Rebuttal #2 & Closing Argument
- Fred Williams, 5/12/2000

In my final installment of this debate, I will try to focus most of my comments to new material from Budikka, and not rehashed topics (such as Neanderthal and Dino-bird). His comments will appear in aqua. I would like to take this moment to thank Budikka for the time he has taken to participate in this debate.

Budikka entertains us with a fanciful claim of a present-day fish with legs! This almost tops his previous whale tale, the now debunked cetacean leg myth! Oh what a fairy tale our dear evolutionists weave. Any cursory review of information on frogfish reveal that what Budikka thinks are legs, are fins!¹

Regarding lungfish, Budikka unwittingly brings up yet another point that only serves to strengthen the argument for creation. The lung fish is befuddling to evolutionists, because they are forced to accept that the complex lung evolved down totally independent paths. It is yet another baffling oddity that defies chance that evolutionists must explain away as a "convergence". Irrespective of this, why would Budikka think this is an "intermediate"? Are cars with diesel engines intermediate between gas cars and diesel trucks? Is the platypus an "intermediate" between ducks and beavers? Shared characteristics among vastly different animals argues against evolution, and is strong evidence for a sole Creator.

Budikka makes this complaint in lieu of the recent Turkey-bird scandal that put mud on the face of evolutionists. He lauds evolutionists for admitting mistakes, then protests that creationists never admit mistakes. But as Budikka has done on several previous occasions, he has proven to be my best witness. Just a few lines after making this protest, he provides an example of a creationist who admits making a mistake! Here's Budikka providing the goods:

"[Reverend Carl] Baugh...appeared on an area television station's evening news claiming that a Cretaceous fossil tooth...was human...They later recanted when microscopic examination demonstrated that the item in question was a fossil fish tooth."

Budikka asks regarding the global flood, "why is the record of land-dwellers so poor?"

There are various reasonable possibilities, but since no one was there we can only speculate on the available evidence. I will first note that fossil preservation almost always requires rapid burial in sediment. So the very fact we have as many fossils as we do is a strong testament to a global catastrophe involving water. Most notable is that sea-dwelling marine fossils can be found in great abundance anywhere in the world, including the great plains of the US, in the walls of the Grand Canyon, and every mountain range.

To summarize why there are far fewer land-dwelling fossils:

1) Ecological zones - sea-dwelling zones would be the first to be destroyed
2) Land animals would naturally seek higher ground
3) Differential Suspension - land animals tend to "bloat and float", causing rapid decomposition
4) evolutionary bias - if a fossil is found in flood strata, the evolutionist's interpretation will be clouded since they insist the fossil shouldn't be there. Then the "flood" of excuses begin.

Budikka and the Cambrian Explosion

If the Cambrian explosion (which covers 15 million years - hardly sudden) represents the week of creation, then what does the 3 billion year period prior to the Cambrian represent? ...It is impossible for the Cambrian explosion to prove sudden creation!

This is a strawman since 1) I never claimed the Cambrian explosion represents the week of creation (it would actually represent the subsequent flood some 1000+ years later), 2) I did not claim it proves sudden creation. No ancient, unobserved event can strictly "prove" anything. However, if creation is true, particularly the Biblical account which records a global flood, then finding fossils that appear suddenly with no trace of ancestors, followed by stasis, is undeniable corroborating evidence. Creationist antagonist Richard Dawkins once wrote:

"...the Cambrian strata of rocks...are the oldest in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them already in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists."²

Conversely, the Cambrian explosion argues strongly against Darwinian gradualism. Where are the intermediates in adjacent strata to the complex Cambrian organisms? There should be literally trillions of examples, yet we only get a handful of wildly subjective ones. Of the few we're given, it doesn't take long for evidence to arise that contradicts the claim. For example, many evolutionists for years claimed that soft-bodied chordates evolved into vertebrates, yet vertebrates were recently discovered in early Cambrian strata!³ This same cache of fossil evidence is also squeezing the Cambrian to a period of less than 3 million years (on the evolutionary timescale)⁴.

The Cambrian Explosion's strict contradiction to Darwinian gradualism has caused some evolutionists to flee to the punctuated equilibrium camp. Punctuationists acknowledge that there is no evidence of gradualism in the fossil record, so they instead put their faith in a belief that evolution happened in bursts in small populations. They actually claim that the punctuation theory predicts that fossils should be missing!⁵. Therefore, the punctuationists core belief is essentially rooted in missing evidence!

Regarding the study⁶ in the journal Nature regarding mutation rates that are way to high for man to have evolved from anything, Budikka replies:

...therefore there must be something wrong with the figures, or with the study, or with the interpretation.

I agree that there may be something wrong with the study. I emailed Dr Crow an article I wrote on the problem, and he graciously responded back saying my methods were valid regarding the reproductive cost, and acknowledged that it was indeed a "serious problem" for the theory of evolution (he added that he did not believe it was "fatal" to the theory, as would be expected due to his commitment to naturalism). Since there is no apparent problem with the study's peer-reviewed methodology, the only logical answer is that the study's base assumption that man and chimp share a common ancestor is flawed.

My article also rebuts Budikka's charge that the genetic code could not mutate this badly in 6K years. In fact, the model I used to demonstrate that the high mutation rate supports a recent creation is almost identical to a model Dr. Crow used in a paper he sent me which tried to explain how truncation selection could soften the problem.

I read recently that we share 90% of our genes with mice...that would mean a difference of only about 8,000 genes between us and them. Creatures like mice existed 65 million years ago. Based on that difference, it would require only one successful mutation every 8,000 years for one of them to become one of us. I challenge MO to explain, scientifically, why this is impossible.

Budikka's genetics is incorrect. He is treating genes as singular units for mutation, where in fact the gene is comprised of many base-pairs in a specific sequence (the average human gene contains roughly 1500 sequential base pairs). Mutations occur at the base-pair level, not the gene level. These base pair sequences can suffer various types of mutation, such as insertions, deletions, and substitutions (substitutions, or point mutations, affect a single base-pair; they are by far the most common mutation).

So, if we assume that there is an 8000 gene difference between mice and men, we may differ up to 12 million base pairs. Note that this is in the coding portion of the DNA only, which is commonly estimated to be about 3% of the entire genome. There is another 97% of non-coding DNA unaccounted for (3.8 billion base pairs!). Even if this DNA is useless (which it is not, as evidence now clearly shows), any differences in this DNA must still be accounted for because it constitutes a difference that must be substituted into the population over time  So, if we differ from mice by 10%, this amounts to 400 million base pairs that over 65 million years must be substituted in. Budikka's own numbers quickly escalate from 1 every 8000 years to 6 per year. This is extremely untenable, for several reasons:

1) Information cannot build up by random processes. NeoDarwinists require beneficial, organism-improving mutations to be random (they require this because non-random means the information is already present, ie no upward evolution). Randomness without fail destroys information, it cannot build it up. Natural selection cannot help because it is a blind process. Information theory tells us very loud and clear that new information can only arise in the presence of already-existing information - that is, from an information Giver⁷.

2) The renowned geneticist J.B.S. Haldane used very favorable assumptions to determine that 300 generations are needed just to fix one beneficial mutation in a population. What this means is that as a new trait is substituted into a population, eventually over many generations a lot of animals that do not have the trait have to die off. This puts a reproductive load on the organism. It needs to reproduce enough to account for 1) offspring that will not contribute to the gene pool (random death, no mate, etc), 2) those that will not inherit the defect (only 50 percent will inherit any new substitution, and if the trait is recessive the problem is much worse), and 3) those that have the trait. The human reproductive cycle is way too long and produces way too few offspring to pay this enormous cost⁸. If there a word for vastly impossible it would be applicable here.

Budikka's link to a FAQ at Talk.Origins that he claims addresses Haldane's cost problem does no such thing. This subject requires much bandwidth to address, so if anyone would like to see why the Talk.Origins FAQ is impotent, and I will send you my rebuttal to this FAQ. Walter Remine in his book The Biotic Message has a great section on Haldane's Dilemma, which also addresses some of charges made in the T.O. FAQ.

Budikka is passing on a flawed argument from Mark Vuletic's web site, which states:

An example of allele number that directly contradicts Genesis 1 and 2, is locus HLA-DRB1 - one gene in the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) complex - which has 59 alleles (Ayala, et al., 1993, 78). If all humans descended from Adam and Eve, and no new alleles ever arose though mutation, the current human population would have at most only 4 alleles at this locus (two from Adam, two from Eve).

This strawman rears its head on a regular basis, and Budikka even repeats it later in his post. No creation scientist states that "no new alleles ever arose through mutation." Of course mutations arise, and of course a wide variety of alleles can be expressed. The Creator unquestionably programmed each kind or creature the capability to adapt under various conditions. But there are clear barriers to variation, that is why birds remain birds, cats remain cats, dogs remain dogs, people remain people, apes remain apes⁹.

So the germane question really is whether a new allele represents new information to the population's gene pool. The creationist says no way, and there are in fact there are no known mutations that have been demonstrated to add information at the genetic level¹⁰.

I should also note that there is growing evidence that some types of mutations, including insertions, deletions, and those mysterious transpositions, appear to be non-random mutations triggered by environmental stimuli!¹¹ (Please don't mistake this for strict Lamarckism, which it is not). The implication of this is that the capability is already present in the genome, so the NeoDarwinist cannot claim upward evolution.

Regarding my comments on our high mutation rate, Budikka writes:

Very little inbreeding?!! This from a guy who believes that our 6 billion population came from only eight people (half of whom from the same gene pool) only 4,300 years ago? Is this a joke?

You completely misunderstand. My assumption of little inbreeding is a favorable assumption for evolution. Hopefully you realize that inbreeding hastens the spread of harmful mutations. If I assume more inbreeding then the problem obviously gets worse for evolution!

Regarding the original population of 8, it is likely they had a much lower genetic load, so they could more easily overcome the reproductive cost of "genetic deaths". It is also very likely our gene pool has lost a fair amount of genetic information over time. Finally, it's a little ironic that you forget that evolutionists believe our 6 billion population arose from a handful of small, in-breeding populations!¹²

Since the latest information coming out of the human genome project supports the contention that some 95% of DNA is noncoding, most mutations are going to fall into that wasteland and do no harm at all. 187,500 mutations looks to me like less than .007% of the 3 billion base pairs How is this a problem even if it's true?

Again you misunderstand. The numbers I used were coding mutations only! I was not accounting for non-coding DNA, if I did then 10 million years we wouldn't be a snail, we'd be a piece of slimy dirt! James Crow in his follow-up article¹³ to the Nature study I referenced even acknowledged that disregarding non-coding mutations gives a rate lower than the true rate.

1. Gradualism in the fossil record has been demonstrated.

Again, why is it so easy to find evolutionists who disagree?¹⁴

2. [Lamarckism] was never a part of Darwin's theory. It was argued against by Darwin himself in "On The Origin...."

Absolutely incorrect. The best refutation comes directly from Darwin himself:

"In every district some one kind of animal will almost certainly be able to browse higher than the others; and it is almost equally certain that this one kind alone [giraffe] could have its neck elongated for this purpose, through natural selection and the effects of increased use." Origin of Species, Chapter 7 [emphasis mine]

Confirmation from Britannica:

"Not only Lamarck but also other 19th-century biologists, including Darwin, accepted the inheritance of acquired traits." ¹⁵

3. [recapitulation in embryology] was not a prediction

Britannica again:

Biogenetic Law - also called RECAPITULATION THEORY, postulation, by Ernst Haeckel in 1866, that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny--i.e., the development of the animal embryo and young traces the evolutionary development of the species. The theory was influential and much-popularized earlier but has been of little significance in elucidating either evolution or embryonic growth.¹⁶

Despite the theory being invalidated by the 1920s, it was taught in schools for another 50 years and still persists among some uninformed evolutionists.¹⁷

4. What possible purpose do [sebaceous glands] have in humans

Britannica again:

Sebum helps to form the slightly greasy surface film of the skin; it thus helps keep the skin flexible and prevents the skin's loss of absorption of excessive amounts of water¹⁸.

So much for another "useless" evolutionary leftover!

5. TBC's failure to address [molecular phylogenies] in scientific forums refutes MO's claim.

Translation: "I don't have a clue how to refute this, so I'll claim I've refuted it by saying my opponent hasn't demonstrated it!".

Heck, I'll let evolutionists demonstrate this for me:

"During the late 1960s and early 1970s there was a wide-spread assumption that taxonomic data from chemical analyses of plants and animals would suggest classifications similar to those based on anatomical and morphological data. ... Confidence in [this hypothesis] is now waning."¹⁹.

Or consider this recent article in the evolutionist's secular journal Science:

"When full DNA sequences opened the way to comparing many different genes in different organisms, the comparisons proved confounding. Rather than clarifying the tree that seeks to show how life evolved, they often produced new trees that differ from the traditional tree and conflict with each other as well."²⁰.

Regarding an article I cited, Budikka notes the problem was not the functioning of an intron, but the fact that defective splicing failed to remove introns. Here's the part of the article he failed to cite: "It's also possible that there is an acquired or inherited mutation in the introns of EAAT2 that gives the wrong cues during the editing process, Rothstein says." Also, the Britannica reference I previously cited offers undeniable corroboration.

Budikka's only citation to support junk-DNA is from someone completely outside of his field (Don Lindsay). I have provided several references from geneticists, including those from qualified evolutionists, of mutations in the non-coding region that cause disease. For yet another, widely recognized geneticist J. Crow confirms the validity of harmful mutations to non-coding DNA¹³. Its plainly obvious that this stuff isn't so "junky" if changes to it can cause harm.

Evolutionists were way too quick to label something they didn't understand as junk, because they believed left-behind "junk" fit nicely with their theory. I am sure that if they were not so blinded with the flawed assumption of evolution, they would not have made such an inaccurate conjecture. Regardless, the ever growing evidence is undeniable, and many scientists are now tossing "junk" DNA on the trash heap of urban legend. Hopefully Budikka will come to realize this soon, as it does no good to continue to perpetuate a myth. Even many secular government and college web sites I've checked that provide genetic information and tutorials no longer refer to introns as "junk".

...he must also agree that humans and chimpanzees are the same kind, because there is less genetic difference between humans and chimpanzees than there is between the two vireos or between the two elephants (see "Next of Kin" by Roger Fouts, Avon Books, 1997).

There are several very good reasons to chalk this one off as another just-so story:

1) We are far from sequencing all the afore-mentioned genomes (at least 3 years more for the human, with the others lagging much farther behind), so to make such a preliminary claim is bound to be founded in philosophy and not science. In fact such a ludicrous extrapolation would be laughed out of reverse-engineering circles.

2) Even after we have fully sequenced the human, elephant, and vireo, we will still have a long ways to go in understanding all the complex interactions and intricacies of the genome and its cell counterparts; the non-coding area alone is still a huge mystery (estimated to be between 67 and 97% of the human genome).

3) The book Budikka cites was written by a primatologist, not a geneticist. Again Budikka cites someone outside his field. He also failed to provide a page number, making it very difficult to verify his claim (its a 420 page book).

Plants often speciate by polyploidy - which is an increase of available information, refuting creationist claims that information cannot increase...a single gene mutation created a 50% reproductive advantage in Monkeyflowers.

Polyploidy is a doubling of chromosomes in plants, which may result in a new "species" since the plant can't interbreed with its parent species. But simply duplicating already existing information is not an "increase in available information"any more than if you were handed two identical dictionaries. Regarding the monkeyflower, the study he cites suggests that minor changes to a few select genes make a significant difference in pollinators' responses. Such a wide discrepancy clearly argues that we are really dealing with a "switch" that enables or disables already existing information. The onus is on evolutionists to show that the enabled information was novel and had previously accumulated by random mutations, something they have been unable to do.

The [Laetoli] footprint size certainly was not human

Again the evidence does not support Budikka's claim. Note what a specialist had to say:

"In discernible features, the Laetoli G footprints are indistinguishable from those of habitually barefoot Homo sapiens ²¹

He then added:

"(If the) footprints were not known to be so old, we would readily conclude that they were made by a member of our genus"

So again we have the theory determining the evidence, instead of the evidence determining the theory. This is the epitome of evolution "science"!

Note a similar reaction to the out-of-place Kanopoi elbow:

The humeral fragment from Kanapoi, with a date of about 4.4 million, could not be distinguished from Homo sapiens morphologically or by multivariable analysis by Patterson and myself in 1967...We suggested that it might represent Australopithecus because at that time allocation to Homo seemed preposterous, although it would be the correct one without the time element."²²

Amidst all this contradictory evidence, Budikka tries to find a way out by asking: why cannot an ancestor of a human have a human elbow and foot?!!

This is surely a desperate attempt around the problem, since there is absolutely no evidence that this is true. In fact, these extinct apes the evolutionists dig up and try to put on the human ancestral line have clear ape-like characteristics among all its limbs, including the feet and elbows.²³

Budikka continues to claim there is evidence that the 1^st Law of Thermodynamics, a law Albert Einstein claimed was the most proven in all of science, has somehow been violated with particle physics. He cited The Physics of Star Trek" by Lawrence Krauss, but *again* failed to provide any page numbers so that we can attempt to verify his claim. He also *again* cites a non-scientist outside his field (Mark Vuletic, M.A. in philosophy) who we noted earlier made some fundamental mistakes in genetics.

Since I have little background in particle physics, I would like to use a critique of Vuletic's comments emailed to me with permission by Physical Chemist Jonathan Barnes.

Vuletic: The uncertainty principle implies that particles can come into existence for short periods of time even when there is not enough energy to create them. In effect, they are created from uncertainties in energy.

Barnes: "The first sentence is untrue while the second is true. Moreover, the first does not logically follow from the second as he presents them. When we say that particles are created by uncertainties in energy, that does not mean from energy that is not there or that it does not exist. It means rather that the total amount of energy a given system is uncertain and so particles that are not expected are created sometimes when there is enough (unknown) energy to create them."

Barnes also noted that Vuletic's excerpt above was cited from a non-scientist (Morris).

I count 19 challenges to MO in my last post. He has effectively answered none, despite being asked twice in some instances.

It was just a matter of time before Buddika invoked the ploy of illusion with numbers. After the above claim of 19 unanswered challenges, he then goes on to list 32 items (which is really 31 due to misnumbering; reminds me of the saying that there are three kinds of people in the world, those who can count, and those who can't! OK I digress!). Looking at the list, one frankly wonders how much of my previous posts he read, since I addressed almost every item he cited. What is more likely the case is that he did not like my answers. So, it would be entirely appropriate everywhere you find a sentence beginning with "Failed to...", to replace it with "Failed to give me an answer I like."

Other problems with the list include items that are poorly disguised duplicates (see 17, 18 & 32). A couple more I have answered twice, such as the importance of most viruses (the bad ones are deteriorated mutants). Others are question begging or circular reasoning (7, 8, 13, etc). Several more are attacks against what he labels an "ignorant & primitive" Bible, a topic that is outside of the scope of this debate (nevertheless, here is a good site refuting Bible Contradictions; also see my chapter on Bible Transmission that refutes Budikka's erroneous claim that the Bible was handed down word-of-mouth).

Others are wild speculation he has no evidence for, but somehow expects the creationist to disprove! For example:

31. Failed to demonstrate why something akin to an ordinary squirrel could not, over the course of time, grow flaps between its fore and hind limbs which demonstrably contribute to gliding ability.

Since Budikka didn't like my NASA answer, I'll leave him with this:

If one practices hard enough you can believe six impossible things before breakfast- Red Queen, Alice in Wonderland.

I think any reasonable person following the debate, whether they agree with my position or not, recognizes how silly and frivolous Budikka's list is.

CLOSING ARGUMENT: Calling Budikka back to the Witness Stand

I have been debating creation/evolution for some time now, and can safely say Budikka's views are very representative of the evolutionary community. Budikka's testimony therefore serves as a good representation of mainstream evolutionary thought.

In my last post, I challenged Budikka to give his three best evidences for evolution. He felt I was "setting him up", but I can honestly say I was not plotting some grand scheme. It's a question I've asked before in internet discussions with evolutionists, because the answers are very revealing as to the quality of the evidence for the theory of evolution. If evolution is such an established fact, then it should not be difficult for evolutionists to quickly reel off the top evidences for it. But what often happens when you ask this question, especially in person and on the spot, is a spree of all kinds of hemming and hawing! The answers you get often include out-of-date evidences that have long since been disproved, such as the gill slit and tail bone fallacies. But in Budikka's case he has plenty of time to think about it. So why did he show such an uneasiness that I was up to some ploy? If evolution is so easily defended, you would think that nothing would make them uneasy about defending the theory, especially when asked to produce just three evidences for it.

Let's now consider Budikka's top choices:

For some reason, instead of offering any fossil evidence, Budikka immediately begins by claiming a global flood did not occur! I asked for evidence of evolution, and I get an argument against a global flood! Budikka really has it out for the Bible. Anyway, what is truly ironic is the fact that fossils by their very existence cry out for some kind of catastrophe involving water, since most fossils require rapid burial in sediment!

To be fair, in other parts of this debate Budikka did attempt to provide fossil evidence for evolution. But in my challenge to him to find evidence for intermediates to the complex invertebrates that the reader could confirm on the internet, he was unable to offer any. This is where the fossils are most abundant, in fact it constitutes 95% of the record and we have now catalogued over 200,000 species. You would think with the numerous soft-shelled fossils we have unearthed in the strata beneath the Cambrian, we would find plenty of examples of ancestors to the complex invertebrates which our evolutionist friends would have plastered all over the internet. But we don't find any. Where did they all go? Are we really this unlucky that such an enormous group simply didn't fossilize, while billions upon billions of their descendants did? Or is it the more reasonable answer that evolution is simply not true?

When I pointed out to Budikka that "many evolutionists acknowledge that there is no evidence of evolution among the invertebrates", he replied that this was "another unsupported assertion." What better support can I offer than a quote from a book hot off the presses, that I had cited in my 2^nd post:

"...This observation suggests that animals of staggering complexity appeared on Earth without evolutionary precursors. It is as though an orchestra began playing without sounding a single tone to tune up"

Also recall Budikka's adamant defense of the bird-dino link, despite several prominent bird experts equating this hypothesis to "paleobabble" and "cold-fusion".

Additionally, why is it so easy to find evolutionists who admit the fossil record does not show gradualism? In this debate I have cited quote after quote from evolutionists who have acknowledged this failure. Here is yet another from a prominent evolutionist:

"Paleontologists had long been aware of a seeming contradiction between Darwin's postulate of gradualism...and the actual findings of paleontology."²⁴

So, Budikka's first choice right out of the gate is one that many evolutionists themselves struggle to justify as reasonable evidence for evolution!

Immediately Budikka again refers to "junk" DNA as evidence of evolution, but this has already been refuted and is quickly becoming urban legend. It is this false assumption that led Budikka to the strawman argument where he asks creationists to explain "800,000 introns since Adam". Since introns are not junk, creationists expect that most introns were already in Adam's original genome.

Another problem with Budikka's 2^nd choice is that again we can easily find evolutionists who recognize this as evidence against naturalistic origins. Since DNA is a very complex code, information theory tells us it requires an information Giver. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, was so moved by the unexpected complexity of the DNA code that he abandoned Neodarwinism in search of another answer. But because of his commitment to naturalism and unwillingness to accept a higher Authority for whom he would be accountable to, he opted for "panspermia", the belief that life was seeded on earth from outerspace!²⁵

I must say this was an interesting choice as one of Budikka's top three, since it is hardly direct evidence for evolution! Instead it is evidence (allegedly) for an old moon, and hence an old earth, which is required by evolution. He then speculates that the earth must have many craters as well, but admits erosion has "hidden" the evidence. So his indirect evidence is hidden! This "evidence" ought to fit right in with the punctuated equilibrium theory, which finds its roots in missing fossil evidence!

(Irregardless of the fact that #3 is not evidence for evolution, a discussion of moon craters from a recent creation perspective can be found here)

I hope this debate has demonstrated to the objective reader that when one tries try to defend a theory so full of holes, their best imaginable evidence ends up being imaginary. As I mentioned earlier, Budikka is well-versed in the theory, yet he could not provide a single compelling evidence for evolution when provided the opportunity. Evolutionists invariably provide the best witness to the inescapable truth that the theory of evolution is:

1) founded on wild conjecture and just-so stories
2) so plastic it can accommodate any evidence, no matter how contradictory it is
3) propped up by misleading illusions, such as the ever-shifting meaning of "evolution"

These truths simply render the theory as unscientific. In reality it deserves no better status than that of low-grade hypothesis. It truly is a travesty that evolution is portrayed as fact through the media and in our schools. Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote: "I myself am convinced that the theory of evolution, especially the extent to which its been applied, will be one of the great jokes in the history books of the future". The sooner this joke is exposed, the better!

Some 200 years ago, William Paley argued that if you found a watch in the desert, you would not think for a moment it came about by some natural, chance process. He asked how one could so easily recognize that a watch requires a watchmaker, yet believe that vastly more complex organisms could come about by sheer blind chance. He made this argument long before we knew about the amazing complexity of the cell, and the programming code in the DNA that absolutely demands a Programmer. Paley's argument from design is as unshakable now as it was then.

In a last bit of irony, Budikka's closing argument is an argument from design! His murder scene can only be solved by identifying patterns that are not the result of random chance, but show intelligence. He claimed I failed to show creation as "science", yet he just used the same scientific method I argued for in my opening post for creation, and used by William Paley two centuries ago!

I again extend my gratitude to Budikka for his time and effort in participating in this debate, and to you for taking the time to read this debate.

Return to Debate Table of Contents

1 - National Geographic online

2 - R. Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker, 1987, p229

3 - D-G. Shu, et al., Lower Cambrian vertebrates from south China, Nature 402, pp 42-46 (1999)

4 - Fazale R. Rana, Cambrian Flash

5 - Note this statement by S. Gould in Evolution as Fact & Theory, 1984, 'Montagu', p 123: "Niles Eldredge and I ... argued that two outstanding facts of the fossil record -- geologically 'sudden' origin of new species and failure to change thereafter (stasis) -- reflect the predictions of evolutionary theory, not the imperfections of the fossil record" (as cited from Remine, 'The Biotic Message', p. 337)

6 - Peter D. Keightley; Adam Eyre-Walker; Nature, Volume 397 Number 6717 Page 344 - 347 (1999) [abstract]

7 - This refers to specified information.

8 - See my online article, or W. Remine's The Biotic Message, ch. 8, or this online discussion.

9 - See discussion of organism barriers in previous post.

10 - Lee Spetner, Not By Chance!, 1998, p 138

11 - Ibid., chapter 7. Also see Long-McGie J, et al., Rapid in vivo evolution of a beta-lactamase using phagemids, Biotechnol Bioeng 2000 Apr 5;68(1):121-5

12 - Daughters of Eve, ABCNEWS.com, 4/21/2000

13 - J. Crow, "The odds of losing at genetic roulette", Nature 397, p 293 - 294.

14 - I've cited quite a few throughout this debate, here's more.

15 - "heredity" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

16 - "biogenetic law" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

17 - S. Gould, Onteogeny and Phylogeny, 1977, p 1

18 - "sebaceous gland" Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

19 - Harris & Bisby, Classification from Chemical Data, 1980, p305-306, as cited in W. Remine, The Biotic Message, p. 399

20 - E. Pennisi Science 1999 May 21; 284: 1305-1307.

21 - As cited by M. Lubenow, Bones of Contention, 1992, p. 174

22 - W. Howells, "Homo erectus in human descent: ideas and problems" Homo erectus: Papers in Honor of Davidson Black, B. Sigmon and J.. Cybulski, eds., 1981 p. 79-80.

23 - ICR Interview of Dr. Charles Oxnard in 1996.

24 - E. Mayr, ne Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought, 1991, p 138

25 - See ICR Impacts 111 & 180.

Home | The Show | Articles | Debates | Guestbook | Forum | Bio | Speaking | Links