no reason why he shouldn’t prefer people to be in torture or may prefer it if nothing existed. In fact the existence of anything other than a completely neutral god would require an equally opposite anti version, though possibly this was projected back in time before the big bang along with a load of anti-matter and anti-energy to account for the overall excess of matter we seem to have. Sure some anti-matter converted into electrons, and hence we know some was projected forward, but why in the proportions they were?

FB: How can simplicity become intelligently complex?

Multiverse theory - create an infinite number of random situations with random arbitary rules applying to a random extent. Since there is an infinite number of oppertunities for our universe to occur it is statistically guaranteed so long as it has positive probability. Though this may explain some laws in science seeming arbitary, and physical constants taking on set numbers (randomly chosen) it doesn’t explain why the constants should be,-well constant in every situation - that is what violates probability if there is nothing to control their values. In answer to this it’s possible that there is a cyclic dependance between the laws of physics keeping constants constant, but we can’t find this link because we don’t have means to vary the extent to which a law of physics applies

FB: A.S. in Computer Science

Betcha wondering about why conciousness hasn’t been programmed yet? Good question? Dunno, where would you start? The leap from plants to animals was a big one - unconcious to concious, and I don’t have the explanation as to how it came about. But if conciousness did come in from outside, it would need to be generating nerve impulses in the brain to allow physical movement - without breaking a rule higher up this could only be done by controlling the positions of charged particles, called ions, in the brain, for it is these that generate the nerve impulse. One possible method of interaction would be via mass-manipulation of the heisenburg uncertainty principle (look up what that is) to controll the position of valence electrons on atoms/molecules/ions, hence controlling their shape, the altered shape will affect the angle it travels off at after colision, hence affecting position. This will affect the entropy of the system (a thermopdynamic effect), so it may either have to be balanced elsewhere or the rules will be broken - but it’s not so bad to violate a probability term such as entropy than it is to violate enthalpy (an energy term in thermodynamics)

The supposed “Big Bang” would have “created” chaos

It was gravity that created the order. Enthalpy (order through interactions) competes with entropy (disorder through having to do something with the energy you’ve got).

But what you should really be asking is that the big bang shouldn’t have been completely symetrical if stuff was to clump together - because if it was there would be no net pull of gravity other than towards the centre of the sphere. It’s possible that randomness in the uncertainty principle was necessary to generate this asymetry. Whether or not the uncertainty principle has to have the symmetry of what it does balanced I don’t know - and it may be forward in time or back (to an inverted universe before the big bang). - if the symetry is balanced this hypothetical anti-universe would be predictable from our one, if not it wouldn’t be.

Also you should be asking why did the big bang actually expand?, it shouldn’t formed a black hole and stopped dead. Maybe antimatter created a negative force of gravity, pushing stuff out, maybe a black hole did form, and all the stuff we see now is the result of something I’ll call ‘black hole degredation’ which is the slow elimination of a black hole by splitting nothing into stuff and anti-stuff, and projecting the anti-stuff into the balck hole and the stuff away. This coincidentally restores entropy lost when stuff falls into a black hole

FB: The book is called He Who Thinks Must Believe, by Dr. A.E. Wilder-Smith.  His credentials are very impressive, too.  I don’t think you all could dismiss him as easily as you do Baugh.

Belief is not good enough, we need full reasoned explanation about a possible god’s existence, the reason for his psychology and why anything should be anything less than perfect if he truely was 100% good and 100% influential. Credentials don’t mean much, it’s the validity of what people say that counts.

misleading typo in my comment:
Also you should be asking why did the big bang actually expand?, it shouldn’t
Should read
Also you should be asking why did the big bang actually expand?, it shouldv’e
Sorry!

DC, you rock.

A quote I saw recently, possibly somewhere else on SEB:

“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.”
- Frank Lloyd Wright

DOF, regarding the quote: Dawkins calls it Einsteinian religion.

What Bachalon said. He managed to keep it much more concise than I would have. Also what DC said, which I have to admit impressed me mightily as I managed to follow it just fine which is a refreshing change from most of his comments.

Les, DC must have been rushed to post a human-readable comment

Thankyou all
Elwed - You’re correct - I was actually in a rush, I had to get to the bank before doing some other stuff - I think that prevented me from complicating things and then losing the energy to concisen it.

Generally in life I go round saying this stuff making the assumption that what makes sense to me makes sense to others, or that they will see the same concept as I did, as the only perspective is my own (other than people at work seem to shy from conversation), so feedback is appreciated, I can always elaborate or clarify if needs be.

I was suspected of some form of HFA a few years back but didn’t persue diagnosis, but have deviated away from that somewhat since then, losing memory, concentration, intrest, etc (probably due to the degree), if that makes sense as to why I think like I do, quite frankly that’s just a label of a fuzzy set of scaled conditions with no set boundry. It’s not a bad thing in my view, just alternative - and I question the importance of the supposed benefits of normality

DC: I question the importance of the supposed benefits of normality

About the only benefit of normality is that you ‘fit’ into society more easily and become lost in the morass of the majority.
Like other weirdoes, I can do without such benefits. 

YOU PEOPLE WHO WOULD PERVERT THE TRUTH, I CAN ONLY SAY, IF I WASNT A TRUE CHRISTIAN ,ID SET OUT TELL YOU WHAT AN SATAN INSPIRED, DILBERATLY IGNORANT, WILLING LITTLE PUPPET YOU ARE!!!!!!!!! BUT BECAUSE JESUS IS RIGHT, ABOUT LOVING ONE ANOTHER . THE BEST WAY TO END THE DEATH AND DESTRUCTION THE PERVERTED TRUTHS AND PURE EVIL IDEAS, THAT WILL ONLY LEAD PEOPLE WITH YOU, STRAIGHT TO YOUR FATHERS HOUSE-HELL!  IS TO PRAY FOR YOU!
SO ONE DAY YOU MIGHT BE WISE ENOUGH TO SEE YOUVE BEEN A FOOL, HUMBLE ENOUGH TO ADMIT IT AND ASK JESUS FOR FORGIVNESS AND COMPASSIONATE ENOUGH TO SEE THE DAMAGE YOU ARE CAUSING WITH THE HATE YOU ARE SPREADING!!!!!!!!!!!!
SO THIS MIGHT HURT A BIT,… BUT FATHER GOD JESUS I PRAY FOR THE PERSON WHO PUTS THIS SITE ON THE INTERNET LET HIM SEE THE ERROR IN HIS WAYS AND CONVICTED IN HIS HEART TO LOOK AT YOU WITH A CLEAR MIND AND RECEPTIVE HEART AND LET THE POISEN WITHIN HIM BE CAST OUT TO THE PIT WHERE IT COMES FROM. JESUS BLESS HIM TO DO THE RIGHTOUS THING AND SEEK YOUR FACE FILL HIS HEART WITH A LOVE ONLY YOU CAN GIVE AND LET HIS EVIL BLINDNESS HARM NO MORE. I ASK IT ALL IN THE NAME OF MY LORD JESUS CHRIST AMEN AND AMEN.THANK YOU FATHER GOD .
TAKE THAT BROTHER !OH AND IF I WERE YOU ID PRAISE THE LORD FOR HIS MERCY!GOD BLESS YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!OH AND P.S.THE FACT YOURE DEVOTING SO MUCH ENERGY TO TAKING TRASH ABOUT JESUS AND CHRISTIAN BELIEFS INSTEAD OF DEVOTING YOUR TIME AND WEB SPACE TO PROVING YOUR THEORY OF HOW WE WERE ALL CREATED ONLY SHOWS THAT YOU DONT HAVE A VALID THEORY AND YOU FEAR JESUS BECAUSE HE IS THE TRUTH AND YOU KNOW IT! IT ALSO TENDS TO SPEAK VOLUMES ABOUT YOUR RESENTMENT TO THE LORD, COULD IT BE THE PROBLEM IS NOT THAT JESUS ISNT TRULY GODS SON ,BUT YOU ARE CONVINCED THAT HE DOESNT LOVE YOUFOR SOME REASON OR WONT FORGIVE YOU AND MAYBE THATS EASIER THAN HATING THE PERSON WHO YOU REALLY FEEL DOESNT LOVE YOU OR CANT FORGIVE YOU - YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!  PEOPLE DONT SPEND THE TIME YOU DO AND THAT MUCH ENERGY ON SOMEONE WHOS SO STUPID.! WHOS SUCH A WASTE OF TIME!
AND IT LOOKS TO ME, YOUVE GOT SOMETHING IN YOUR HEART THATS EATING YOU UP WITH ANGER ! DO YOURSELF A FAVOR -CHECK YOURSELF AND ASK YOURSELF WHY YOU ARE SO DETERMINED TO CONVINCE PEOPLE NOT TO BELIEVE IN THE MESSAGE CHRIST CARRIES ? COULD IT BE, THAT ITS NOT TO HELP THEM, BELIEVE YOUR TRUTH, BUT TO HELP YOU, BELIEVE YOUR LIES?