To count as science, hypotheses and theories should make predictions that might turn out to be wrong. In other words, it should be possible to falsify these ideas.
Like when evolutionists wrongly pronounced most of the genome "junk DNA' with no purpose? That was a failure (and science-delayer) of evolutionary theory. Too bad people can't learn from that failure.
progression over time seen in the millions of fossils unearthed around the world is exactly what evolutionary theory predicts. Unicellular organisms, for example, appear before multicellular ones. Jawless fish precede jawed fish. Lunged fish precede amphibians. Amphibians precede reptiles. Reptiles with scales precede mammals and birds with modified scales (fur and feathers). Apes precede humans.
A progression over time was observed before evolutionary theory came along. So this isn't really much of a prediction. Heck, even Genesis 1 describes a progression of life forms over time culminating in humans. The issue isn't progression of life forms over time, but the WHY and HOW of the progression.
Rabbits with feathers could also disprove evolution.
Really? If we found a rabbit with feathers, evolutionists would trumpet it as an example of evolution. I mean, a platypus has a duck's bill and lays eggs. It also has legs on the side of it's body like reptiles and venemous ankle spurs. It has eyes with structures similar to hagfish and lampreys. It finds prey via electroreception. It has ten sex chromosomes, instead of two like most mammals and it's sex chromosomes are similar to those of birds. It has both reptilian and mammalian genes associated with egg fertilisation.
A draft version of the platypus genome sequence was published in Nature on 8 May 2008, revealing both reptilian and mammalian elements, as well as two genes found previously only in birds, amphibians, and fish.
en.wikipedia.org
All these bird-like, reptile-like, fish-like features make it unique among mammals. Certainly, a platypus is weirder than a 'rabbit with feathers.' Fitting the platypus into an 'evolutionary tree' would require a lot more wild ass guesswork delivered as declarative pronouncement (aka 'just-so stories' or horseshit) than would a 'rabbit with feathers.' So I guess using Mars ignorant pronouncement above, we should consider evolution disproven! Brilliant!
Now designed things can and do contain design features taken from other unrelated things. Even Mars, ignoramus though he may be, understands that:
There is no reason why an "intelligent designer" would not have mixed up features, such as creating mammals with feathers and efficient bird-like lungs, or furry, breast-feeding ostriches.
Gee, he's right about that and as I showed, we have a creature that is even weirder with more "
mixed up features" or incongruous design elements that the ones he mentioned.
no animals have a mixture of mammalian and bird features
Yes, Mars actually said that. He really forgot about the platypus with bird, reptile, fish AND mammalian features, didn't he? He should think more. I mean, I thought of the platypus as soon as I read Mars post. Why didn't he? Maybe the problem is he has a mental model in place that is PREVENTING new thought?
if all organisms were created to fulfil particular roles, they might be unable to evolve
Might be? Why?
The breeding of plants and animals, or artificial selection, has produced an incredible range of forms in just a few thousand years,
Yes, it has. However, there are obvious limits to artificial selection. I mean we haven't been able to breed rabbits with feathers yet. Or guard dogs that can fly or have an extra set of eyes in the back of their heads to see threats from two directions. Instead, we get variations on a theme or selection and intensificaiton for features already present.
In the laboratory, researchers have been able to produce bacteria, plants and animals with all kinds of novel characteristics.
They do this because of the limits of artificial selection and accomplish the new characteristics via genetic engineering, pulling genetic material from one thing and putting it into another unrelated thing. IOW, by intelligent design.
In the wild, too, there are numerous examples of evolution in action. Many viruses and bacteria have changed dramatically in the space of a human lifetime, from HIV adapting to humans to H5N1 bird flu.
Infortunately, HIV is essentially the same virus as pre-existing SIV's.
What is the difference between HIV & SIV?
The short answer is that HIV is found in humans and SIV is found in non-human simians.
madsci.org
A virus affecting a new host population isn't an example of evolution.
All life on Earth has turned out to work in essentially the same way: organisms store and translate information using the same code, with only a few minor variations
As I've pointed out before, if life could spontaneously generate as Mars has indicated elsewhere he believes, it would have happened many many times and we'd have living things with vastly different and completely unrelated information coding systems. The common coding system means something very different than he thinks. Though, I guess it might be wrong to use the word think .... he seems, like many people, to have just absorbed without thinking a host of ideas which he doesn't understand well regurgitates out incoherently on occasion.
Human designers are already creating a range of new life forms whose molecular underpinnings will be very different from those of existing life forms.
He really doesn't understand what genetic engineers and designers do. |
