Sure there has. There are also plenty of accounts of people being raised from the dead.

And yet strangely no one ever seems to have a video camera handy when a limb spontaneously regenerates. Even with video available on just about every cell phone these days. Weird.

And no one thinks to take a DNA sample from a dead body and then compare it to a sample from the resurrected body. No, no, no, that would be too science-y, better to just believe it and not ask any questions.

Right, because these things always happen in a laboratory.

I'm sorry, are you saying that there are reliable accounts of limbs growing back every year? (or within say, the last 10 years?)

And re: people coming back form from the dead, I'm assuming you're not just being cheeky about medical revival. Do you have reliable evidence of that within the last 10 years?

You don't find it strange that with all of these cases of people being brought back from the dead, limbs regenerating, and other miracles, there isn't a single legitimate video of such an occurence? If this sort of thing actually happened, shouldn't there be a truckload of doctors, nurses, hospital staff, and morticians giving first-hand accounts?

I am not saying any of these things. There are reports, how reliable, I don't know.

I have said many times that I do not find reports of miracles to be very compelling and I am very skeptical of anyone that reports such a miracle. Now that does not mean that I do not believe they are true, they very well could be. I am also seriously skeptical of anyone that claims something and subsequently benefits from the claim

There are a lot of reports from good honest people that I have met that gain nothing from these reports being true or not. I don't really have good reason to believe they were delusional (very conveniently) or that they were lying. The only real reason would be a dogmatic belief in naturalism, which of course I don't hold.

No way man! It's all about crocoducks!

Could you link me to a report of someone having their limb grown back through praying. It doesn't have to be scientific or anything.

I never said this. I think you have too many conversations going on at one time.

You have ignored the point of my post. Macro and micro is a false distinction. That is a simple fact.

However, for the record, science never requires a theory to be directly observable. What it requires is that the theory is logically sound, fits the evidence, predicts future evidence, and is falsifiable. Evolutionary theory fits all of these criteria.

Don't play the game of trying to call science faith. It's a weak ploy and only makes you look desperate.

It wouldn't have too be show to regrow in a laboratory. In the modern world you cant really loose a limb without there being some type of documentation of it. So all that would need to be shown is that someone once lost one (x-rays, mri scan, docters report...) and now they got it back.

Again, declaring something "a simple fact" don't mean a thing in science.

You say it is not an article of your faith. Okay, then where is your argument from observation?

God really does like to do things the hard way. He could of just planted life and its necessary ingredients in the big bang spreading life form there. But instead he creates the big bang waits billions of years and than plants billion of individual species that can only change within there own kind.

I still don't get what Concerto's problem is with evolution over long periods of time. He accepts species can change and that we've observed it over relatively short periods of time.

What's going to stop the same thing happening over long periods of time? If the conditions were right and you had a long enough time frame, why can't one species change so drastically it's no longer considered the same species?

Is God going to come in and be like "Sorry, I cannot allow this! LOL"?

I got distracted from my main point which was not comparing the self-delusions of ufo folks, but to make the links to the acts of Jesus.


I acutually think that they are actual useful distinctions: microevolution dealing with the changes from parent to offspring, and macro dealing with groupings of changes that result in one ancestor not being reproductivly compatible with a descendant. They are useful words that help define what we are talking about.


[quite]Don't play the game of trying to call science faith. It's a weak ploy and only makes you look desperate.[/QUOTE]

yes, its a silly rhetorical claim.

we've discussed an article dealing with those exact observations - or are you suggesting that studying the genomes of creatures is not observation?

When a conclusion is based on a properly evidenced scientific opinion, how can it be said to be taken on faith?

What observation? Observation of the anti-evolution camp creating a false distinction?

OK, here you go. At this link is a short video by C0nc0rdance that addresses fallacies used by Casey Luskin of the DiscoTute in a recent article. The macro/micro discussion starts at 1:42 in the video.

An Open Letter to Casey Luskin

I fully expect that you will ignore the video and continue with your false distinction. Go ahead. It only makes your position look more desperate.

Or did you mean observation of evolution? OK, here you go,

Michigan State E. coli Long-term Experimental Evolution Project Site

Rail on, my friend. Rail on.

Dawkins did a great job of discussing this in his recent book, The Greatest Show on Earth. He illustrates the point by showing how evolution is the gradual change of a group of individuals. Parents will always be closely related enough to interbreed with off-spring. If not, the off-spring would simply die out. What we call "rabbit" is an average of the species' characteristics, with some individuals at extremes but most within the average.

Eventually, one group of a species can drift far enough in their genetic pool to be distinguished from another group in a species, and then we have two species. The problem is that we can't pick an exact moment that divides the process into micro and macro evolution. It may be a distinction that's useful as you say in a discussion of species, but it's meaningless in terms of evolution since it's all the same process.

My faith wouldn't be shaken by the appearance of aliens of obvious intelligence.

I wouldn't predispose that God was obligated to tell me that He created alien civilizations, if it turns out he did, I would think thats pretty cool.

But I am having problems working out if the aliens have souls and if I am obligated to share the Gospel with them.

What do you guys think?

Possibly an inherent incapacity of species to accommodate that much cumulative change.

Then again, the reason could be X, Y or Z. Or maybe we don't know why it has never happened.

We seem to be talking past. I don't dispute that the evidence in the article could be construed as agreeing with common descent somewhat. Maybe you don't get how that is not such an interesting point to make considering we are trying to differentiate common descent from common design, which requires a different sort of evidence.

Same fallacy all over again unfortunately: "Such terms both refer to the same common mechanism. A little change over time within a species and a little change over time between species is still a little change over time."

Nice assuming your conclusion.

The real, and sadly neglected, question is: Do the little changes over time we actually observe (micro-evolution) ever in fact accumulate to produce the large differences between species attributed to supposed macro-evolution?

I already addressed how the E. coli example doesn't help your case. If you can be bothered to make your point explicit (rather than link linkying), I'll bother to repeat myself from earlier.

Setting aside the religious perspective, I have always thought it likely that you would only see micro evolution absent serious environmental pressure. Large evolutionary change would seem to require extreme stress.

But what kinda of extreme pressure could exist that was not so extreme that it wipes out the species. Let's not forget that the changes still need to take place over large amounts of time, which means that any pressure would have to be relatively mild so the species has a chance of surviving.

Yes, species could be limited to a particular amount of cumulative change. However, you have absolutely no reason to think this is true.

To the best of our knowledge, there is nothing to stop a species changing so much that it is no longer considered the same species. A species is not some strange, concrete thing, but merely a way we classify organisms. From our observation of evolution over short time frames, it's perfectly logical to conclude that as this process continues over a longer period, it would often produce more significant change.

The only argument you've presented against this is "well it's possible something could stop it". If you're being honest I think you'll agree that this isn't much of an argument at all.

You try to make the distinction between "micro" and "macro" evolution simply because you cannot deny evolution takes place. It's clearly documented and has been observed. So your solution is to claim that it cannot happen over longer periods of time, which is quite bizarre.

I have never quite understood how this is touted as evidence for "macro-evolution" (or large scale changes), when it is quite obvious that no large scale changes occur. And in this instance you have thousands (if I remember correctly) of generations and virtually no change in the organism compared to what dawinian evolution is supposed to be able to produce.

Pressure enough to wipe out 95%+ of all species that have been on this earth?

But you are just saying "well it is possible nothing could stop it". Extrapolation of this measure needs to be warranted. So why would we believe that these sort of large scale changes could occur?

When we look to the one record that we have we do not see a slow progress. We see giant (in geological time) leaps of species. So really the burden of proof is on the one that is making the extrapolation here.

Small change + small change + small change + small change + small change = larger change.

Larger change + larger change + larger change = large scale change.

Large periods of time allow for many changes.

It's pretty likely that large scale changes can happen given enough time and the right conditions. Sure, it's possible they can't. But it's also possible you're a reptilian overlord from Venus who's trying to trick me.

The real question is: Have such large scale changes happened? I do not know the answer to that, as I'm unfamiliar with much of the evidence for evolution. It would hardly be shocking though. WOW! Who'd have thought that lots of small changes over a long period of time eventually produces a big change?!? Next you'll be telling me I can travel large distances by stringing together a long series of small steps!!

Btw, since when were you a creationist?