Critics of evolution have often rightfully observed how the idea of humans coming to exist by chance is utterly ludicrous, and actually mathematically impossible. Anyone can see just by looking about that this couldn't have happened by chance... the odds against this world coming about by chance are essentially infinite. Here's a simple mathematical disproof of evolution: As a conservative estimate, lets say that historically 10% of people have been childless. Considering the rate of infant mortality and young deaths, the actual percentage may be considerably higher. Now let's consider how many ancestors you've had. You have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-grandparents, 16 great-great-grandparents, etc. This grows at such a fast rate that when you go back 20 generations (which would be maybe 1000 years max?) you'd have had a total of over two million ancestors. Evolution requires genetic material to be passed on from parents to children. Thus, the totality of evolution rests on the (insane) claim that all of our ancestors had children. Think for a moment about how insane that claim is... in every generation, all the way back, every last one of your ancestors has to have had children according to evolution. Simple probability says that even if you only take the last 20 generations into account, 200,000 of your ancestors (10% of the two million) should have been childless. Math tells you 200,000 and evolution tells you 0. That discrepancy is far, far beyond the range of what anyone could claim to be random chance. Thus, evolution is mathematically false.
Please show me some website or something saying we could not have happened by chance/the laws of nature. Please make it a site NOT by some religious nutter. Wat you have described is not mathematical disproof, merely an mathematical exercise. It proves or disproves nothing. However, let's look at your numbers. Even if only 90% of us have kids, and even if half of those kids die, there is still life going on. How does any of that disprove evolution? Um... Can someone else be bothered with this? No. That means 10% at any given time would have been childless, and none of those people were my ancestors. LOGIC!!! I hope this was a joke.
Hoth, You really are joking right? If not then perhaps you could answer this simple question – If any one of your ancestors didn’t have a child how do you explain your own existence? For example if one of your grandmothers didn’t have a child, then one of your parents would not have existed, and hence you could not exist. Perhaps what you have done is mathematically proven that you do not exist. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Cris
Hoth, I don't understand your argument. Obviously, all of your direct ancestors had children, or you wouldn't exist. But that doesn't mean that all people who ever lived had children, just as some don't today. Perhaps you're worried about the fact that the number of your ancestors seems to increase as you go further back in time - you have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great-greatparents etc. Doesn't that mean that the population should have been bigger in the past, not smaller? The answer is: no. Why? Because the people alive today <i>share</i> some ancestors. Your great-great-great grandmother may also be my great-great-grandmother, for example. The further back you look, the more ancestors you and I will have in common.
Yes, that was supposed to be the whole point. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It's a demonstration of the anthropic principle and how misleading "evidence" can be. If you place yourself 1000 years back in time and examine possible futures from there, then mathematically the odds are stacked heavily against all those people who were your ancestors having children. Even beyond that, imagine the odds of the exact right people meeting and mating at the correct moment to create the exact genetic structure for your specific ancestors and your specific self to exist. The odds against you existing are nearly infinite. Hopefully, everyone alive knows that they exist, and so they know also their ancestors did all have children -- despite how from a historical perceptive the odds would seem stacked against it. This, quite simply, is why it's such flawed reasoning when people say things couldn't possibly have turned out the way they did just by chance.
there is an error in your postulate You are assuming that birth rates are constant. Evolution says the opposite. Therefore your problem is really that of creationism where everything must be constant. That ten percent does not offset the fact that another ten percent probably has upwards of 4 children. Think about it in the rational sense. If the average protion of the curve has two then we ussually expect outliers. That means outliers skewing toward nothing and outliers skewing toward multiples. It is actually a mathematical postulate that defeats your assumption. That is bad logic. All of my ancestors had at least one child. That does not mean that all humans prior to my being had children. Evolution never claimed that people come from no place at all. I see where you are going with this, but in fact you are wrong. In fact the choice of your genetic matrix is a random process. Will you have blonde hair or black? It's completely random. No predestination. It's not an error but an idealogical difference. Our argument simply has the virtue of being less arrogant. I am not special. So then you were playing devil's advocate?!?!
You are assuming that birth rates are constant. Actually birth rates have little to do with it. The point is that there'd be a group of 2 million people (my ancestors) who all had 1 or more (doesn't matter how many) children. Take a random group of 2 million people from birth, and many of them should've died off as infants or otherwise failed to reproduce... the odds that you could randomly select 2 million people and every last one would have children are just about zero. Of course, by choosing this group as being my ancestors, I'm automatically excluding the people who didn't have children... but to be a good creationist I can ignore that and pretend it's a random sampling, since if I claimed my ancestors all have a trait like reproduction in common that'd almost imply (gasp) natural selection. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Maybe I should make my parodies more obvious... but the fact that it wasn't obvious to everyone that this was a parody shows how similar the "logic" is to the actual anti-evolution arguments people use.
>Thus, the totality of evolution rests on the (insane) claim that all >of our ancestors had children. Show me someone, anyone, who's ancestors did not have children. By definition an ancestor is someone who had at least one child... otherwise they would not be an ancestor. >Think for a moment about how insane that claim is... in every >generation, all the way back, every last one of your ancestors >has to have had children according to evolution. Evolution does not state this. Simple reason does. Whether we were created or evolved, the ancestors of every living thing on earth had children. ~Raithere
There is no need for a mathematical proof that Darwinian evolution does not exist, it simply does not , it is based on the false premis that each organism is an individual. All that lives is but one superorganism and "evolution" is an unfolding developmental process. see Stoic Way this section.
*ponders this question anyway* 2 8 128 32,768 2,147,483,648 ect.... Thats fascinating... Where does it begin. I know I must be missing something. But who were our anscestors anscestors anscestors? Lets say I'm an early early early incarnation of modern day humans, how doesn't this multiplication of anscestors and the incredibility of chance occur in the same sense it does now? wait, I get in now... just swich the numbers around and go backwards by going forwards... wait...I don't get it... Damn this thread.
Your contention that each "organism" under the Darwinian evolution is an "individual" is incorrect. It defines those factors observable in similar organisms as aspeciation. That is to say that each species is individual in that they cannot procreate with other species. Even close species such as human and ape are incapable of producing offspring. To the question of connections and the ecosystem, Evolution addresses this as well. In this way we can define the relation between every organism in any given environment as codependents. In fact there is only one species that goes against this trend. They move into an area and multiply until the area is desert. Then they move on. If the planet can be seen as a single organism, we are a super disease (note that use of the modifier super in that most diseases serve a function of inhibiting growth). So then how long before the organism heals from this super disease? Some diseases can be so successful as to destroy rapidly only to die off as a result of certain immune sections of the population. Just a fun little metaphor from the Matrix .
O.K... I admit that I did not read throught the rest of this thread, I'm sure others have addressed it by now, but I just had to say that I got a good laugh when I read: ***Thus, the totality of evolution rests on the (insane) claim that all of our ancestors had children.*** Call me insane if you mustPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image! . Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
I have been reading about this topic on threads like this for years. One question has never been answered adequatly to support evolutionary claims. Where and when did this line of human genealogies begin? The odds against a male and female, with an average life span of even lets say 200 years, (much less when were discussing early time periods) evolving from the nothingness, finding each other, and beginning procreation are so astronomical as to stagger even the evolutionary mind. The are many scientific minds on both sides of the isle. Those who see design are invariably accused of being narrow minded. And of basing scientific theory upon religious rhetoric. However, when these same accusers are confronted with other, just as "scientifically" arrived at theories, that put huge holes in their theory, they themselves become religious in their thinking, and simply retreat to "There can be no design, for there can be no God." Even though every aspect of the entire creation is balanced such that a design is certainly evident. While I agree that there are some compelling evidences for evolution, the fact is, (scientifically speaking), they cannot be proven in regards to the evolution of man. They can only be theories. And those theories exist, on both sides of the argument, in answer to one question, "Is there a God?" The question of our beginnings is in all cases a religious question. It cannot be proven through scientific means. Only theorized.
Richie, Can you clarify your position a little, please? Do you accept evolution for animals other than humans? If so, why draw the line at humans?
[hr] Well, my position is a bit precarious I admit. I have my beliefs about these things, but I hate to be pigeon holed. And BTW, Im no expert in any field. Let me put it this way, I see "some" evidence that evolution has taken place among lower life forms. However I have seen NO such evidence presented for man. I have seen fabrication and conjecture which is very telling. But I have seen no real hard evidence. Another problem I have is that the evidence that IS presented as compelling is really not so compelling from the standpoint of, a horse is still a horse, a bird is still a bird, a man is still a man etc. No great changes in appearance have ever been shown to happen among any "creature" raoming the earth today. They have been fabricated, dreamed up and conjectured, but not through any objective evidence. It is simply stated that it happened and the public at large, and even the scientific community, are required to believe it. If they don't, they are "excommunicated" from the evolutionary "church".
In Africa, approximately 200,000 years ago when organisms utilizing the current human genome template could not produce offspring with their non-human counterparts. 200 years? When stating facts, make sure they aren't rooted in fiction. Nothingness? How bout a complex soup of amino acids and organic molecules. It doesn't stagger my mind. No, not really. Not legitamtely at least. Well duh. There is no possible way to make anything more complex than a chemical reaction a law. Germ theory of disease? Its just a theory. Number theory? Relativity? The fact that evolution is a theory means it cannot be proven, because there is an infinitessimal chance it may be wrong.
Richie, What do you think about hominid fossils of pre-human species such as <i>Australopithicus afarensis</i>? They are recognisably non-human, yet very similar to <i>Homo sapiens</i>. And what are these fabrications you speak of?
Something to know before you read: I'm not biased toward anything. I know very little about evolution and creation. But here's a question that ponders my mind. The chances of asexual organisms turning to sexual is pretty high for one bacteria (or whatever it is) right? Don't the chances increase dramatically to have two sexual organisms, with matching or close to matching dna, that are ALSO able to have a offspring that can reproduce successfully?
No point in changing or trying to change another person's opinion. What is interesting is the discussion about HOW one came to the conclusions/opinions that one holds. So, in that spirit, I gotta ask - How did you come to the belief you currently hold? How did you validate the process? (aka did you do a reality check?) How come many scientists do not share your view? (collective bias? conspiracy?) etc....
