Re: New Flood data

Glenn Morton (grmorton@waymark.net)
Thu, 19 Feb 1998 20:34:54 -0600

At 04:39 PM 2/19/98 -0600, Ron Chitwood wrote:
>>>> However, what we usually hear from YEC's is
>repetitions of arguments that have been recycled ad infinitum. And that
>grates after a while.<<<
>
>Agreed, and as a YEC myself, they are constantly repeated because
>documented macro-evolutionist answers are not forthcoming. Many erudite
>opinions are expressed, but no documentation. Example: Drusophila has been
>examined since 1903, first by Dr. Morgan in Woods Hole. After 15 years no
>'mutation' occurred other than one eye appeared white. Then experiments
>were done by design and all sorts of fruit flies were mutated. All
>mutations, however, were at the most neutral and many proved lethal. To
>date, as far as I know, no mutation upgrading of the fruit fly has ever
>occurred.

Well lets put this into perspective. Fruit flies have a generation time egg
to egg of 2 weeks (here is your documentation ~Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol
IV ,p. 338 ; Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 1 ,p. 300; Tracy I. Storer
Robert L. Unsinger James W. Nybakken, Elements of Zoology, (St. Louis:
McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1968), p. 224)

Now lets compare the evolution of fruitflys with that of humans from
chimpanzees. Since 1915 there have been

1998-1915=83 years

83 x 52=4316 generations of fruitflies compared to 5 in humans. How long
ago is 4316 generations in human terms? Oh, about 77,000 years. And if you
will look at what anthropologists say, Homo sapiens has been on the earth
for 120,000 years, some say 200,000. We have not had a lot of time to
evolve fruitflies even by evolutionary standards.

Man separated from the chimps 5-7 million years ago. We wil use 5 million
with a generation time of 15 years (which is probably too long chimps give
birth at 10 years [documentation: ~Encyclopaedia Britannica Vol 10 ,p. 913
Ashley Montague, Man: His First Two Million Years, (New York: Dell
Publishing Co., 1969)].

With these assumptions there have been 333,333 generations between us and
the chimps. If we put that into fruitfly (drosophila) terms with a 2 week
generation, the minor change we see between man and chimp would take 12820
years to take place. Thus, evolution would be unexpected to produce much
change in flys in the 80 years or so.

The problem with many creationist arguments is that no one actually performs
calcuations like this to see what would be expected. Young-earthers seem to
be content with qualitative terms like "there have been a whole lot of
generations of flys in 80+ years" rather than actually figuring out how many.

Fossil layer interpretation abounds here, as it does on most
>chatrooms, but that is all it is, and predicated on the huge timespans
>required by macro--evolution.
>

So are you suggesting that there should be no interpretation? We all just
sit and stare at the fossils with no one saying a word? What do you want?
Someone needs to raise the obvious question "What do the fossils mean?"

glenn

Adam, Apes, and Anthropology: Finding the Soul of Fossil Man

and

Foundation, Fall and Flood
http://www.isource.net/~grmorton/dmd.htm