Gentry's material - you have two choices. (a) learn enough physics and geology to understand the complex arguments for yourself, or (b) accept that Gentry's stuff has been examined and found not-conclusive by experts in the area. I am not an expert, I have read the material from both sides, and have chosen (b) with a dabbling of (a). I don't have the time to do full justice to (a).
It just seems to me from my reading that Gentry was not given a fair shake by people who had reason to oppose Gentry's experiments because they contradict basic tenets of evolutionary theory. Gentry provides documentary evidence of this in his book. I'm not certain that Gentry is right in his theory, but it does look like he could be, or at the very least that his experiments are worthy of being taken much more seriously than they have been. In any case, I do know that there were/are lots of people who obviously did not want his experiments to be completed or his conclusions to become accepted. That is made clear in the transcripts of the trial as well as in the correspondence with various organizations and scientists. If these scientists thought that Gentry's ideas were so easy to prove wrong, why didn't they present their evidence and their arguments at Gentry's lectures, when he asked them to question him in public in order to see if his ideas would stand up under the closest scrutiny?
The calculations for the chemicals are simply wrong, because they do not factor in the repetitions involved in the mutate/select model, nor do they factor in the range of possible outcomes.
Let me give you a simple model.
I toss ten coins. There is 1 chance in 1024 I will get 10 heads. It will take about 500 tosses to get 10 heads, sometimes 1, sometimes 10000, but average around 500.
If, however, I am allowed to retoss all the tails but keep the heads, it won't take many tosses to get all heads. It will only take about 5-10 tosses.
If, in addition, any answer with at least 5 heads is good enough, I'll only take one or two throws.
If, at the end of it, someone looks at my specific pattern of heads and tails in the coins in front of me, they will conclude that I had 1:1024 of getting that pattern and it would take 500 throws - they are wrong because they did not factor in mutation and selection and acceptable alternatives.
I don't know why mention is made of "the factoring in of mutation and selection and acceptable alternatives," because what we are dealing with is the calculation of the probability of the appearance, by chance alone, of certain essential elements of life, certain large molecules, proteins for instance. Therefore, so far as I'm concerned, we aren't focusing in on the probability of everything evolving exactly as it has, since that would entail an even far greater improbability than the formation of a single molecule of high dissymmetry of, say, 0.9. At any rate, that was the basis of Guye's calculations.
The main question is whether you believe that the theory of probability would indicate that the chance of life arising out of non-life is (a) nil, (b) highly unlikely, (c) likely, or (d) highly likely. I believe myself that it would be virtually impossible. However, I've read that Julien Huxley, a famous evolutionist, believed that anything can eventually happen by chance, if only given enough time. He even said that if given enough time-- millions of years-- a group of monkeys could sit down at their typewriters and inevitably at some time during that long period produce the Encyclopedia Brittanica word for word and in exact order. I don't have as much faith in time as Huxley did. No matter how much time you multiply 0 x something, you will always get 0. To me, 0 is what people are trying to multiply when they attempt to get life from nonliving matter.
assuming that uniformitarianism
You want to hypothesise that before the Flood shell-fish lived and died at a far faster rate than today? What rate would it have to be to create the Cliffs? Do a back-of-the-envelope calculation.
I freely admit that I don't know how to explain the shell-fish and the Cliffs. It seems to me that neither creationists nor evolutionists have a good explanation.
But I would be interested to know if you believe in the flood that the Bible describes in Genesis and refers to in Matthew 24:37 and again in 2 Peter 2:5 and 3:6?
I think that assuming there was a flood such as the Bible describes, it makes sense that a great deal of animal life died both on land and in the water. But whether those that died included this number of shell-fish and whether it would explain the Cliffs, I am not at all sure. It's one of the subjects I plan to research and for which I want to see if I can find a plausible explanation.
how else humans reproduced while their sexual organs were evolving during all of those millions of years
Yes, you are right, of course. I did not mean to imply that penises are restricted to mammals. I am only asking about their evolution, assuming for the moment that they did evolve. How did it happen that both the male and the female reproductive systems evolved when we lack all evidence of such evolution in the fossils? Doesn't it seem a little strange that we have no evidence in the fossil record of any transition from non-sexual to sexual reproduction? After all, the evolution of the sexual reproductive system must have taken millions of years, yet where are the transitional life-forms that reproduced in some other way prior to "the ones which probably all used the same copulatory mechanisms we do"? Again, the male and female reproductive systems are extremely complex and could not have simply occurred overnight fully developed but must have evolved over millions and millions of years. It is hard to imagine how those life-forms were reproducing while they were evolving their present sexual organs. How are we to conceive that this could have happened?
In other words, that there is no transitional life-forms between the major kinds of animals?
Not true - for instance look up the fossil history of whales. We now have a pretty good set going from land to shore to ocean-dwelling.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/09/0919_walkingwhale.html Scientists have found fossil skeletons of two new species of primitive whales with well-developed limbs, fingers, and toes?supporting genetic evidence that hippos are the closest modern land-dwelling relatives to the giants of the sea I notice that they are called whales, albeit primitive ones. That is somewhat like the four-toed horse, being called a transition to something else, but what that something else was no one knows. The same with this so-called "primitive whale." It is, after all, a whale. A whale is a whale is a whale. Why then conclude that it is related to the hippo? In order for that to be proved, we would need a transitional form leading from the hippo to the whale-- a transitional form that is neither hippo nor whale. Has any such ever been discovered? I mean an animal that does not fit neatly into one of the recognizable catagories?
No-one claims the fossil record is complete.
Yes, that is exactly what Darwin complained of back in the 1840s and 50s. He said in Origin of Species that he fully expected that the fossil record, when more thoroughly examined, would eventually reveal many transitional forms. However, these have still not been discovered, despite the fact that scientists have been looking diligently for them for over 170 years. I should think they would have been found by now if they ever did exist. It just seems strange to me that out of all the billions and billions of fossils, not a single instance can be singled out as having proven to be an indisputable, clear transition from one major group, or phylum, to another. There are, I know, lots of examples of imaginary transitions, such as an artist's concept of what one might have looked like, for instance the various so-called transitions from lower forms of life to human beings, etc.
Have you ever read what Darwin says in his book, The Origin of Species, about the human eye?
Darwin was writing in the 1800's. We have a lot more examples and understanding since then. In particular we are now much more aware of the range of existing light-sensitive organs.
It is simply not true that you need all of a modern eye to be useful.
I don't doubt that what you say here is true, but what I have reference to is the eye's extreme complexity and how highly unlikely it seems that it would have evolved by pure chance. Darwin could not possibly have understood the human eye's true complexity, yet it seemed complex enough even in his relative ignorance concerning the eye's design that it made him feel as if he was proposing an absurdity to consider natural selection as the way in which the eye came into existence. How much more daunting it would certainly then seem to him if he were more knowledgeable of the human eye today.
You are, of course, correct to observe that we do not need all of a modern eye in order for it to be useful. In fact, Darwin discusses this very thing in Chapter VI, "Difficulties With the Theory." The problem is that I cannot conceive of either the fully developed human eye or the eagle eye coming about because of mutations or by pure chance. It is not a question of how much of the eye is necessary for perfect vision, or, as you say, "to be useful." It is a question, rather, of how the complete human eye came into existence by pure chance and without any evidence, as far as human beings are concerned, of its ever having been less than the fully developed, useful eye of today.
Do we, in any case, have firm evidence from the fossil record or from ancient skulls that humans or direct ancestors of humans ever had anything except two fully developed eyes? There is no evidence, is there, that the eye evolved by slow mutations? If not, it seems useless to discuss the idea that we don't need all of the modern eye in order for it to be useful.
I plan on spending about a year studying this subject at the library and interviewing various people until I can resolve questions in my own mind about creationism and evolution.
Good plan - read widely, and think about it from both a scientific and a psychological perspective. Try to understand people and their motivations as well as the science.
God bless - it has been a rough road for me, and yet a fascinating one.
/Bevin
I apologize for editing the last part of your responses, but tomorrow I'll be back to complete my answers to them the best that I can. Thank you.
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