Evolution a hoax?

[DC]

Here is another example of a creationist advancing science in this area, just a small advance but a significant one relative to the particular area of research.



http://www.cedarville.edu/Offices/P...tmore-Presents-Controversial-Discoveries.aspx

wow there was water in the grand cannion? whou would have thought that.

 

[pakeha]

randman, please get serious.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coconino_Sandstone

 

[randman]

So you guys disagree with conventional geologists on the formation of this part of the Grand Canyon?

The Coconino Sandstone represents the remains of a vast sea of sand dunes which was blown down from the north around 270 million years ago

http://www.bobspixels.com/kaibab.org/geology/gc_geol.htm

This is a bigger deal than some of you may realize. There's been other research, even by an evolutionist as well as creationists, indicating the long-held belief the sandstone was formed in a desert environment is incorrect and it was formed in water and the many animal tracks were formed under water. It's not a direct challenge to evolution but creationists have largely led the way because it was an issue for them, and they have done some good work, sometimes mentioned in mainstream journals, to advance a different hypothesis and appear to be correct in this small area.

 

[catsmate]

Dinwar, thank you for that excellent analysis.

Nice implication here: the big, powerful establishment is suppressing the truth! Only, they forgot that geology back then was hardly the calm, civilized dicipline we have now (remember my comment about explosives and fist-fights when you read that). This was back when geology was just starting--there were several competing theories floating around for just about everything, with ardent supporters on all sides. You couldn't simply railroad something into orthodoxy--there WAS NO orthodoxy!

This reminded me of the somewhat stormy history of palaeontology, e.g. the Bone Wars.

I strongly suspect more quote mining. I have little doubt that later in the paragraph this author goes into the various causes of extinction. So, dishonesty. Again.

A quick search on those specific terms leads only to this thread and various anti-evolution crackpot pages, so I'd agree some editing seems to have been applied. It's certainly not in the abstracts of his papers.

 

[randman]

more creationist research and experiments

McKee attempted to explain the relative absence of downhill trackways by suggesting that the animals tended to "slide" downhill, thus obliterating their own tracks in the sliding sand. One might wonder why the animals would slide downhill when they were doing do fine going uphill without the sliding problem. Those who have ever visited areas with desert sand dunes will find that trackways on such sand dunes go every which way. Also, one would expect that wetted sand would be much more cohesive than dry sand and preserve tracks just as crisply no matter which direction the creatures were heading. And, just in case there was any doubt, Brand performed a few more experiments. Brand actually went to the trouble of inducing his experimental animals to walk both downhill as well as uphill. On underwater sand, wet sand, and damp sand, almost all downhill trails produced easily recognizable trackways. On dry sand, the trackways of salamanders were less well defined, but still relatively well preserved, while that of lizards were still quite distinct (both walking or running slowly). Only when running very fast did their tracks become unrecognizable. Thus, the almost complete absence of downhill tracks in the Coconino Sandstone layers seems to remain a mystery if they are truly desert formations. It almost seems as though the creatures were trying to escape something, like rise water levels, and that is why they were all generally going uphill?

http://www.detectingdesign.com/geologiccolumn.html#Coconino

Note one of his published papers on the subject.

http://resweb.llu.edu/lbrand/pdf/fo...rn_arizona-evidence_for_underwater_origin.pdf

Edit to add: If evolutionists want a civil and honest discussion, they need to admit creationists and IDer do original research, publish and make scientific contributions. Insisting this is not the case is just dishonest.

 

[DC]

more creationist research and experiments



http://www.detectingdesign.com/geologiccolumn.html#Coconino

Note one of his published papers on the subject.

http://resweb.llu.edu/lbrand/pdf/fo...rn_arizona-evidence_for_underwater_origin.pdf

Edit to add: If evolutionists want a civil and honest discussion, they need to admit creationists and IDer do original research, publish and make scientific contributions. Insisting this is not the case is just dishonest.

honest and civil debate? ironic when that comes from you, you that claim conspiracies and hoaxes without any evidence.

 

[Dancing David]

He's not wasting time. I read his rebuttals of your arguments, and they solidify my opinion that you don't have the slightest idea what you're talking about when it comes to evolution.

Seconded!

 

[Reality Check]

On ERVs and how a design inference is more useful than an evolutionary hypothesis in this area:
http://open.salon.com/blog/jeffrey_...dogenes_ervs_evolution_and_intelligent_design

His conclusioin is wrong as the source he quites clearly states that ERVs just have strong preferences for certain regions. The rest of the time they are inserted randomly. See Relationship between retroviral DNA-integration-site selection and host cell transcription.

In order for common ERVs to not be evidence for common decent, the ERVs would have to insert into the same site in both species.

The best layman explanation for hhis I have seent is a YouTube video by CDK007: Evidence for Evolution, Part III

WHAT IF INSERTION IS NOT RANDOM
If you run the numbers with the assumption that ERVs can only insert in 1% of the genome, i.e. highly nonrandom, you still get enormously low probabilities with only 16 ERVs. So even if insertion is highly nonrandom, getting the thousands of matched ERVs between all primates is unbelievably unlikely just like I show in the video (don't believe me, do the math).

Evolutionist predictions were wrong when it came to ERVs,

Citations?
I am quite sure that some predictions about ERVs were wrong. That is how science works - make predictions using the existing knowledge and fix the theory according to the actual data.
But the only way that ERVs do not demonstrate common descent is if ERVs always insert into the same site in both species. That is not the case.

and IDers and creationist predictions were correct.

That is obviously wrong since creationists and IDers have no scientific predictions. Creationists have an obsession with a holy book. IDists are just creationists in disguise..

Many do have a function are not merely errors.

ERV are not 'errors' - they are viral RNA transcribed into DNA and insrted into existing DNA.
About 1% of human ERV are active:

Thousands of endogenous retroviruses exist in human DNA. HERVs account for 98,000 elements and fragments—nearly 8%—of the human genome.[11] According to a study published in 2005, no HERVs capable of replication had been identified; all appeared to be defective, containing major deletions or nonsense mutations. This is because most HERVs are merely traces of original viruses, having first integrated millions of years ago. However, one family of viruses has been active since the divergence of humans and chimpanzees. This family, termed HERV-K (HML2), makes up less than 1% of HERV elements but is one of the most studied. There are indications it has even been active in the past few hundred thousand years, e.g., some human individuals carry more copies of the virus family than others [12].

They are also not necessarily similar germline insertions and are not entirely random and it may even be exogenous retroviruses were originally derived from ERVs - - not necessarily the other way around.

So what?
ERV exist. That and their almost random insertion into DNA is strong evidence for common decent.

http://www.detectingdesign.com/pseudogenes.html#Endogenous

Also note another ID site which is lying in your quote :
40 .Barbulescu M, Turner G, Su M, Kim R, Jensen-Seaman MI, Deinard AS, Kidd KK, Lenz J., A HERV-K provirus in chimpanzees, bonobos and gorillas, but not humans. Curr Biol. 2001 May 15;11(10):779-83.
One provirus, not the entrire familiy.

 

[dafydd]

Edit to add: If evolutionists want a civil and honest discussion, they need to admit creationists and IDer do original research, publish and make scientific contributions. Insisting this is not the case is just dishonest.

Wrong. Creationism is fairy tail bovine excrement for the weak-minded.

 

[dafydd]

honest and civil debate? ironic when that comes from you, you that claim conspiracies and hoaxes without any evidence.

Not to mention aliens in the sky.

 

[pakeha]

more creationist research and experiments
http://resweb.llu.edu/lbrand/pdf/fo...rn_arizona-evidence_for_underwater_origin.pdf

Edit to add: If evolutionists want a civil and honest discussion, they need to admit creationists and IDer do original research, publish and make scientific contributions. Insisting this is not the case is just dishonest.

randman,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n1_v141/ai_11746935/

alph Hunter of the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif., agrees that evidence within the Coconino indicates it formed mainly from windblown dunes. Most important, he says, the formation has think laminations consisting of fine sand on the bottom and coarse sand on top. "That is very distinctive and is a very reliable indictaor of deposition by wind ripples," Hunter says.

He suggests taht some of the tracks may indeed have formed underwater in small streams running through a field of windblown dunes. He notes that such streams and ponds develop temporarily after infrequent rains in the Namibian desert of southwest Africa.

The newts mean naught, randman.

 

[randman]

response to Reality

You totally ignored his point below (bolded).

Dr Sean Pitman discusses the problems with using ERV's as proof of neo-Darwinism. One problem is the presence of other ERV's in the chimp and gorilla genome which are NOT Present in the human genome. If ERV's can be used to prove a common ancestor, then they can also be used to DISprove a common ancestor. It turns out that many of the basic assumptions underlying the ERV thinking has been found to be incorrect. Insertions are not random, but are related to HOT SPOTS. And rather than being non-functional, they seem to be involved in highly important regulatory functions

http://open.salon.com/blog/jeffrey_...dogenes_ervs_evolution_and_intelligent_design

 

[randman]

randman,
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_n1_v141/ai_11746935/


The newts mean naught, randman.

Look into it more. Read the links I provided. They deal with rebuttals such as the one you mentioned and others.

Edit to add: thought this was dealt with but cannot remember where. It may not be on one of the links, but regardless, it appears an evolutionist may agree the research indicates the tracks were made in water and has come up with an alternate hypothesis than the creationist. Undoubtedly more work will show who is right.

 

[Reality Check]

response to Reality

You totally ignored his point below (bolded).

http://open.salon.com/blog/jeffrey_...dogenes_ervs_evolution_and_intelligent_design

Response to randman:
I have little idea.
I would suspect that ERV's are also removed from DNA, e.g. by transciption errors.

 

[pakeha]

I don't see any reference to that in the links provided here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7361496#post7361496

And this
http://resweb.llu.edu/lbrand/pdf/fo...rn_arizona-evidence_for_underwater_origin.pdf
doesn't either, since the rebuttal is from 1992.

 

[randman]

I don't see any reference to that in the links provided here:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?p=7361496#post7361496

And this
http://resweb.llu.edu/lbrand/pdf/fo...rn_arizona-evidence_for_underwater_origin.pdf
doesn't either, since the rebuttal is from 1992.

See my edit above. Didn't see you had posted already when I made it.

 

[randman]

Response to randman:
I have little idea.
I would suspect that ERV's are also removed from DNA, e.g. by transciption errors.

So guess it's amazing this ERV would still be in the same place from the common ancestor of all primates?

Maybe a better explanation is there is some regulatory function for the ERV being there, as ERVs do sometimes serve an important function.

The idea it formed from an extreme bottleneck way back then, serves no function and survived all this time is not more reasonable than other explanations such as humans and chimps, etc,.....all infected with this wound up keeping it in this spot due to selective advantage or even perhaps it wasn't inserted as a germ in the first place but that ERVs are a product of degradation of existing material and they enter the world that way.

We really don't know.

 

[pakeha]

more creationist research and experiments



http://www.detectingdesign.com/geologiccolumn.html#Coconino

Note one of his published papers on the subject.

http://resweb.llu.edu/lbrand/pdf/fo...rn_arizona-evidence_for_underwater_origin.pdf

Edit to add: If evolutionists want a civil and honest discussion, they need to admit creationists and IDer do original research, publish and make scientific contributions. Insisting this is not the case is just dishonest.

See my edit above. Didn't see you had posted already when I made it.

randman, i'ts considered polite to repost instead of edit when someone has already answered.
Anyway I went around to your link and really, is this the best you can come up with?

 

[randman]

Also, keep in mind there are only 7 known shared ERVs with chimps among about 30,000 in human beings. That's a context that should be explained whenever evos trump ERVs as strong evidence for common ancestry.

Note as well:

"We performed two analyses to determine whether these 12 shared map intervals might indeed be orthologous. First, we examined the distribution of shared sites between species (Table S3). We found that the distribution is inconsistent with the generally accepted phylogeny of catarrhine primates. This is particularly relevant for the human/great ape lineage. For example, only one interval is shared by gorilla and chimpanzee; however, two intervals are shared by gorilla and baboon; while three intervals are apparently shared by macaque and chimpanzee. Our Southern analysis shows that human and orangutan completely lack PTERV1 sequence (see Figure 2A). If these sites were truly orthologous and, thus, ancestral in the human/ape ancestor, it would require that at least six of these sites were deleted in the human lineage. Moreover, the same exact six sites would also have had to have been deleted in the orangutan lineage if the generally accepted phylogeny is correct. Such a series of independent deletion events at the same precise locations in the genome is unlikely (Figure S3). . .
Several lines of evidence indicate that chimpanzee and gorilla PTERV1 copies arose from an exogenous source. First, there is virtually no overlap (less than 4%) between the location of insertions among chimpanzee, gorilla, macaque, and baboon, making it unlikely that endogenous copies existed in a common ancestor and then became subsequently deleted in the human lineage and orangutan lineage. Second, the PTERV1 phylogenetic tree is inconsistent with the generally accepted species tree for primates, suggesting a horizontal transmission as opposed to a vertical transmission from a common ape ancestor. An alternative explanation may be that the primate phylogeny is grossly incorrect, as has been proposed by a minority of anthropologists." [emphasis added] 42

http://www.detectingdesign.com/pseudogenes.html#Signs

 

[randman]

randman, i'ts considered polite to repost instead of edit when someone has already answered.
Anyway I went around to your link and really, is this the best you can come up with?

I had already made the post. Sorry not to have reposted it.

The best I can come up with? No, but the overall point here is to show creationists doing valid research and your rebuttal shows the same. As far as whether all these tracks formed from desert streams, I am sure there are more responses, papers, etc,.....just haven't had time to read them.

Gotta work and make a living too!