Creationism (Pro) vs Evolution (Con)

Pro's design rebuttal:As agreed in a PM, I'll post the rest of Con's rebuttal along with his sources (His arguments will be underlined)Refutal for design argument:Con suggests that the complexity of life, such as excessive human facial muscles, or bacteria that can survive galactic radiation levels, is inherit proof for Creation. However, it is important to note that the vast majority of mutations are neutral/cosmetic, and do not help or hurt one's chance of survival. Furthermore, human facial expressions can have aided in survival by sending "signals" to other humans, thus leading humans to survive as a group rather than "ripping" at one another.None the less, if neutral mutations may not be enough to explain such diversity of life, this would not necessarily suggest evidence for Creationism. Rather than acting as evidence for Creation, this argument could be used to argue for Theistic Evolution, with a God assisting in evolution.Sourceshttp://www.talkorigins.org......http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov......http://repositorio.ipl.pt......http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov......http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu......http://learn.genetics.utah.edu......https://en.wikipedia.org......Missing Photos: I apologize as to the missing images in my beginning arguments. I’ll try reposting them now: Kimura’s distribution of mutations Crow’s figures plotted over 300 generations (6000 - 9000 years) Graph of Biblical lifetimes since Noah Soft tissue in dinosaurs Human facial muscles Rapid Change: The purpose of the study was to show that in a different environments, speciation can happen quite rapidly making the creation model plausible. As with Con’s only objection, such species could easily be relocated by nature through extreme weather such as floods, storms, and tornadoes. Genetics: It appears that I need to clarify a few things. Speciation can still happen even though functional information in the genome is lost as there is still plenty of functional information to sustain the organism. However, in order for dinosaurs to let’s say evolve into birds, a vast amount of functional information must be introduced to the genome to code features such as functional wings. Despite the fact that Nachman and Crowell’s numbers are lower than the numbers put forward by Kimura, they still acknowledge the problem. In the very same paper they state [1]: The high deleterious mutation rate in humans presents a paradox. If mutations interact multiplicatively, the genetic load associated with such a high U would be intolerable in species with a low rate of reproduction (Muller 1950; Wallace 1981; Crow 1993; Kondrashov 1995; Eyre-Walker and Keightley 1999). The reduction in fitness (i.e., the genetic load) due to deleterious mutations with multiplicative effects is given by 1 - e(to the -u) (Kimura and Moruyama 1966). For U = 3, the average fitness is reduced to 0.05, or put differently, each female would need to produce 40 offspring for 2 to survive and maintain the population at constant size. This assumes that all mortality is due to selection and so the actual number of offspring required to maintain a constant population size is probably higher. The study also makes some unrealistic assumptions. They assume that, “Silent substitutions are entirely neutral” despite the fact that such mutations affect splicing and mRNA stability [2]. The authors also acknowledge that their estimate is too low: In fact, this range is likely to be biased downward because we have considered only nonsynonymous sites as potential targets for deleterious mutations. Since they haven’t looked at the “silent” mutations for whether or not they’re deleterious or beneficial and that they make up the majority of mutations we must relegate to Kimura’s study. You also attack the methodology that Kimura used to figure out mutation rate but it is not much different as to how Nachman and Crowell arrived to their figures as the paper itself references Kimura’s papers a lot in their study. Con also concedes the estimates of beneficial mutations with Lenski. He also concedes the rate of degradation within the human genome with Crow’s estimates. And he also concedes that if Crow’s estimates were plotted over 300 generations (6000 - 9000 years), the graph happens to look very similar to the lifetimes of biblical figures supporting the creationism’s thousands of years. Fossils: The problem is that such creatures would have had to evolve. Take a look at all the mass extinction events that supposedly took place throughout evolution’s history. Many involve dramatic change in the world’s climate. Marine animals aren’t safe as some mass extinction occur within Earth’s oceans such as the Ireviken event. [6] Even not taking into account the climate, such organisms still experience change on the genetic level as mutations still happen. And also, if a select few organisms “do not evolve”, wouldn’t they end up extinct as the organisms around them are evolving, their competition, predators, prey, parasites, pathogens. The biggest flaw in Schweitzer’s conclusions can be seen by looking at the experiment. They then tested the iron-as-preservative idea using modern ostrich blood vessels. They soaked one group of blood vessels in iron-rich liquid made of red blood cells and another group in water. The blood vessels left in water turned into a disgusting mess within days. The blood vessels soaked in red blood cells remain recognizable after sitting at room temperature for two years. [5] One might question how much iron is in the liquid used to preserve the blood vessels and whether or not this realistically represents the amount of iron in blood vessels. The biggest one however is that somehow a two year experiment justifies 65 million years of preservation. Iron cannot preserve proteins as well as say formaldehyde because formaldehyde can form covalent cross-links between protein chains whereas iron cannot. In addition, recent research has shown that iron generated free hydroxyl radicals that according to Schweitzer should have preserved the soft tissue would more likely help degrade proteins and other organic matter. [3] [4] Arguments from design: “ However, it is important to note that the vast majority of mutations are neutral/cosmetic, and do not help or hurt one's chance of survival.” ----- I’ve addressed this in my genetics argument “Furthermore, human facial expressions can have aided in survival by sending "signals" to other humans, thus leading humans to survive as a group rather than "ripping" at one another.” --------- You state why such a system would be beneficial but never explain how such a system could evolve. “Rather than acting as evidence for Creation, this argument could be used to argue for Theistic Evolution, with a God assisting in evolution.” ---------- I don’t see how this necessarily helps your case, you are arguing for a model that is purely naturalistic. Sources:[1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...[2] https://en.wikipedia.org...[3] http://tinyurl.com...;[4] DeMassa, J.M. and Boudreaux, E., Dinosaur peptide preservation and degradation, Creation Research Society Quarterly 51:268–285, 2015. [5]http://tinyurl.com...[6] https://en.wikipedia.org...