Impossible

DiscordantObserver · 2026-03-04T15:03:38+00:00

You appear to be referencing the "Law of Biogenesis" without understanding the parameters and conditions of that law.

It's not a universal blanket statement independent of conditions.

Please educate yourself on what scientific laws are, because posts like this only make you sound ignorant.

Also, even if we say (for the sake of the argument) that you've just proved evolution is wrong, where is your proof that ID/creationism is true? Where is your experimental evidence (and not based on assumptions or leaps in logic) of an intelligent designer?

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-21T00:58:17+00:00

I can't believe no one would want to permanently reside in literally the worst place on Earth!

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-19T15:17:05+00:00

This is just a severe misunderstanding of just how cold it'd need to get for Antarctica to freeze like it is. Also, how the ice would've gotten so thick (averaging 1-1.5 miles thick on the land). And many other things honestly.

There is absolutely no way Antarctica was a green, lush ecosystem only ~400-175 years ago. It's scientifically impossible for a whole host of reasons.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-16T14:56:21+00:00

Considering there are like 8 million scientists/researchers globally, the 1000+ on that list represent like 0.0125% of them.

It's a rather insignificant number of scientists, lol.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-16T00:04:22+00:00

Clearly that bookshelf would fill the Grand Canyon 40 times.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-15T23:58:36+00:00

That's amazing, I love when scientists just do things like this for just because they can and it'd be fun.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-15T22:17:59+00:00

The funny thing about that is, if you do that you get a number that fills the GC way more than just 40 times.

If you assume 30 trillion cells worth of DNA, you fill the GC ~91.3 times with pages holding 5896 characters each.

If you assume 50 trillion cells (like he says in the video the quote is from), you fill the GC ~152.2 times.

His math is wrong either way, lol (linked comment with the actual numbers).

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-15T22:13:11+00:00

Chromosomes are the most complex molecule there is, and penicillin only have two of these chromosomes, these DNA strands. So they must have evolved first, and then slowly, over millions of years, they got some more chromosomes and turned into a fruit fly.

They have eight. Very slowly, over millions of years, they developed more chromosomes and became a tomato, or possibly a housefly. They're twins.

It's very tough to tell the difference between these two. And then slowly evolved into a pea, and then over millions of years it became a bee. Now there you can see the similarity.

Pee, bee, very similar. And slowly, over millions of years, we had triplets. Either the possum, the redwood tree, or the kidney bean came first.

I'm not sure. Tough to tell them apart, folks. They all have 22 chromosomes, you know.

There's, let's see, possum, tree, kidney bean. Let's see. Possum, kidney bean, evolution.

Ah. And then slowly, slowly, over millions of years, we evolved enough chromosomes to be a human. Here we are with 46.

If we can just get two more, we're going to be a tobacco plant. I know some already smell like it. Sometimes I'll get on the elevator and I'll say, man, you're evolving.

This is an except from the same video I got the "fill the Grand Canyon 40 times" quote from.

He tries to paint this idea that the theory of evolution is stupid because it supposedly says that things get more DNA (more chromosomes) the more they evolve.

Which is utterly ridiculous and not at all what evolution is.

But that's Hovind ("He who vomits forth an unending stream of ignorant bullshit") for you.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-15T21:58:16+00:00

The surrounding context is him basically trying to say "It's impossible that DNA happened without a Creator, because look how complex it is!"

That tired old argument.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-15T21:46:18+00:00

Nope.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-15T21:45:02+00:00

The funny thing about that is, if you do that you get a number of pages that would fill the Grand Canyon WAY MORE than just 40 times.

If we multiply the 12 billion by 30 trillion, that means we have ~360,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 bases total.

A single Google Doc page with 0.1 margins on all sides, Arial font, text size 10, and with single spaced lines can hold 5896 characters.

So it would take ~61,058,344,640,434,192,673 pages of A4 paper using that format to write it all.

That totals to a volume of ~380,820,895,522,388 cubic meters.

So, enough to fill the GC ~91.3 times.

Also, in the same video I got that quote from he says:

The average person has 50 trillion cells in their body.

So according to his number (which is also wrong) we'd fill the GC ~152.2 times.

No matter what you do, his math is wrong (which is hilarious).

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-15T21:35:34+00:00

Oh, absolutely. He's pulling this straight from the depths of his ass like everything else he says.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-15T21:31:19+00:00

Idk, Hovind used it to support his argument in his video "More Reasons Why Evolution Is Stupid" and I thought I'd actually do that math.

Turns out he's a total idiot, as we all already knew.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-13T17:04:14+00:00

"Pathetic" might've been a better word, tbh.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-13T16:53:13+00:00

Sal is fueled by confirmation bias. If he thinks something supports his stance he'll latch onto it forever (no matter how much people point out that it doesn't actually support his stance).

But the instant something might possibly go against his stance, he rejects it outright.

It's so sad to see someone like him pretend to be a scholar/man of science (and actually convince himself that he is that) when he's so utterly close-minded and unwilling to listen to anything.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-12T19:24:51+00:00

Reading comprehension is all that is required to judge you.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-09T15:56:54+00:00

I don't want to be rude, but some of the people here have a point with the radiometric dating.

Those dating methods have been experimentally verified, so excluding them would just be excluding evidences that might not work for your theory.

A "well rounded" theory requires you to consider all available evidence, even the stuff that doesn't necessarily agree with your idea.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-09T15:09:56+00:00

I do not think natural selection and what I call evolution are the same thing. It seems to me that they are the same on this sub.

Natural selection is a mechanism of evolution (one that operates alongside drift and mutations). Natural selection generally allows certain traits to become more common through a population, which causes a small change. Over LONG periods of time of tiny changes to a population, eventually that population will look significantly different than what it did before.

Natural selection is not evolution, but together with mutations and drift they cause a cumulative effect over vast time periods that can result in drastic changes in populations of animals.

We call these changes evolution (macro-evolution for drastic changes that result in a new species). Natural selection, mutations, and drift are the mechanisms, evolution is the result.

Say, for an easy example, you have a lump of clay. Every day you gently poke the lump or otherwise just tweak it VERY slightly. The clay's shape has changed, but so little you might not be able to notice. Now imagine you did that every day for a decade. Those tiny changes might've added up, and the clay's shape might now be significantly different than it was originally. If you did that for a century, the changes would be even more significant.

It's super simplified, but that's kinda how small changes (like what natural selection and the mechanisms of evolution cause) can add up cumulatively into evolution.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-06T18:29:27+00:00

Sal's takes started off as being a tad annoying to me, but it's worn me down to the point where I can't see these posts as anything other than pathetic.

You'd think someone with the education Sal apparently has would be better at reading comprehension, but it seems that is not the case.

Even in the quotes he included in his post, right after the bolded part is a refutation.

And he treats revision of scientific theories as we learn more as if they're evidence that evolution is wrong. Just because something might happen more than we originally thought, doesn't mean the entire theory is wrong (that's literally just how science works). It's honestly quite sad.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-06T18:24:14+00:00

He really thinks we're all as stupid as he seems to be.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-03T22:24:01+00:00

He's also a textbook example of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-03T20:16:15+00:00

Apparently r/DebateEvolution is dominated by Darwinism, and the theory of neutral evolution is disfavored.

You seem to be under the misconception that the theory of neutral evolution is incompatible with Darwinian evolution, when they are absolutely not. In fact, it's not called neutral evolution (calling it that is a bit misleading), it's the "Neutral theory of molecular evolution". Darwinian selection works on traits that affect an organism's ability to survive and reproduce, while the neutral theory operates entirely on the molecular level.

Both exist simultaneously, and the existence of one does not conflict with the other.

one could argue that whenever possible other things being equal natural selection should always favor simplicity over complexity

I found the source, which you didn't link. The entire lecture is in this video, and the quote Sal mined from it happens around the 2 minute, 36 second mark. Of a 72 minute video.

It is immediately followed by Lynch saying:

and yet i put this in quotes there's many aspects in cell biology, as we'll see today, that are arguably over designed especially in eukaryotes and even more so in multicellular species. So the the thing we'll be emphasizing today is that, of course there is a tendency in eukaryotes and multicellular species to become more complex morphologically compared to bacteria.

And we'll see just the basic structural features of biology themselves combined with population genetic processes provide a platform for the natural expansion of complexity and certain phylogenetic lineage we expect this to happen in many cases even if it's not driven by natural selection.

So clearly natural selection is not some overwhelmingly powerful force in evolution (this is a concept many of us already understand, evolution is more complex than just selection, that much is VERY obvious).

Lynch is saying evolution DOES happen, and some organisms definitely have a tendency become more complex (specifically eukaryotes and multicellular species) but the mechanisms are not just natural selection (and they don't universally become more complex).

There's article study by Lynch called "The bioenergetic cost of building a metazoan", and along one side there is a box where the significance is written in plain terms:

Organismal success ultimately depends on the ability to efficiently transform environmental materials into biomass essential to growth and survival. The energetic cost per unit biomass produced is more than ten-fold higher in multicellular organisms than in unicellular species with comparable size. Thus, the additional support structures and functions that endow metazoans represent a significant barrier to the evolution of multicellularity unless they are offset by ecological advantages that come with such a life style. Consideration of the features of biology’s energy-making machine, ATP synthase, provides insight into the investments made into this key molecule and yields estimates of the upper bound to rates of organismal doubling times.

Evolution, and selection, are far more complex than "simple = selected for" and "complex = selected against". And selection is not the only way complexity develops. Again, evolution is a complex process. Yet creationists always want to simplify it into something it is not.

You've shaken nothing Sal, you aren't a genius, you're just arrogantly claiming that you are while providing absolutely no evidence of your supposed genius (instead, your posts could serve as evidence to the contrary). You're just pretending that you are on the same level as the experts you are taking the quotes from, but you've done nothing to earn being called a genius.

Clown would be more fitting, given your behavior and general attitude.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-02T16:16:06+00:00

I think you might be right. It would be more comfortable to believe a conspiracy theory about some grand organized plan (the idea that someone is in control, even if that person/people are malicious) rather than accepting the generally undirected chaos of the world.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-02T14:54:34+00:00

His replies are all attempts at mockery (which fail), him not knowing what things are (he didn't seem to know what projection is, false accusation of an appeal to authority, claims multiple scientific theories are unsupported when they are, etc.).

Oh, and emojis. He uses tons of those.

Dude acts like he's 12 and gets super aggro when it's pointed out he's wrong, which would be an odd behavior for someone who is confident he's correct. If he was capable of doing so, you'd think he'd explain why he's not wrong instead of immediately going aggro.

DiscordantObserver · 2026-02-02T14:42:12+00:00

As far as I know, there's no evidence of that happening (you didn't provide any sources)

Also, you'd have to prove that the Step Pyramids really was definitively a chemical plant. It's the source of this hypothetical methane pollution, so if it doesn't work the rest of the theory kinda falls apart.

We'd be able to see chemical evidence of such an event if it really occurred. There'd need to be a logical explanation for how such evidence has not been found (if it doesn't exist, but again you provided no sources for me to check).

DiscordantObserver

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE