Hi Russ

You are correct that mutations could not create an arm, not a chance, well just a very small one but too small to be worthy of consideration.

But then who ever suggested that they could?

Not me.

Not ToE.

What you say would be perfectly reasonable if it weren’t for the fact that you have forgotten or don’t understand what ToE actually says. Mutation provides raw material for Natural Selection to work on. If you take just one part of any theory you’ll find that it doesn’t work, you have to look at the whole picture not cherry pick to build a straw man. Not that you have to build this particular straw man, YEC’s have been presenting it to a gullible public for many years, it’s a sad indightment on your education system that people can’t see through this transparent rubbish.

Lets look at reality and see how improbable evolution really is.

That giant roulette wheel has four numbers on it and it is biased such that more than 99.999% of the time it will turn up the same number as is currently in the DNA.

In order for a beneficial mutation to occur, a certain number has to be rolled on an enormous roulette wheel with millions of numbers—not just once—but time after time.

Well the roulette wheel has four numbers on it and more than 99.999% of the time it turns up the number that is already in the DNA of the parent.

Remember, you can't have one hand and then simply expect to have all of the necessary mutations form a second hand in perfect symmetry. This is clearly absurd.

Though of course this is exactly what happens, we don’t carry DNA for a left hand and a mirror image in DNA for a right hand we carry DNA for a hand and DNA to mirror it left and right. Nature is much smarter than you, it understands how to create mirror images.

Remember, a hand is not just a hand. It is muscles, ligaments, bone, cartridge, nerves, arteries/veins, and much more in intricate design.

Absolutely though of course we see far simpler designs than humans possess working in the real world. Simpler designs are still useful and each increment from the simplest to the modern complex form is useful at least I am unaware of any step in that process that is not useful. That’s all that evolution needs to produce some amazing things. The fossil record documents this and we observed it in the lab in bacterial experiments. Those experiments I explained earlier that you keep ignoring involved the bacteria doing the equivalent of inventing an second stomach which operates on a completely different metabolic system. Not an arm but then bacteria don’t have arms and stomachs are complex enough to demonstrate the power of evolution.

This intricate concert of symmetry requires mutation after mutation after mutation, not just in perfect form and proportion, but in the right order.

Again you ignore or are ignorant of what ToE says. Natural selection will weed out the organisms which get a step wrong. Not that the exact order of the changes is particularly critical. There are some critical paths involved but many are not and natural selection easily deals with the unfit missteps.

Now, pile on that the problem of irreducible complexity. There is no way all the steps—even if they could occur—would be beneficial. No chance.

You’ll have to show me some step in this process that is irreducibly complex. Can you think of one. You’ll be the first if you can but please give it a try. It’s easy to say that there are impossible steps, harder by far to actually find one. Can you do it Russ or is this all hot air and misunderstandings or outright lies?

Furthermore, the probability of the sequence of events happening in the right order depletes chance to beyond absurdity.

Well it would if there was no such thing as natural selection. But you can’t just ignore natural selection. You do know what natural selection is don’t you Russ? Please tell me are you ignorant (no chrime there we are all born that way) or are you a liar? Ignorance we can cure, I’m happy to help there. So which is it?

Then, you have to hope that no destructive mutations take place during the development of some useful part that would destroy it's form, and we all agree that harmful mutations are far, far more abundant than beneficial ones.

Again this is not an issue when you understand that Natural Selection really exists. The missteps will be weeded out and the beneficial mutations will make it into the next generation. Natural selection has a ratcheting effect, a cumulative effect on beneficial mutations no matter how small. You need to understand this to understand ToE.

Evolution is a mathematical absurdity. You really need to open your eyes and see the big, pink elephant in the room.

I agree that you should look at the whole picture, you can’t ignore Natural Selection if you are going to talk about ToE. Are you ignorant of what ToE says or are you a purposeful liar Russ? It’s a pointless waste to have to continually explain the same errors in our posts over and over again Russ. If you don’t know how ToE works ask, we can help. If you do know how it works and purposeful misrepresent it then that’s another problem and I don’t know what we should do about that. It doesn’t say much for your integrity. So which is it Russ, do you actually understand ToE?

In Reason

Russell


—Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 179

And of course we have to have another miss cited and out of context quotation to close off Russ’s latest missive.

Contrary to the citation the above ‘paragraph’ is made up of sentences from Chapter 6 and Chapter 9 or Origins. These self challenging statements are a feature of Charles Darwin’s writings. Time and again he raises the concerns that he believes others will have with his ideas then goes on in detail to explain why the concerns are unfounded. The same is true of the above quotes where Darwin spends two full chapters explaining in detail why the challenges he raises are not in fact the problems that a naive view of the theory would make them out to be. If you want to read the quotes in context including the detailed rebuttals that were in the original text 150 years ago here are the links.

http://talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter6.html
http://talkorigins.org/faqs/origin/chapter9.html