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Stupid Christian Article on Evolution

ID is not an answer to a scientist, merely a line of thought that raises questions based on the assumption that magic exist
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When you decide to actually consider what ID is, let me know. Otherwise, it is fruitless to talk to someone that refuses to even consider a concept on it's face and makes stuff up about it in order to prejudge it.
 
randman said:
Personally, I don't think human beings evolved via natural means or even evolved at all. So not the best example, but so-called junkDNA exists in other organisms too.
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Can you show us the reasoning which led you to think that humans didn't evolve?

I'm curious about this, because you seem to place a great deal of weight on what biologists say, but then you say something like this which totally contradicts what most biologists have been saying for the last 150 years or so.
 
Brainache said:
Can you show us the reasoning which led you to think that humans didn't evolve?

I'm curious about this, because you seem to place a great deal of weight on what biologists say, but then you say something like this which totally contradicts what most biologists have been saying for the last 150 years or so.
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No, just saying my opinion here. Not trying to defend the idea man is a special creation apart from the rest of biota, but at the same time our knowledge is still pretty limited in biology.

I don't really place a great deal of weight on biologist's opinions outside of the area of data they have focussed on.
 
randman said:
No, just saying my opinion here. Not trying to defend the idea man is a special creation apart from the rest of biota, but at the same time our knowledge is still pretty limited in biology.

I don't really place a great deal of weight on biologist's opinions outside of the area of data they have focussed on.
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I was just curious as to how someone so familiar with so much evidence for evolution can arrive at an opinion so utterly contradictory to all of that evidence and so totally unsupported by any positive Creationist evidence whatsoever.

How do you do that?
 
Used to believe in darwinism. Was asked to look into the evidence to see if the reasons for why I believed it were true. The evidence given for evolution was false. Microevolution does not add up to macroevolution but contradicts it, evolution in the wrong direction genetically.

I could not believe it now. The evidence, if you are willing to look at it independently, conclusively shows it's wrong.

The funny thing is there may be a way for the evidence to fit an evo model, but the one model that is surely wrong is NeoDarwinism.
 
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randman said:
Used to believe in darwinism. Was asked to look into the evidence to see if the reasons for why I believed it were true. The evidence given for evolution was false. Microevolution does not add up to macroevolution but contradicts it, evolution in the wrong direction genetically.
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Do you mean that animals like humans don't have a complex genome as implied by the general trend towards complexity implied by statistics? Or that the human genome is too complex given the theory states that we evolved from simpler organisms?

I could not believe it now. The evidence, if you are willing to look at it independently, conclusively shows it's wrong.
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You mean all of that evidence that Evolutionary Biologists keep finding that fits perfectly within the modern evolutionary synthesis paradigm? That evidence?

The funny thing is there may be a way for the evidence to fit an evo model, but the one model that is surely wrong is NeoDarwinism.
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So you think this evidence supports the idea of special creation?
 
randman said:
Lot of bs there. Never said God controls at least in the way you are thinking every single molecule's activity.

Proof?

Science does not deal in proof but in probabilities. Learn that and we can talk.
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You yourself stated that the settings of the universe were divinely determined earlier. That indicates control over the molecular activity. Hence got proof?

Science deals in proofs. If you make a grandiose claim (AKA we have backed up evolution with our proof. You have attempted and failed to bring down our proof) then you have to back it up.

Your claim is that the biblical god did all this. What proof do you have?
 
randman said:
Used to believe in darwinism. Was asked to look into the evidence to see if the reasons for why I believed it were true. The evidence given for evolution was false. Microevolution does not add up to macroevolution but contradicts it, evolution in the wrong direction genetically.

I could not believe it now. The evidence, if you are willing to look at it independently, conclusively shows it's wrong.
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The problem is, as you have so amply demonstrated, this is only true if you completely misrepresent both the theory and the evidence.

If you evaluate the actual evidence in light of the actual theory, it fits perfectly.

The only way to reach your position is through complete dishonesty or complete ignorance. Or both.
 
As a long time lurker (and absolute non-scientist) I would really like to thank all the people who have so patiently posted such a wealth of information. In reading this thread, I have learned quite a lot regarding both the TOE, and biology in general, both from a large number of well written and clear posts, as well as a number of quite interesting links.

So, while I don't think anyone has gotten anywhere in changing randman's oppinion, I thought I'd thank you all in hopes that all the time and effort put into this thread seems less wasted.
 
bokonon said:
I have to say, though, I'm impressed to find a creationist who's even heard the word epigenetics, much less apparently familiar with its definition.
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I mentioned epigenetic a while back. I do suspect teh google or teh wikipedia.


randman said:
Ok, name them. Among sexually reproducing organisms, show the living species and the species following it, and keep in mind we're looking for real speciation, not just evos classifying something like wolves and dogs as different species though they can interbreed, and then we can discuss whether it's macroevolution or not. Speciation is not macroevolution per se but it should be an interesting exercise.
Can you come up with any?
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Culex pipiens molestus; speciated from Culex pipiens fairly recently.




randman said:
Here's a peer-reviewed ID paper on the topic from a different angle.

Darwinian evolution is, at its heart, a search algorithm that uses a trial and error process of random mutation and unguided natural selection to find genotypes (i.e. DNA sequences) that lead to phenotypes (i.e. biomolecules and body plans) that have high fitness (i.e. foster survival and reproduction). This peer-reviewed scientific article in the journal IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics A, Systems & Humans by William Dembski and Robert Marks explains that unless a search starts off with some information about where peaks in a fitness landscape may lie, any search -- including Darwinian search algorithms-- are on average no better than a random search. After assessing various examples of evolutionary searches, Dembski and Marks show that attempts to model Darwinian evolution via computer simulations, such Richard Dawkins famous "METHINKSITISLIKEAWEASEL" example, start off with, as Dembski and Marks put it, "problem-specific information about the search target or the search-space structure." According to the paper, such simulations only reach their evolutionary targets because there is pre-specified "accurate information to guide them," or what they call "active information." The implication, of course, is that some intelligent programmer is required to front-load a search with active information if the search is to successfully find rare functional genetic sequences. They conclude that "Active information is clearly required in even modestly sized searches."
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http://www.discovery.org/a/2640
http://marksmannet.com/RobertMarks/REPRINTS/2009_ConservationOfInformationInSearch.pdf
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But, in the case of natural selection, it is the environment that is doing the selection. Therefore the 'information desired' can be considered as encoded in the environment...

In the program they mention, you could easily replace the selection algorithm with somebody pressing a key to discard the sequences not evolving in the right direction. The key pressing would be a stand-in for Natural selection preventing, in average, the worst fit specimen from reproducing...
 
randman said:
http://www.arn.org/blogs/index.php/literature/2007/06/16/encode_decodes_junk_dna

Maybe if evos spent half as much time listening to their critics instead of trying to silence dissent, they'd learn something. Obviously, other camps foresaw this finding and evos did not.

Why was that?
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Answer: it wasn't. Despite your claims that "evos" didn't see this coming while IDers did, the paper linked at the very creationist website you linked to says exactly the opposite.

The project found that nearly the entire genome may be represented in primary transcripts that extensively overlap and include many nonprotein-coding regions. The idea of a network of transcripts has been suggested before (e.g., Cheng et al. 2005; Carninci et al. 2006), but data from the ENCODE project provide firmer footing for further investigation of this challenge to the concept of lone transcription units (Denoeud et al. 2007; Emanuelsson et al. 2007; Rozowsky et al. 2007; Ruan et al. 2007; Trinklein et al. 2007). New transcription start sites (TSSs) were identified, and the arrangement of regulatory sequences (and binding of transcription factors) around TSSs was more broadly described to show the range of locations (Denoeud et al. 2007; Trinklein et al. 2007; Xi et al. 2007; Zhang et al. 2007). Some enhancers that previously mapped distal to the known TSSs were found by the ENCODE project to be near the newly described TSSs and transcripts, suggesting a role in regulating proximal expression. A richer view of the connections between chromatin structure, regulation of transcription, and replication has emerged from integrating these data sets. For example, earlier knowledge of the types of histone modifications that correlate with gene expression has been amplified to create a predictor of expression based on these modifications and chromatin accessibility (The ENCODE Project Consortium 2007; Koch et al. 2007; Thurman et al. 2007; Zhang et al. 2007), and correlations between the timing of replication and chromatin structure were also described (Karnani et al. 2007). Another result from integrating data sets shows that ∼60% of the bases found to be under evolutionary constraint in genome comparisons are correlated with functional sites identified by the project’s experimental approaches (Margulies et al. 2007). One anticipates this proportion will increase as binding sites for additional transcription factors and other elements are mapped.
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So, far from being something that left evolutionary science totally gobsmacked and scrambling to explain it while IDers and other creationists smugly say "we told you so", what the ENCODE project found was actually anticipated by biologists, and its findings actually confirm other, previous findings, and even expand on those findings in a way that allows biologists to predict gene expression in ways they weren't able to before.

In fact, the ENCODE findings actually make the integration of your vaunted epigenetic heritability into the Synthetic Model even less problematic than it was before, since it's easier to find and understand the noncoding genes that regulate epigenetic gene expression.

Evos will likely just say it was luck and continue to ignore the arguments of their critics and perhaps even deny their critics were the ones that were right all along in some detail like this.
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Because, here in the real world of actual scientific evolutionary study, none of that is true.

Especially since, as Lukraak_Sisser pointed out to you, actual evolutionary theory long ago abandoned "junk DNA". It's only you IDers who cling to it.

randman said:
I am not ignoring. Darwinism posits that gene accumulation can outweigh and did outweigh gene loss.

Where are the peer-reivewed studies to substantiate this claim? In other words, where do they compare rates of gene loss particularly through natural selection and isolation of subgroups with conceived rates of mutation rates of beneficial genes emerging?

I've asked this question for year and have never seen one single study and yet evos are confident they are doing real science assuming this untested claim has been verified.
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Well, here's a study about how additional genes created through genome duplication acquire novel functions at a rate almost equal to the rate at which those duplicated genes which serve no beneficial function are lost from the genome (a rate far higher than previously expected - about 50% of all gene duplications will lead to functional divergence).

Here's a study that's less specifically about the overall rate nonbeneficial gene loss vs. beneficial gene retention, but it does discuss both of those things in relation to the evolution of the eye in octopodes and humans. (Actually, there are a number of studies of individual genomes exploring the rate of gene addition [usually through duplication] and gene loss during that particular genome's evolutionary history. I can cite you a lot of those, if you want)

[EDIT: There are also a number of papers written by Sergei Rodin about how your old friend epigenetics plays a role in increasing this retention factor even further, via epigenetic silencing. But I can't find an open link to the papers that doesn't cost quite a bit of dosh that I can provide to you. Still, you can see a list of the papers I'm talking about here.).
 
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Science does not deal in proof but in probabilities. Learn that and we can talk.
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So now you're going to dictate to scientists what science is. :rolleyes: The arrogance in this statement (not to mention the error) is astounding.

I am not ignoring. Darwinism posits that gene accumulation can outweigh and did outweigh gene loss.
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Bull. Darwinism says nothing about how many genes an organism has. Read the references I provided and you'd see that. And in fact the book on genetics outlines precisely how genes can be increased. It's really rather common, or at least far more common than ID advocates, Creationists, or you would have people believe.

The evidence given for evolution was false.
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There's a post a number of pages back where I provide a number of lines of evidence from the texts I referenced. You've yet to even ATTEMPT to address those points.

The evidence, if you are willing to look at it independently, conclusively shows it's wrong.
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What, you mean like those fossil mollusks that show clear evolutionary lineages, complete with transition fossils, that Gould and Eldritch used to prove that Punctuated Equilibrium occurs in at least some lineages? I won't bother with DNA evidence, as you've shown a consistant inability to differentiate between accumulated changes in genese and accumulated genes.
 
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_experiment

A project where during the course of it, by random 'micro' mutations E.coli gained a function it did not have before.
In part of the experiment, indicating that this happened due to pure random chance. Only a small part of the population actually gained the function, which goes against front loading. Of course the ID/creationist argument can always be 'god/invisible super aliens made it that way because it/they wanted to'.

And there are functional intermediate stages all around you. Every single living organism alive today is a functional intermediate stage between what was and what will be.
Livestock and other animals that humans have increased selective pressure on are an even clearer indication of rapid speciation that will eventually lead to different species.
 
How can a chihuahua give birth to an akita? It can't! These animals share no common ancestry!
 
PixyMisa said:
We've done that. So I take it ID has been falsified?
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Only if you can do so in an example satisfactory to their arbitrary personal standards.

Also, the ethnic San of South Africa cannot give birth to a blond haired blue eyed ethnic Caucasian, therefore they share no ancestry!
 
If Asians and Europeans are descended from humans who migrated out of Africa, why are there still Africans? Ha!
 
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