One Argument that Creationists Really Struggle With

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As for the Laryngeal nerve being a design fault, maybe it is, or maybe we are just not as clever as the designer to understand why something is designed a certain way, for instance, talking is tied up with breathing, maybe the nerve for the larynx is purposefully that long so that the message to the lungs gets there before the message to the larynx?

Perhaps if you had your Laryngeal nerve shortened to what seems a more logical length, speaking would feel wrong and you would have to momentarily delay you speech whilst the message gets to your lungs?

Your not getting the point Iam trying to make that just because different creatures share a genetic code, it doesn't prove that one came from the other because its also possible that if a designer, in this case God, writes a genetic code for something to occur in one species, and then he wants the same thing to occur in another species, why shouldn't he use exactly the same code?
Why would he write a completely different genetic code for the same thing to occur for each different species?

Sharing DNA doesn't prove anything, which is what Iam trying to show with my motorcycle illustration, if something works fine on one model, why use something different on a different model?

We are so similar to apes, that of course why shouldn't we share the same instructions, very slightly altered to bring about the differences between us.

So what's your explanation for my OP, which shows that we descended from ancestral apes and not just share similar designs.

Nambo, granted that we don't have as much information as we would like to have, but we have found fossils of at least a dozen hominid species from the last six or eight million years who even if they are not our direct ancestors are at the very least close cousins to us. The older hominid fossils are more ape-like and there is a clear progression in the fossil record to more human-like features over time. And then there is the genetic evidence of patterns of nested hierarchies which are clearly explained by common descent but make no sense if common descent did NOT happen. Are you aware of the fossil and genetic evidence for human evolution? This is where your argument of common design features falls apart. It does NOT explain what we find in the fossil record and it does NOT account for the patterns of nested hierarchies in studying DNA of different species. And even more, that the tree of life produced from studying DNA MATCHES what we find in the fossil record as to which forms appear first. If evolution did NOT happen, then why does all this evidence of so many different types all indicate that it did happen? Is God a trickster?

Last edited by TheBicyclingGuitarist on 01 Jul 2013, 12:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's just one example. How about the anatomy of the mammalian vas deferens? It wraps around the top of the uretur (which drain the kidneys into the bladder) and then joins into the urethra from behind and below the bladder - a product of mammalian evolution.

how about the fact that the tissues in the mammalian retina are upside-down? How about the fact that humans have a vestigial appendix (yes, GALT is functional; no, there's nothing special about the GALT in the appendix). How about the human knee? How about the fact that we great apes posses a non-functional version of the gene that creates vitamin C? It's not just that we need fresh fruits for our C, it's that we have a broken copy of the gene. The first time I ever saw an anatomical diagram of a human knee, I laughed; my reaction was, 'for crying out loud, *I* could 'design' something better than that!' How about the human lower back? And that's just the most obvious examples from our species; there are plenty of others, from other species as well.

Regardless of common traits, you can't make a phylogenetic tree based on interchangeable parts. To be the same as evolution, you would have a pattern of distribution of these parts that can show us exactly where these different machines fit in a phylogenetic tree of relatedness based on derived traits. But this would go for the entire compliment of parts that makes up each individual machine design. If even one of these parts doesn't fit the pattern, it would falsify the phylogenetic tree. That means that if you can trace the same headlight through what seem like generations of inheritance, but the pattern of fuel line designs conflicts, then the tree is bunk. In biology, it isn't common traits that prove relatedness, it's the patterns of similarities and differences over time.

By the way, evolution has been proven because it has been observed, like gravity. Evolution (including speciation and the development of new structures in populations) have been observed. The definition of biological evolution is a change in allele frequency over time. This has certainly been observed and doesn't even require speciation or the development of new traits. (A population bottleneck would almost guarantee a change in allele frequency by virtue of a drop in diversity.) On the other hand, theories (like evolutionary theory) explain facts and are potentially refutable because they make testable predictions.

Such as: About four percent of the human and chimp genomes are made up of DNA from deactivated retroviral insertions. If the populations of chimps and humans were once the same population, you would expect the pattern of randomly accumulated endogenous retroviral insertions to reflect that. These pieces of viral dna are inserted randomly, so the likelihood that each population would coincidentally experience an insertion of retroviral dna in the same place is about one in 3,000,000,000. We have (and this is a ridiculously conservative estimate) 14 retroviral insertion points in common with chimps. The chance that humans and chimps did not inherit these from a common ancestor is mathematically insignificant. What's more is that when patterns of retroviral insertions in other animals are used to create phylogenetic trees, they match other independently assembled trees based on physiology, fossil record, biochemistry, other (numerous) lines of genetic evidence, and all of these trees match each other. Independent lines of evidence showing the same pattern of relatedness based on derived traits as predicted by the theory.

Darwin proposed his theory long before anyone could have conceived of dna evidence, yet that is where the theory is finding its most powerful confirmation. The closer you look, the more right it is.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jim_HBj7Bdk[/youtube]
And I just wan't to add this for fun:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-ilMYc5xdQ[/youtube]

If A and B have a common ancestor, it does not necessarily follow A is B's ancestor as well. They could be distantly related only by that common ancestor of many generations ago.

Thus, just because DNA reveals that Apes and Humans have a common ancestor, it does not necessarily follow that Humans descended from Apes (or vice-versa), but only that we're distantly related.

You are in principle correct, but...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igq_niFmXNs&list=PLAA2ED2BCDB5F5A43[/youtube]

Everything about our biology tells us that we still are apes. There isn't a trait that all apes have in common that we don't have in common with them. If you consider the animals that we would all agree are apes, humans are no more divergent from the group than any other member. If I were asked to pick the ape that is least like the others, I would probably go with the gibbon. We are far less interesting apes than they are.

Lungs emerged as a trait in ancient fish. Lungs are therefore a 'fish' trait. We humans had to inherit them from a creature that would be described as a 'fish'. No creatures have lungs except those fish and their progeny. Therefore we evolved from 'fish'. We have diverged genetically and physically, but you can't be human unless you are the descendant of a fish.

But, we are not the descendant of modern lung-bearing fish. They have diverged from that same common ancestor over the same period of time. We have each accumulated our unique mutations, but neither line will ever be anything more than a modified version of that common fish ancestor. "Humans are land fish" is not a ridiculous claim, biologically.

I just realized that everything I just wrote was contained in the video above. I was wondering where those ideas came from. The vid was so much better than my post, too. Damn!

Still no clever creationist apologist-style response, I see. I know, from my Christian past, I had no "intelligent" way to argue that piece of evidence.

You mean birds? But if they don't believe in human evolution I doubt they could understand that.

Yeah, Human Chromosome 2 is practically a smoking gun showing our recent common ancestry with the other great apes. Even if the Creator is the God of the Bible and He used two ape chromosomes to create Human Chromosome 2, that still does not explain the patterns of nested hierarchies in the DNA of different species nor why the tree of life made from that data MATCHES what we find in the fossil record as to what forms appear first and what forms lead to other forms.

The fossil record and many lines of genetic evidence clearly show life evolving over time: fish becoming land animals, dinosaurs becoming birds, some land animals going back to the water to become whales, and non-human apes becoming human apes. This is supported by numerous different lines of evidence that all point to the same reality. This is the evidence the Creator God (if there is one) has left for us. So I ask, how does denying the observable demonstrable reality of evolution make one a better Christian when to do so is to deny ALL the evidence we can observe and measure that clearly shows evolution happens. Why would that evidence exist if it did NOT happen?

I have seen two arguments used by creationists to explain the tree of life and they both fail to account for the patterns of nested hierarchies and also for what we find in the fossil record. The two arguments are common design by the same designer (Nambo's argument in this thread) and what creationists call "ranking" which is what they THINK scientists do when the scientists describe a family tree of life showing the relatedness of different species to each other. The creationists seem to think this is done on a purely arbitrary basis instead of being based on genetic evidence AND the fossil record, which blows both their arguments away (but just try to get a creationist to admit that...go ahead but don't hold your breath).

Of course the biggest problem is the false(?) dichotomy where many Christians say if you accept evolution that automatically means you are rejecting God. But that choice might not be necessary. MOST Christian denominations now accept the fact evolution happens or say it doesn't matter to their faith. I am reminded of the Galileo affair where he got in trouble for saying the earth goes around the sun when the Christians of the time thought the Bible said the sun travels around the earth. Evolution is in that place now for some denominations, where they will eventually either have to admit they were wrong or fade away in ridicule as another failed crackpot cult. If the fundies are correct though, I have to ask why God would make it LOOK so much like evolution happens if the price of being fooled by God means spending eternity in torment? That is not very nice and I would not want to believe in such a God.

^^^^ That is because all the evidence points in the same direction.
-The distribution of fossils, in both space and time
-The similarities and dissimilarities of DNA (example: endogenous retroviruses)
-The distribution of species around the world (marsupials in Austrialia etc)
-Convergent evolution (there are mammalian rats and then there are marsupial "rats" who occupy the same niche, same for marsupial "dogs" that are now extinct, they are not closely related buy evolved to do the same job... fish, and mammal "fish" such as dolphins)
-Vestigial organs (snakes and whales with hip-bones)
-And of course we often see the similarities between species just by looking at them (cats and tigers, sheep and goats, chimps and humans)

Here's a video about endogenous retroviruses:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7OclPDN_s[/youtube]

Evolution is a fact humans evolved from apes and not from mud the earth is over 4 billion years old not 6000 years old, and humans and dinosaurs did not live together at the same time if they did the dinosaurs would wipe the humans out, get over it! All the genetic data and fossils are 100% fact!