Theory of Evolution and Mormons

[Eldwynn]

Can it? Possibly

Did it? We don't know.

Off of the top of my head I don't know. I will have to think about it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "we". Biologists are more certain about the common ancestry between chimpanzees and humans than they are about anything else (which on second thought, isn't saying much )

However, I think you defining big change would be a great question to your argument. As I showed before, bacteria have been observed to change their genome by 2% in the laboratory. You seemed to have been claiming that this was no "big change" because we still call them bacteria. However, the difference between chimpanzees and humans (which you would say is a big change) is the same 2% change that we observed in bacteria. There is no reason to expect in 28 million years (which is what the fossil record, and other techniques on dating suggest) or over a million generations, that this change would not take place.

Sure, the fossil record isn't perfect, but it does agree with every other method. Remember, we are talking about this in the first place because you raised the point that bacteria, even with such a short generation time, only change small amounts. Well, when you look at it in humans, 2% is a LARGE amount.

If you really want to understand change in evolution, and the power of cumulative selection (which has no mathematical problem) then do read "The Blind Watchmaker". It's a great book, and even if you don't finish it accepting the theory, you will at least have a greater understanding of it than the average college graduate.

[Eldwynn]

Again this sort of reasoning is not based on an observed speciation event. It is a supposition without an A to B to C map showing step by step how it supposedly happened. As Dembski has proven mathematically, it is outside the realm of possibility for enough genetic change to have occurred to explain the diversity of genetic information. There is no evolutionary algorithm that can do the required work within the realm of possibility.

This is just NOT true. Dembski proved nothing mathematically, because his models have always been based on SINGLE STEP selection. Evolution, is NOT single step selection, but cumulative selection. The difference is so huge! This is explained nicely in the book "The Blind Watchmaker" (maybe if I plug for it enough some of you anti-evolution folks will actually go pick it up so I can stop typing).

Dembski liked to point to the bacteria flagellum as irreducibly complex. Others like to point at eyes. However, neither is irreducibly complex:

http://www.health.adelaide.edu.au/Pharm/Mu...ys/flagella.htm

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/01/1/l_011_01.html

One other thing to point out: When we look at complex features, and ask "How could this possible evolve in a slow gradual way by natural selection?" We have to remember that we are seeing the end picture. There are a great deal of support structures that may be gone by now. Look at how ancient people built an arch. Looking at the keystone, it seems irreducibly complex. How could they insert the last piece, if the entire structure depends on it from the beginning?

The answer is: they used support structures until it was completed, and then those support structures are removed. Evolution often works in the same way.

[thesometimesaint]

From Wiki:

Advocates of intelligent design argue that it is a scientific theory,[11] and seek to fundamentally redefine science to accept supernatural explanations.[12] The unequivocal consensus in the scientific community is that intelligent design is not science.[13][14][15][16] The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science."[17] The U.S. National Science Teachers Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have termed it pseudoscience.[18] Others in the scientific community have concurred, and some have called it junk science.[19][20]

The concept of intelligent design originated in response to the 1987 United States Supreme Court Edwards v. Aguillard ruling involving separation of church and state.[4] Its first significant published use was in Of Pandas and People, a 1989 textbook intended for high-school biology classes.[21] Several additional books on the subject were published in the 1990s. By the mid-1990s, intelligent design proponents had begun clustering around the Discovery Institute and more publicly advocating the inclusion of intelligent design in public school curricula.[22] With the Discovery Institute and its Center for Science and Culture serving a central role in planning and funding, the "intelligent design movement" grew increasingly visible in the late 1990s and early 2000s, culminating in the 2005 Dover trial which challenged the intended use of intelligent design in public school science classes.[7]

In Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District, a group of parents of high-school students challenged a public school district requirement for teachers to present intelligent design in biology classes as an alternative "explanation of the origin of life". U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents", and that the school district's promotion of it therefore violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.[23]