Do "Young Earth Creationists" actually still exist?

[technodad]

I am interested to know if Young Earth Creationists (who believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old and that evolution did not happen) actually still exist, despite the overwhelming scientfic evidence to the contrary?

crescent

My world view is not based upon "bad design features in the human body", my world view is simply that I trust the scientific process because it is rigorous. I am not an evolutionary biologist after all.

I said: "Something in the region of 97% of all species that ever existed are now extinct. We have evolved over millennia through a chain of now extinct ancestors and retain many of their non-useful characteristics and a countless number of useful characteristics which mean our species survived."

and this point is still true. A giraffe has a nerve which goes from the head, down the neck, round the heart and back up the the head. No one can claim that this is a "useful characteristic" since it can not being any benefit to the animal (only and increased risk of injury because of the long and odd route).

This is the sort of thing I meant by "non-useful characteristics".

Have a good weekend by the way.

I confess to continued confusion over what, exactly, is at issue wrt evolution.

My point about the yolk sac, for example, was that humans retain the reptile gestational method up to a certain point (around the time the 'newt' is formed), then the whole mechanism mutates into a system appropriate to the in-utero development of mammals. This makes the most logical sense as an outcome of evolution by mutation - the mutations themselves having remained encoded in mammalian genes. Same deal with brains; the mammalian parts being progressively wrapped around the fish & reptilian brains; the primate parts being stuck on the outer edges of the mammal. (A tad simplistic, but ykwim.)

Evolution by mutation makes all this clear, along with other weird characteristics like our coccyx and the giraffe's loopy nerve (thanks for that bit of trivia!) It explains why the human birth canal is poorly suited to human birth: it hasn't caught up with our hind-leg posture; neither have our spines and pelvic musculature. Surely intelligent design would be more efficient?

If you accept the theory of evolution, crescent, I'm unclear as to where your view collides with Technodad's. For now, it's the last nice weekend of the year, probably, and my garden looks like a weed salad ... so I'd better get outdoors! Hope everybody has a good one.

If you want to compare different countries, this article and table is very good news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/08/060810-evolution.html

Apparently 7% of the people surveyed in the UK totally rejected evolution

sorry, Article

Wow Lilka, thank you, that's interesting.

Garlic

I too am a little unsure what point crescent is trying to make. She seems to be arguing against evolution, but says she is not a creationist.

It is very confusing, hence my assumption that she was cherry-picking data to make an anti-evolution point.

Hello, crescent!

Cresentmoon.

I am confused.

Are you arguing that it is consistent to believe in a creator god, and that evolution happened the way that scientists think it did? (i.e. what most mainstream religions seem to argue).

Or are you arguing that evolution happened in some different way (which didn't leave any spandrels?)

...or vestiges?

Crescentmoon, I get you. I agree that we don't know everything about the body and that as we learn we SHOULD be reassesing our assumptions, even about "vestigial" organs.

Cresentmoon -

Sure, some things that were thought of as vestiges or spandrels may turn out to have some overlooked use, yet to be discovered. Maybe male nipples are crucial for something. But I'm not sure what the broader significance is if one or two things thought of as 'useless' turn out to be useful.

Do you think that if we continue to study biology we will find out that everything is useful and nothing is useless, maladapted, wasteful or oddly engineered in the natural world?

If so that would blow the theory of evolution out of the water.

It is a fairly core bit of the theory of evolution that natural selection cannot look ahead to what might be useful (or dangerous) in the future. So it doesn't necessarily end up with the 'best' designs but with the ones that were most successful in each generation, building on what was there before.

Yes that is why I am confused as to why the argument on it?

There's a brill post on Facebook about how they preach their creation theory and then drive home on fossil fuels......

Sciencelover (... And crescent ...) but she seems to be saying that talking about evolutionary vestigial features implies an agenda, and that it is possible to have evolution without any odd design hangovers?... I don't geddit.

There was a gay marriage debate on 5Live the other day and a women who was anti called in 'taking the Bible literally'. Nicky Campbell said 'So how old do you believe the Earth is?' to which she replied 'I believe it's about 6,000 years old but I don't see why that's relevant to the debate' - he cut her off fairly swiftly, as I was saying to the kitchen in general 'Because it highlights the fact you are a fucking nutter; that's why.'

I know I'm harsh.

Harsh but fair.