From: "Aron Nelson" <ilcunl@hotmail.com>
To: Mozart533@aol.com
Subject: RE: The Debate
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2003
Hi, I have been busy with exams, that is why I have not answered you in a while.
I need to apologize too. I would have sent this yesterday, but we had a dish installed, and they cut our cable connection so I didn't have internet access last night.
Well, here are my answers as best as I could explain myself:
Remember, I gave you a week for each response. I'd rather get a good one, (one that was thought out, researched and reasoned) rather than what I got this time. Don't rush yourself if this is the best you can do in 48 hours. Take the full week if you have to, but your next response should be better than this one was. If you're not even going to think about what I tell you, then there's not much reason to proceed as you won't have actually accepted the terms of the engagement. I still don't think you'll make it to the meat of the conversation, but congratulations are in order since you have now gone further than any of your predecessors.
Answer to question #1.
Well, that is the point of a debate. We will find out whether evolution is what the evidence actually points to.
We already have, unless you're ready to counter everything I've already said in the last post.
Now, you will think that you know that your side is the correct side, but what if you are wrong?
Then the already observed fact of evolution is still right but common ancestry is somehow partially wrong. Of course the Bible is still at least mostly wrong too, meaning that we would both be wanting for a better alternative. Don't forget that my position is scientific. That means it can be tested. If you contend that creationism is scientific as well, then there must be a way to test it too.
What if all that you have thought about evolution is just not right?
Then you should already have provided some reason for me to reconsider my position. As yet, you have not.
Or, what if I am wrong? Well, we, or in this case, I, will find out what is the truth (since I know that you "know" that you are right, I will not dispute your belief).
As I have already told you, it is not a belief, it is knowledge, and as such, it is testable. So go ahead and test me, and dispute me if you can. That is what you should have already begun doing. I have no want nor need of beliefs that cannot be tested.
I will attempt to prove that evolution is not what the evidence points to.
Once again, how? And when? You were supposed to have started already.
Remember, the question was, 'why should I believe that any of the evidence I know about implies anything other than the only conclusion it logically seems to; that all living things evolve and have been evolving from successive stages of common ancestry?' You have not answered that question.
Answer to question #2.
I have a reason to believe what I believe,
I've already asked you what it was, and I'm still asking. Remember, earlier you said that you had presented evidence for creationism when you really hadn't. You actually presented evidence exclusive of evolution without realizing it. I made an open challenge for you to present evidence of your side since no creationist before you has ever done so. That challenge still stands.
and I believe that that reason is a valid argument.
OK. What is it?
Since I believe and follow my belief, then according to my belief I believe that I should try to get as many people to believe my side as possible.
I don't see why. It is more important to me that people shake these shackles of blind unwarranted and unyielding faith and learn to think for themselves. But OK, go ahead, convince me to believe, just give me your reason first.
This reminds me of something my mother told me once when she was still a creationist;
"I believe what I believe because that's what I believe. I believe that!
And I'm not going to believe what you believe because that's not what I believe."
What she said was utterly free of logic, just like your preceding comment.
It does not matter if my belief is wrong, or that I may be mistaken. If I am wrong, than logically I should be proven wrong by ambient evidence to the contrary of what I believe.
No problem. In fact, I have already done so. But before we go any further, you're going to have to state what it is you believe, and then give your reasons for it. Because if you haven't got any, then you have no position, and I don't even need to prove you wrong. Remember the challenge was to prove that biological evolution was the truest, best explanation there is for the origin of our species. If you can't produce any alternative at all, then obviously I win by default.
If either of us does not convince the other, then either one of us is wrong, or we are both right.
Or we're both wrong. Maybe the Hindus are right.
Since we both cannot be right at the same time (unless of course "proof" can be interpreted two different ways), if we are prudent, and amply consider each other's evidence and proof, we should come to a mutual conclusion.
The question was "why should I believe anything about your position, whatever your exact position is?" You've danced around the subject rather fancifully, but you have not answered that question either. Should I ask both of them again? I'll give you another chance to answer these in your next response. And you apparently haven't yet considered the evidence I've already shown you.
Now, for my questions to you:
1. Why do you think that the Theory of Abrupt Appearance is not a valid theory?
I don't know. I've never heard of it. Funny, I've been participating in alt.talk.creationism and talk.origins regularly since 1998, yet this is the first time I've ever heard of this. Are you talking about Big Bang cosmology? Or Quantum fluctuation? Its no secret that I'm not a fan of either of these, but I can hardly contest them. I tried once but lost that debate rather soundly. I have no argument that can counter red-shift expansion, and have been forced to conclude that a quantum singularity is indeed implied whether I like it or not.
As for what makes a valid scientific theory, it must cite its evidentiary support, and it must make testable predictions. That's why Intelligent Design "Theory" is a Theory in name only. It has no supportive evidence, can't make any predictions and wouldn't subject itself to testing anyway.
"A theory is a good theory if it satisfies two requirements: It must accurately describe a large class of observations on the basis of a model that contains only a few arbitrary elements, and it must make definite predictions about the results of future observations."
--Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time
So what is the Theory of abrupt appearance? And how does it meet the above criteria to be valid?
2. What was the initial impetus for a "hypothetical protobiont" to join with another "hypothetical protobiont" and form a symbiotic relationship that evolved and grew more complex? Do they think? Did these extremely simple life forms know that they needed each other? Is there a chemical explanation for this?
Amazingly, I've never heard of a protobiont either, but then I've been studying evolution, not abiogenesis. According to your own definition, protobionts shouldn't be considered life forms since viruses are more complex and still aren't considered to be alive. Combinant polymers are strictly chemical reactions with no initiative to bond other than that. Currently, there are I think six different possible scientific suggestions of abiogenesis, but none of them have yet shown themselves to be more conclusive than the others. I would go into more detail but as I said, it is outside of what I study, and don't have the links available at this time.
The short answer is that it doesn't matter how they originated. God could have said "Abracadabra" and spoke them out of nothing for all I care, and that is exactly what most Christian evolutionists and Intelligent Design Theorists happen to believe. I personally don't think so since I have no reason to believe in gods, and the few descriptions I've seen for natural origins of replicative cells seem much more reasonable. I don't have access to all of them at the moment, but I can include this link, which is the best text-based explanation I know of.
Remember, one of the rules of the debate is to "properly address" each challenge. That means that if something is irrelevant, we need only point that out and explain why it is. And my explanation in this case is that evolution doesn't depend on abiogenesis. Whether dogs descend from wolves or not wouldn't change whether the first pre-biotic proteins were naturally-formed, planted by aliens, or poofed into existence by magic beings. In any case, we would still be apes and Genesis would still be wrong.
To explain that another way, imagine one of those massive domino designs like they have in the Guinness Book of World Records, where there are thousands of dominoes falling in divergent flowering patterns. Now imagine that you're seeing all this in VERY slow motion. You can clearly see the lines where dominoes have fallen in the past, and you can see how some dominoes are falling now. Obviously, they are falling and have fallen before. You're trying to contest that idea, and the only way you know how is by pointing out that no one knows for sure how the first domino fell. Well, what difference does that make? Whether it was accidental, incidental or intentional, it really doesn't matter because the dominoes clearly are still falling and have obviously been falling for some time no matter how it all started. Just because we don't know how it started doesn't change the fact that it is happening.
Not surprisingly you've done what all creationists must do; avoid evolution entirely and concentrate on abiogenesis instead. Also you try very hard to parody what is the single most supported concept in the biological sciences as if all the greatest minds in any related field didn't support it unanimously and with good reason. If this is the best you've got, you're losing fast. Another reason for this tactic is that you must go into the unsearchable depths of time if you would try to feign equal uncertainty. However, I of course would go the other way. Prefer to look at what we know now, and work backwards to find what has gone before.
For example;
You share more biological traits in common with your siblings than you do with your cousins due to the recent ancestors you share with them, your parents. This is one facet of evolution that you cannot contest. Some religions try, my mother's for example. She believes that we had bodies in the before-world, and that we choose our parents. But of course that doesn't explain why we look like our relatives. Only evolution explains that.
Deeper down, you share more in common with those in your extended family than you do with neighbors and classmates, etc., people you do not recognize as part of your biological family. This is another level of evolution that I doubt you would try to contest.
Deeper down, you must surely recognize relatively small and long-isolated cultural demes, (what we used to refer to as races) where Samoans, Europeans, blacks, Dravidians, Aborigines, and Amerinds (among others) all descend from what I think you will agree is a common ancestor.
Going even deeper down, we've seen that new breeds of dogs, cattle, corn, etc. have come about via artificial selection, and new sub-species have occurred via natural selection, in both cases, stemming from common ancestry, be that hundreds of dogs coming from wolves or dozens of commercial bovines coming from the extinct European Aurochs. I doubt you would contest any of these either.
These are all what biologists used to define as "micro" evolution, or variation within species. Variation between species, (macro-evolution) has also been directly observed and documented both in the lab and in naturally-controlled environments in the field numerous times each. And whether we are talking about various distinct and non-interbreeding groups of finches, zebras, tigers, flies, or mice, they are all different species that clearly do share common ancestry.
Beyond that, and going still deeper, we have certain groups we have recognized based on their distance from common ancestors such as between the various genus of cats; panthers, felines, cheetahs, lynx and the extinct scimitar cats. Felines of different species can still be interbred in captivity where they will not do so in the wild, and the same is true of panthers. But even forced interbreeding of two different genera starts getting tricky. Look at how hard it was to cross camels and llamas. There are several different species of camel and several different species of llama both living now and in the fossil record. The fossil record actually has more species of each than are alive now. So these camels and llamas aren't just different species, they are different genera, and are even more distant from each other. Consequently, it took two years worth of lab research and several failed attempts before artificial insemination could take effect. This is another fact of evolution that is explained by the Theory of evolution involving an increased variance due to cumulative differences depending primarily on how far two organisms are from their common ancestor. At any level beyond genera, the degree of variance may be so great that even forced laboratory crosses may not be possible. Variable conditions exist for every group of course. Yet relationship is still strongly implied by the fact that every organism on Earth shows obvious relatives either living nearby or in the fossil record. And everything in the fossil record has similar relations evident there as well, again according to synapomorphies which are consistently confirmed genetically wherever it is possible to do so.
These are all levels of evolution and statements that evolution is a demonstrable fact that can be verified. The question is, do you believe that felines and panthers share a common ancestor? Do you believe that camels and llamas share a common ancestor?
You see, you're not really arguing against evolution. How could you? Unless you contend that life is an illusion, you must admit that evolution does exist and that it really does happen. What you're attempting to contest is really the concept of common ancestry, which we also both know does exist at least to some degree. The only question is, how far does it continue?
That's another reason why your abiogenesis argument is irrelevant. (1) You already believe it happened, you just think it was supernatural as opposed to natural. (2) The only reason you bring it up is a feeble attempt to argue that you're not an ape. I'm sure you realize now that no matter how abiogenesis occurred it has nothing to do with your relationship to other hominids.
So we already have proof that evolution is the truest, best (and only) explanation for the genetic make-up of our families, our physical characteristics and our deme. The only pertinent question here is do we have adequate evidence to convince you that evolution also explains the origin of our species? At this point, I don't know what you would need to be convinced. For that I'm going to need some additional information from you. Please explain.
Now, you've already given your criteria for what makes us human, except that your criteria includes not only our species but every other species in our genus, every genus in our taxonomic family and even the other families of the collective superfamily Hominoidea. Biologically, the term "human" only includes certain bi-pedal "great" apes, (Hominids excluding Oreopithecus), and sometimes, the common use of that word excludes the Paranthropines as well. That is as restrictive as that word ever gets! But our specific species applies only to Homo sapiens sapiens, and perhaps Homo erectus and intermediate names according to some treatise of that word. Homo neanderthalensis is considered a distinctly separate species also originating within Homo erectus. Each of the pre-erectine hominines, H. habilis and H. rudolfensis etc., are also universally considered to be different species even though they are clearly human by every definition of that word biological or otherwise.
At present, evolution provides the only explanation for any of these other people. Do you have any alternative explanation for them?
Now these questions, points etc., in addition to the challenge to produce your alternative explanation for the origin of our species and the reason behind it, along with my two previous questions, (neither of which were either answered or properly addressed) should all be addressed in your next reply. They all center around the big question, the most pivotal one in our entire discussion, and its not at all what you think it is.
If evolution from common ancestry is not true, and some flavor of special creation of different (as yet unidentified "kinds") is true, then there would be some surface level(s) in a cladogram where you would accept an actual evolutionary ancestry. But there must also be subsequent levels in that twin-nested hierarchy where life-forms would no longer be the same "kind", and wouldn't be biologically related anymore. At that point, they would be magically created separate "kinds" from those listed around it, and they would only be in those categories "in the mind of man", as you put it. Throw away any ideas you have about the importance of any other argument you might be thinking about. None of them compare to this. If creationism is true of anything more than a single ancestor of all living things, or if the concept of common ancestry is fundamentally mistaken, then there MUST be a point in the tree where taxonomy falls apart, where what we see as related to everything is really unrelated to anything else. And unless you're a Scientologist or a Raelian, that criteria must apply to other animals besides ourselves. So my challenge to you is this, open up Google.com and investigate any cladograms you can find, (I suggest the Tree of Life pages as they are peer-reviewed) and find for me where that mystic division is in any or all of the following sets of questions below.
Is the short-tailed goanna related to the Perentie
and all other Australian goannas?
Are all Australian goannas related to each other
and to the other monitor lizards of Indonesia and Africa?
Are today's varanids related to the giant goannas of Australia's past?
Are all Varanidae related to other saurians and serpentes?
Are varanoids related to the mosasaurs of the Cretaceous?
Are terrestrial monitors related to any other Anguimorphs?
Are any Anguimorphs also related to scincomorphs and geckos?
Are all Scleroglossa also related to iguanids?
Are all lizards related to each other and to all other squamates?
Are all of squamata related to each other and all other lepidosaurs?
Are all lepidosaurs related to each other and to all other diapsids?
Are all diapsids related to each other and to all other reptiles?
Are all reptiles related to each other and all other amniotes?
Are all amniotes related to each other and to all other tetrapods?
Are all tetrapods related to each other and to all other vertebrates?
........and so on.
Which of these are related? Which of these are created?
Here are some references to help you.
Tree Of Life
Click the "containing group" link to go back through projected ancestry. This cladogram isn't really detailed, but it is easy to navigate, and since it is peer-reviewed, it will be the most accurate available on the web.
This cladogram below is not peer-reviewed, but it is much more detailed.
Click the <==o to go back.
Here is a hint as to how to read the Finnish cladogram
<==o Parent category (contains these and those)
|--o Group name
| |-- Individual species (scientist)
| `--o descendant group
| |-- Individual species (scientist)
| `-- Individual species (scientist)
`-- Group name (contains these and those)
The parent category is also the ancestral group. Even in those cases where direct ancestors are known, like Australopithecus afarensis or Homo erectus, they must still be listed as sister species. Terminal taxa, [individual species] cannot be listed as ancestral even if they are considered to be so. Instead, they are all listed according to how closely they are related to each other, with basal species listed first and subsequent derivations in descending order.
This first list of questions was asked of dozens of creationists over the years, yet not one of them would even attempt to answer it. Why? I can't imagine. I've presented it so often on T.O. that if became known as Aron's quiz, just one more in a continuing series of issues which creation "scientists" habitually refuse to deal with but must if they would promote their beliefs in a classroom. If there is any validity to Creationism whatsoever, or if there is some critical flaw in the overall Theory of evolution from common ancestry, that flaw MUST be found here or it simply can't be anywhere else!
For these next couple series, you may want to compare the TOLweb site with the Finnish cladogram as it is also more illustrative. However, bear in mind that not being peer-reviewed means that errors in it are not corrected unless you email the systematist directly to advise him of them. I have found some errors in other lineages, but these groups appear accurate.
Are Bengal tigers related to Burmese tigers and all other tiger species?
Are all known species of tiger related to each other and all other panthers?
Are all panthers related to housecats, scimitar cats and all other felids?
Are all felids related to civets and other viverrids?
Are felids and viverrids related to other families within Feloidea?
Are all Feloidea related to any or all other Carnivora?
Which of these groups evolved from common ancestors, and which ones were spoken into existence by God's magic incantation? If you can answer that, then we'll know how many pairs of cats Ubar-Tutu took onto the ark with him, right?
And a bonus question
Are all species of ducks related to each other?
Are all ducks also related to geese and other Anseriformes?
Are Anseriformes related to Galliforms and other neognaths?
Are neognaths [modern birds] related to paleognaths [primitive Struthioformes]?
Are any extant birds related to Hesperornis, Ichthyornis and/or other Euornithes?
Are Euornithes related to Confusiousornis or Archeopteryx?
Are Aves related to Dromaeosaurs and/or other non-avian dinosaurs?
And finally(from the TOLweb site)
Are modern terrestrial scorpions related to extinct aquatic scorpions?
Are all scorpions related to Cambrian Eurypterids?
Are Eurypterids related to horseshoe crabs?
Are horseshoe crabs related to trilobites?
Again, if the overall Theory of evolution is NOT true, and/or if creationism IS true, then at some point in each of these, your answer should be a simple "no", and wherever you answer "yes" is equally important. And of course the same applies to the human version of this same inquiry. .
Are Caucasians, (modern versions of Cro-magnon) related to all other extant human demes?
Are Homo sapiens related to any or all other species of Homo?
Are any Homo species related to any other Hominines?
Are any of the Hominines related to any other Hominids?
Are any of the Hominids related to any other Hominoids?
Are any Hominoids related to other Catarrhine primates?
Are any Catarrhines related to any Platyrrhines?
Answer all of these if you can, and remember that you have previously described them all as "human". I'll understand if you want to modify your criteria somewhat. If you do, let me know what the new criteria is.
What is also very important to remember is that we don't know anything at all about miraculous creation, not even if it exists. Don't forget that I'm still waiting for some reason to believe that such a process is even worth considering. No matter what you may believe, we don't know that any of these have been created, nor do we have any reason to suspect any of them were. But we do know for certain that at least some of these have definitely evolved according to processes we know to be real, and which we understand fairly well.
These queries may look like a lot of work, but they shouldn't require much research at all as it is more or less just a matter of your own personal opinion at this point. As I say, these are critical questions which we will review in-depth following your reply. And although there is no more important question for any creation "scientist" to answer, none of them yet has ever done so. I'm not kidding! Hovind, Ham, Gish, Moon, Morris, Yahyah, Probupada, none of them would dare answer this. As you have already progressed futher than any of them ever would, I eagerly await your next reply.
