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Creationists! I have a question for you! |
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This thread is specifically myself seeking answers from those who completely deny that biological evolution is possible.
Now going in, I realize that somewhere between many and all creationists will acknowledge that "micro evolution" does occur. This is commonly synonymous in the creationist world as "change within kinds". Creationists concede that genetic change can, and in fact will, occur within what they call a kind. They will even be comfortable (usually) with the phrase "adaptation within a kind". Based on this, I have three questions for creationists (using creationist terminology when possible even!)
1. Let's posit a scenario where two groups of one "kind" suddenly become separated from one another. Let's posit that one group didn't move at all from the original location, whereas the other did move to a quite different habitat over time. Now after many generations, the combination of genes which affect traits that are likely to benefit survival vary in these two populations due to their different habitats. After some time, some people find these two populations, posit that they have a common ancestor, and bring them back together, and find them reproductively incompatible. You may say "well, you're just suggesting macro-evolution is true here". Perhaps I am. However, it's not just us heathens that suggest this. Here is a video of Kent Hovind suggesting exactly that. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ilMYc5xdQ#t=316 . Now this isn't a video of just Hovind, so bear with me here Creationists. Just watch the first 5 minutes or so.
At about 1:54, Kent says "If they can bring forth, they're the same kind! Simple definition. A dog and a wolf can bring forth. A dog and a banana can not." This is quite a concise statement, and while I don't ever see Kent Hovind as an authority on anything (except perhaps how to go to jail for the dumbest of reasons), it's pretty much a working definition in the creationist world. From Answers in Genesis, I present the following:
Between the above, and Kent Hovind's spiel about rabbits, creationists seem to concede that considerable amount of genetic change can occur in animals with a common ancestor, to the point where (in the AIG example) animals can produce offspring that are almost always sterile, or (in Hovind's example of Alaskan vs. southern rabbits) aren't reproductively compatible at all!
Given that information, how can one posit the theory of evolution in its entirety to be impossible? With this concession, once you have two groups of animals with a common ancestor that are no longer reproductively compatible, what is to stop their genes from diverging so far that an uneducated person hundreds of thousands of years later would not be able to tell that there is a common ancestor at all? I will assert that given the evidence for this, (fossil evidence, DNA evidence which I will address further shortly, and homology for sure) to say that it could not have happened, one would have to show a biological mechanism that remembers its ancestral genes, and refuses to change past a certain point. Failure to find any such mechanism in genetics allows the theory of evolution to hold the position that creationists hate so much; one where we know it's true.
2. Further on hybrid animals as touched on above. If it's true that everything is designed, why weren't mules? Surely, if god wanted us to have mules (a working animal that is for certain applications favourable to either of horses and/or donkeys) he would have made a "mule kind", with horses and donkeys being reproductively isolated. Instead, he made us figure out mules on our own. If mules are more useful than horses and donkeys, why would god have made us figure this out on our own? Also, why would he have made the overwhelming majority of mules sterile, instead of making their own "kind" so that they can bring forth, and perhaps help us selectively breed better mules?
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8FfMBYCkk <--Pretty well fully explained here. Why is human chromosome #2 homologous to two chimpanzee chromosome? The explanation that "god made it that way" is simply not good enough here. The link I posted is a talk by a biologist who is also a Catholic. Should you be Christian but not Catholic, do note that he says in this video that he believes in a designer, but not a deceptive one. Wouldn't you agree? If not, then:
A. Why is he deceptive, or
B. Why is Kenneth Miller wrong?
Theists - If your god is omnipotent, remember the following: He (or she) has the cure for cancer, but won't tell us what it is.