So how long are you going to let the question get pushed back before you realize I.D. is self-defeating?
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A Simple Arguement Against INTELLIGENT Design
- Thread starter CBVan
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So how long are you going to let the question get pushed back before you realize I.D. is self-defeating?
From a scientific perspective we'd say If natural selection is the designer, we'd expect to see _____________ (vestigal organs, ...)
What do you believe vestigal organs show besides change over time?
delphi_ote
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I see the sign of the cross, which is the ultimate proof of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and Savior. What about you?What do you believe vestigal organs show besides change over time?
Heretic! Unbeliever!I see the sign of the cross, which is the ultimate proof of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ, who is our Lord and Savior. What about you?
Vestigial organs are obviously a relic of our time in the Garden. We didn't use to have to eat crass material foods; instead, our appendix converted Divine Love directly into nutrition. The stomach and intestinal compliex were originally intended solely for storing air for the "pull my finger" trick. God was such a joker back then!
articulett
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Sure. Probably has something to do with the fact that "designer" doesn't necessarily mean god(s).
Suppose the "designer is "natural selection"? The stuff that works survives, reproduces and is honed through time--the stuff that doesn't dies out. How do you explain waste and all the pseudogenes in our junk DNA that are active in other life forms or de-evolution of ice fish (hemoglobin gene) or naked mole rates (devolving eyes, pigment, and fur because these aren't necessary and can be a liability under ground. Why suffering and extinctions?
It's easy to ignore intelligent design enthusiasts because they don't ever present evidence in support of their theories (just attempts at discrediting evolution)--but you can discredit germ theory or gravity all you want by pointing out stuff we don't understand, but it doesn't alter the facts or the truth of those theories. And there seems to be no amount of data that would make believers change their mind. It seems so stubborn...like they just can't even consider the possibility that there might be no design despite their eager defense of such a notion. All it would take would be some real, measurable evidence--not silly mathematical problems based on incomplete and insufficient knowledge like that old "haldane's dilemma" thing thinking that evolution is all about point mutations. Do you guys know what frameshift mutations are, non-disjunction, uniparental disomy, chimeras, hybrids, duplications, translocations, start codons, and stop codons are? Do you know about promoter sites, x inactivation, disomies, anueploidies, monera as mitochondria and chloroplast ancestors, reverse transcription, inversion, the way a point mutation can result in hugely phenotypic changes and the way huge deletions or changes can lead to no phenotypic variation? And what about recombination and crossover exchange during meiosis?
Kleinman focuses on this point mutation theory wherein he asks a question that was asked by geneticists long ago--and not to disprove evolution--but to understand it; And the question has been answered for some time. There are so many avenues to both pheontypic and genotypic change and with natural selection at the helm, design is routine. We only see the stuff that works...or the fossils of stuff that worked (at least for a while). We never see the infinite numbers of failed experiments. And now that we can see DNA, we can see exactly what happened along many evolutionary paths. We can see that a hippo is more closely related to a whale than any land animal. We can see how closely people are related...and how closely species are related--
Maybe some designer set it all in motion, but the evidence looks far more like a cobbling together from that which was already there than top down design.
articulett
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Acckk--I read Kleinman in regards to hemoglobin--(it's an old creationist ploy having to do with irreducible complexity--disproven in multiple peer reviewed jouranals--plus it's just a vestigal bit of DNA in the ice fish (not that creationist will be changing their mind...just looking for more obscure bits of data they can expound upon as a "weakness" in evolutionary theory without offering an iota of evidence in support of designe.)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6353991
http://www.discover.com/web-exclusives/carrollinterview/
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1650.html
Would you publicly debate an intelligent design advocate?
No. And I don't think astronomers should debate astrologers nor surgeons debate faith healers. The ID proponents have succeeded in gaining enormous attention for a notion that the scientific community and the courts have found lacking any scientific substance. ID is an outgrowth of a desire to undermine evolutionary science, which is perceived to be a threat to their religious worldview.
...He starts with a fish that has no red blood cells. Before it was found, biologists taught that all vertebrates had red blood cells containing the hemoglobin that carries oxygen, and when there were stories of fish without blood in the Antarctic, they were assumed to be just stories. But in 1954, biologists were amazed to read a report of the icefish, so called because it looks transparent; it has no red blood cells to block the light. There is no fossil record for these fishes, but the DNA is there, although it could only tell the story of the icefish's evolution forty years after their blood was first sampled. The DNA that codes for red blood cells in fish and the rest of us is there, but only partially, and in an eroded form that cannot work. One of the lessons Carroll consistently draws is that in evolution, there is a "use it or lose it" dictum. Genes change, even if mutation rates are low; if the change is deleterious, it might be that the organism is sufficiently wounded that it gets no chance to pass the gene on. It also might be that other genes make up for the change, and if so, the changed gene gets passed to the next generation, but since it does not work, it can further decay as it is passed further down. In this fashion, natural selection maintains working genes, and ignores inoperative ones. The icefish DNA for hemoglobin is eroded, but it is still there from the time of its ancestors that had hemoglobin. (This is a perfect argument against some supernatural designer building the fish in this way: what would be the point of including eroded, nonfunctional DNA?)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6353991
http://www.discover.com/web-exclusives/carrollinterview/
http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail1650.html
Would you publicly debate an intelligent design advocate?
No. And I don't think astronomers should debate astrologers nor surgeons debate faith healers. The ID proponents have succeeded in gaining enormous attention for a notion that the scientific community and the courts have found lacking any scientific substance. ID is an outgrowth of a desire to undermine evolutionary science, which is perceived to be a threat to their religious worldview.
...He starts with a fish that has no red blood cells. Before it was found, biologists taught that all vertebrates had red blood cells containing the hemoglobin that carries oxygen, and when there were stories of fish without blood in the Antarctic, they were assumed to be just stories. But in 1954, biologists were amazed to read a report of the icefish, so called because it looks transparent; it has no red blood cells to block the light. There is no fossil record for these fishes, but the DNA is there, although it could only tell the story of the icefish's evolution forty years after their blood was first sampled. The DNA that codes for red blood cells in fish and the rest of us is there, but only partially, and in an eroded form that cannot work. One of the lessons Carroll consistently draws is that in evolution, there is a "use it or lose it" dictum. Genes change, even if mutation rates are low; if the change is deleterious, it might be that the organism is sufficiently wounded that it gets no chance to pass the gene on. It also might be that other genes make up for the change, and if so, the changed gene gets passed to the next generation, but since it does not work, it can further decay as it is passed further down. In this fashion, natural selection maintains working genes, and ignores inoperative ones. The icefish DNA for hemoglobin is eroded, but it is still there from the time of its ancestors that had hemoglobin. (This is a perfect argument against some supernatural designer building the fish in this way: what would be the point of including eroded, nonfunctional DNA?)
Suppose the "designer is "natural selection"?
Natural selection doesn't rule out a (real) designer.
How do you explain waste and all the pseudogenes in our junk DNA that are active in other life forms or de-evolution of ice fish (hemoglobin gene) or naked mole rates (devolving eyes, pigment, and fur because these aren't necessary and can be a liability under ground. Why suffering and extinctions?
Why do you believe that those things should be prohibited from existing if the universe/biology was designed at one time or another?
I also disagree with your so-called de-evolution of naked mole rats. Change over time and they evolved to live in underground environments. Are you saying that a design at time t for purpose p has to have the same purpose p at time t+1 ? It sounds like you are actually arguing against evolution if you think that.
Maybe some designer set it all in motion, but the evidence looks far more like a cobbling together from that which was already there than top down design.
One has no way of logically ruling out the former. In fact, it is an explanation (albeit a not so detailed one) for the orgin of "that which was already there" that you allude to.