1. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #231139 by txpiper on August 15, 2008 at 9:42 pm

txpiper has promised that he will return and provide us with a comprehensive research package that proves beyond doubt that evolution is wrong

Yeah, I do owe you guys a summary. I still need to post a few whale notes and answer Quine's question as well. Unfortunately, I don't have the time right now, but I'll get around to it.

2. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #223295 by txpiper on August 2, 2008 at 12:31 am

Steve Zara,

I doubt you have the wherewithal to read this in its entirety, but you really should.

http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9501/bigbang2.html

"Does everyone agree with Stephen Hawking's opinion on these matters? The answer is no. Alan Lightman, a MIT professor, said in his book Origins: The Lives and Worlds of Modern Cosmologists (Harvard University Press, 1990), "Contrary to popular myths, scientists appear to have the same range of attitudes about religious matters as does the general public."

This fact can be established either from anecdote or from statistical data. Sigma Xi, the scientific honorary society, ran a large poll a few years ago which showed that, on any given Sunday, around 46 percent of all Ph.D. scientists are in church; for the general population the figure is 47 percent. So, whatever influences people in their beliefs about God, it doesn't appear to have much to do with having a Ph.D. in science.

There are many prominent counter-examples to Stephen Hawking. One is a colleague of mine at Berkeley for 18 years, Charlie Townes. Townes won the Nobel Prize for discovering the maser. One statement he made differs greatly from Hawking's view; he said, "In my view, the question of origin seems to be left unanswered if we explore from a scientific view alone. Thus, I believe there is a need for some religious or metaphysical explanation. I believe in the concept of God and in His existence."

Arthur Schawlow is another Nobel Prize winner, a professor at Stanford who identifies himself as a Christian. He states, "We are fortunate to have the Bible and especially the New Testament which tells us so much about God in widely accessible human terms."

The other Cambridge professor of theoretical physics for much of Hawking's career was John Polkinghorn, a nuclear physicist. He left his chair of theoretical physics at Cambridge in 1979 and went to seminary to become a minister. Upon completing that, he had a parish church for awhile and now has recently come back to be the President of Queen's College at Cambridge. He states, "I take God very seriously indeed. I am a Christian believer and I believe that God exists and has made Himself known in human terms in Jesus Christ." "

3. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #223275 by txpiper on August 1, 2008 at 11:18 pm

alan baylis,

One that I found very informative is:
http://www.karger.com/gazette/64/fernald/index.htm
Note, as in most of the others, how many links and citations there are for self proclaimed "experts" like txpiper to follow up.

I read a lot of the stuff at this link. Very interesting, but true to the form of the fantasy, not one mention of beneficial mutations, even in the "How do eyes work and How did they evolve?" section, which btw, didn't address that subject. The writer did however expand the probabilities problem for the idea of accidental formation:

"Why might enzymes be recruited to make vertebrate lenses? Perhaps the robust regulation of enzyme production is advantageous for producing sufficient protein for a lens, but there is not much beyond speculation to support this notion. There may be some deeper reason, however, because this molecular opportunism seemed such a good idea, that certain invertebrates, e.g. mollusks, independently evolved the same strategy"

The chances of this "good idea" occurring randomly and coincidentally in other organisms are nil. It only puts a bigger exponent on the odds-against number.

But notice the predictable invocation of totally un-evolutionary descriptive terms such as recruited, opportunism, idea and strategy. Words like this cannot be used without implying intellect and intent. Quine will probably be sickened by this recklessness.

====

J Mac,

Evolution doesn't have dogma.

There is a technical definition involved. This used to be the MIT biology website until the professor who was responsible for it died a few years back.
http://www.sciencegateway.org/resources/biologytext/dogma/dogmadir.html
The "DNA Replication" section has a good summary of the incredible enzymes involved in that process, particularly polymerase. It might be unsettling though. If you get started thinking about stuff like that instead of doing the "yes massah" when someone tells you enzymes formed by accident, it could rattle your worldview.

it is all available, go into any good university library, there are stacks of journals all with data, experiments, and detailed discussions of the precise mutations.

I'm sure you believe this, but if it were true, you wouldn't still be seeing sickle cell anemia cited as a beneficial mutation.

4. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #223232 by txpiper on August 1, 2008 at 9:01 pm

No reasonable developmental pathway, that sticks to evolutionary principles, has been presented here or anywhere else, either for eyes or for any other system. If you take the time to read this paper:
http://jhered.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/96/3/185
you will discover that they haven't even pinned down how cavefish lose their sight, much less how eyes evolved.

All the explanations offered for how bio-specialties evolved will typically not mention the absolute necessity of beneficial mutations. They can't. It spoils the fantasy. Here is a good example of an evolutionist using nothing but his imagination to produce what mutations and selection cannot possibly produce:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/bombardier.html
The scenario below shows a possible step-by-step evolution of the bombardier beetle mechanism from a primitive arthropod.

1. Quinones are produced by epidermal cells for tanning the cuticle. This exists commonly in arthropods. [Dettner, 1987]

2. Some of the quinones don't get used up, but sit on the epidermis, making the arthropod distasteful. (Quinones are used as defensive secretions in a variety of modern arthropods, from beetles to millipedes. [Eisner, 1970])

3. Small invaginations develop in the epidermis between sclerites (plates of cuticle). By wiggling, the insect can squeeze more quinones onto its surface when they're needed.

4. The invaginations deepen. Muscles are moved around slightly, allowing them to help expel the quinones from some of them. (Many ants have glands similar to this near the end of their abdomen. [Holldobler & Wilson, 1990, pp. 233-237])

5. A couple invaginations (now reservoirs) become so deep that the others are inconsequential by comparison. Those gradually revert to the original epidermis.

6. In various insects, different defensive chemicals besides quinones appear. (See Eisner, 1970, for a review.) This helps those insects defend against predators which have evolved resistance to quinones. One of the new defensive chemicals is hydroquinone.

7. Cells that secrete the hydroquinones develop in multiple layers over part of the reservoir, allowing more hydroquinones to be produced. Channels between cells allow hydroquinones from all layers to reach the reservior.

8. The channels become a duct, specialized for transporting the chemicals. The secretory cells withdraw from the reservoir surface, ultimately becoming a separate organ.
This stage -- secretory glands connected by ducts to reservoirs -- exists in many beetles. The particular configuration of glands and reservoirs that bombardier beetles have is common to the other beetles in their suborder. [Forsyth, 1970]

9. Muscles adapt which close off the reservior, thus preventing the chemicals from leaking out when they're not needed.

10. Hydrogen peroxide, which is a common by-product of cellular metabolism, becomes mixed with the hydroquinones. The two react slowly, so a mixture of quinones and hydroquinones get used for defense.

11. Cells secreting a small amount of catalases and peroxidases appear along the output passage of the reservoir, outside the valve which closes it off from the outside. These ensure that more quinones appear in the defensive secretions. Catalases exist in almost all cells, and peroxidases are also common in plants, animals, and bacteria, so those chemicals needn't be developed from scratch but merely concentrated in one location.

12. More catalases and peroxidases are produced, so the discharge is warmer and is expelled faster by the oxygen generated by the reaction. The beetle Metrius contractus provides an example of a bombardier beetle which produces a foamy discharge, not jets, from its reaction chambers. The bubbling of the foam produces a fine mist. [Eisner et al., 2000]

13. The walls of that part of the output passage become firmer, allowing them to better withstand the heat and pressure generated by the reaction.

14. Still more catalases and peroxidases are produced, and the walls toughen and shape into a reaction chamber. Gradually they become the mechanism of today's bombardier beetles.

15. The tip of the beetle's abdomen becomes somewhat elongated and more flexible, allowing the beetle to aim its discharge in various directions."

Stupid is too dignified a word to use in describing this kind of nonsense. This guy is completely divorced from the baseline tenets of evolutionary dogma, the requirements of scientific method, and reality in general. No data, no experiments, no tests, and of course, no mention of mutations. Nothing but standard mind-fruit. This is simply kneeling at the altar of "evolution did it" religion.

5. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #222743 by txpiper on July 31, 2008 at 8:28 pm

fizhburn,

I'm just wondering how qualified you are to claim to know how to properly apply the method, and how much of the accumulated body of scientific knowledge you are familiar with.

What you are doing here, once again, is trying to put your beliefs in a safe zone. The MW definition is as follows:

"principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving the recognition and formulation of a problem, the collection of data through observation and experiment, and the formulation and testing of hypotheses"

Degrees and pedigrees are not a prerequisite for applying the scientific method. And having those does not prevent anyone from ignoring the method or permit them to do so.

The reason that I wonder this is that you must be claiming that you are applying the method in making your anti-ToE/YEC assertions.

My objections to evolution and my acceptance of creation theory are two completely separate things.

To illustrate, I've suggested that you, or anyone else, outline a reasonable developmental pathway for some bio-system and show how all the components stayed useful enough to be selected until the system was up an running. Evolutionary theory maintains, actually demands, that this has happened countless millions of times. Your inability to do this does not prove that young earth creation theories are correct. It just shows that your belief is either extremely difficult or impossible to sustain by scientific method.

Unless you think that "revealed" information is also reliable, in which case I'll ask what grounds there are for choosing between the various mutually incompatible revealed belief systems. In other words, Quine's question.

Well how are you gonna show that what you believe does not fall into the "revealed" category? Where is your data, observations, experiments and testing? So far, all you have is an identified problem.

6. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #219935 by txpiper on July 27, 2008 at 8:06 pm

The Reverend Dark,

No. Lamarckism is not the same thing.

You did a predictably fine job of completely missing the point on this. And I expected exactly what you delivered when I suggested that you quote the examples of scientific method you found the journal article that you immediately sat down with.

If you explore archaeology in China, Africa, North America, etc, you will find distinct skull shapes. If the global flood of Noah took place as you claim, these distinct skulls will disappear suddenly from the record, be be replaced by skulls with characteristics common to the pre-jewish people of Noah's geographic area. Yet, no such change occurs in the archaeological record.

This is still a thoroughly lame argument. That said, I like hearing new angles and arguments, but since you usually quote from TO, I don't think you've personally explored enough archaeological discoveries in China, Africa, North America, etc., to have come up with this yourself. Where are you getting this?

====

Quine,

Each of Anjika and Baljinder would present the other with stories of fulfilled (and future) prophetic scripture.

I'd like to examine what they consider their best examples and compare what they have with the ones recorded in the Bible. I've done this with several muslims and all they wanted to do was claim that their prophet, who had essentially no prophecies, was the subject person of two prophecies recorded by Moses and John.

I have a reasonable overview grasp of Asian religions, but I've never looked into their prophecies, I suppose because I've never heard anyone claim anything impressive about them. If I ever get done sorting out the confusion of supposed whale evolution, maybe I'll take a look.

the cases that are counterexamples to what they want to be true (e.g. Jesus not returning within the lives of the early followers)

You have a popular example here, and unfortunately you are able to draw on the beliefs of many Christians for support. A good dispensationalist can snap this view, but it is very common, even among the mainstream Prots and Catholics, both of whom struggle with origins and end times.

You would be less amazed if you had been with me working all those hours in the University microbiology lab, that I did to get my degree. I, personally, know what testing is all about, and have used artificial selection to induce enzymatic changes in microorganisms.

I am sure you had to work hard for that degree, and I admire you for it. But enzymatic changes in microorganisms is not what the debate is about.

Oh, I may have already asked you this, but which of the wives were Chinese, Ethiopian, and Eskimo?
And who did you say was the mother of the Australian aborigines?

Genesis only provides some limited regional information about the descendants of Noah's sons. I've read a lot about this, and the loose conclusion I've drawn is that Japheth, Shem and Ham do not equate into the three supposed "races".

====

Scot Rafkin,

As far as detailed analysis goes. Yes, I have made plenty of detailed analyses. You can look these up, too.

I did actually, and hats off to you Dr. Rafkin. I want to reread one paper in particular and ask you some questions about it.

In the meantime, I'd like to ask you about the beautiful ice formation in the picture I linked to before you went on vacation. How old do you think that is, and what are the best ideas for how it was formed? The reason I ask is that you make a valid point about flowing and freezing.

====

alan baylis,

They are determined to force these beliefs into the school curriculum.

This is patently false, and you cannot quote one piece of legislation, even proposed legislation, or court decision that would support such a claim concerning public schools. Nobody is forcing creation or ID down anyone's throat. We want the academic atmosphere to be open and reasonable, and the textbooks to be honest. We want kids to be able to ask reasonable questions without fear of retribution. What we don't want is classic Pharisee/muslim establishment tactics, with the divinity status going to paranoid scientific community extremists.

====

Mark Smith,

So, when I (and Fizhburn) provided a strong counter example to your claim that people believe in evolution as a result of their atheism, you imply that we and others must be ignorant.

Uh, no. Sorry if you found yourself in there somewhere. My comment was about Christians.

Marvellous! A test. I did this test many times when I was a believer, and I never found one supposedly-fulfilled prophecy that was not either (a) so vague as to be unimpressive in the extreme or (b) the result of unwarranted over-interpretation or (c) entirely explicable as human prediction with no need to posit a divine source or (d) had not actually happened yet. Category (d) is always the most convincing by the way.

How about if you list a couple from each of the first three categories that you tested? That should be a piece of cake considering your comprehensive analysis.

No doubt though you think they [liberal historians] are part of the terrible atheist conspiracy also.

No, just more grandstanding, liberated-from-evidence, confused casualties.

====

Goldy,

You are on record here as basically saying a fish is a fish. So a fossil crocodillian is identical to the ones today? What evidence do you have - everything I read say the morphology is the same but they are all different species.

That doesn't make sense. If the morphology is the same, how could they qualify as another species? How, short of DNA evidence which they don't have, could they determine that? I'm thinking that if the flood had happened while someone was having a dog show, they'd be claiming a new species every time they dug another one out of the rock.

But even if the fossil crocs are a different species, that's an embarrassing commentary on the supposed awesome power of mutations/selection. If that's all the evolution that happened after 100 million years, you don't have much of a mechanism. You have the same problem with alligators and marine turtles.

You have been shown so many examples but you still don't believe. I'll try one more time - accidental mutation...cancer.

We're not on the same subject Goldy. Of course there are genetic mutations, and the results are not pleasant. What I don't agree with is the idea that adaptive enhancements are the result of mutations; I don't think they are accidental at all. I don't think people who have dark skin had to wait for a random mutation to gain that protective adaptation.

I believe that as research proceeds, that they will verify Steele's soma to germline reverse transcription theory. Maybe you missed when I posted about that some time ago. Here is one link about it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_J._Steele

This is extremely interesting, and I'd appreciate hearing your professional thoughts about it. It looks to me to be a promising theory, but unfortunately there are ideological considerations that will probably delay further study.

====

thewhitepearl,

I studied evolution, accepted it, realised that the bible was wrong

What convinced you about evolution? Was it the stasis in the fossil record, or the statistical realities about mutations?

====

bugaboo,

A single amino acid change in the gene for haemoglobin can confer resistance to malaria.
What is your explanation of this?

Having a serious genetic disorder that provides resistance to a parasitic disease is not a blue ribbon beneficial mutation in my view.

====

fizhburn,

A simple question for you: do you agree that the scientific method gives us reliable information about how the world works?

Yeah, that's why I keep trying to get you to apply it to the theory of evolution, using facts instead of your imagination.

7. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #219933 by txpiper on July 27, 2008 at 8:04 pm

Steve Zara,

"Because we want to believe there is hope for the future of the human race"

Well that's noble enough. But considering the hopelessness of your ideology, it must be discouraging for you to consider that this belief, and any effort you put into it, will ultimately go unappreciated and unrewarded. You have to be convinced that when you die, you will be in the silent, black isolation of an unconscious eternity, having had no more significance than an oyster.

People like you won't keep your stupid beliefs private. They are actively trying to wreck education, medicine and science.

Well Dr. Zara, I'll assume that your comments are the product of unawareness of the facts rather than some sort of dementia.

As to education, Christians have historically made enormous contributions.

"106 of the first 108 colleges were started on the Christian faith. By the close of 1860 there were 246 colleges in America. Seventeen of these were state institutions; almost every other one was founded by Christian denominations or by individuals who avowed a religious purpose."
http://www.tysknews.com/Depts/Educate/history_part3.htm

On medicine and science, I've already listed these, but to help you with your perspective problem, I'll do so again.

Bacon
da Vinci
Kepler
Galileo
Harvey
Pascal
Boyle
Newton
Linnaeus
Hershel
Morse
Faraday
Babbage
Joule
Kelvin
Maxwell
Mendel
Pasteur
Lister
Leavitt
Carver and
von Braun

All of these people were Christian creationists, if not young earth creationists. Their names are recognizable because of their fabulous contributions to medicine or science or both, and some of them are actually credited as being founders of disciplines. I'm sure they could carry on fine conversations about their Christian beliefs, and unlike you and beneficial mutations, they could also expound about the bedrock scientific principles that their specialty involved.

If you go to a hospital here in the U.S., you have a good chance of winding up in an institution with a name like Providence, Methodist or St. Somebody. Do a quick search of "Baptist Hospital". I'm betting it will be the rare atheist who will be protesting from his gurney while they wheel him into one of these that he'd prefer to be placed in an atheist institution. You might, but then you're unique.

Perhaps you've heard of MRI technology?

"Raymond Vahan Damadian (born March 16, 1936) is an American practitioner of magnetic resonance imaging. He practically invented MRI (which gradually gave way to today's fMRI, a specialized MRI scan), along with his colleagues Dr. Larry Minkoff and Dr. Michael Goldsmith. He labored tirelessly for seven long years to reach this point. The first MRI exam ever performed on a human being took place on July 3, 1977 under his supervision. This machine, which is now in the Smithsonian Institution took almost five hours to produce one image."

This guy was pretty much ripped off for the Nobel prize for his work, probably by people who share your ingrate mentality:

"Some consider Damadian to be a controversial figure in academic circles, not least for his exuberant behavior at conferences. He is also fundamentalist Christian and a young earth creationist and a member of the 'Technical Advisory Board' of the Institute for Creation Research. Philosopher Michael Ruse writing for the Metanexus Institute suggested that Damadian might have been denied a Nobel prize because of his creationist views, saying:"

"I cringe at the thought that Raymond Damadian was refused his just honor because of his religious beliefs. Having silly ideas in one field is no good reason to deny merit for great ideas in another field. Apart from the fact that this time the Creation Scientists will think that there is good reason to think that they are the objects of unfair treatment at the hands of the scientific community."

Damadian himself said, "Before this happened, nobody ever said to me 'They will not give you the Nobel Prize for Medicine because you are a creation scientist.'... If people were actively campaigning against me because of that, I never knew it."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raymond_Damadian

He underestimated not only "religious" intolerance, but the intolerance of intensely religious people.

the greatest minds living and in history are a symptom of how religion poisons minds, and allows dangerous hubris to prosper

You have an interesting capacity for conveniently ignoring atheistic contributors like Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot. Is Kim Jong Il a hero of yours as well? I'm not seeing a lot of humanitarian stuff happening in North Korea these days.

Or maybe you're confusing Christianity with muslim outreach programs. If that's the case, you might actually have the opportunity one day to miss the Christians who are apparently terrifying you.

====

Verylee,

I take it that you would wish your version of events/science be taught in school science class across America (as in teach the controversy)?

Not really. I would prefer that science be taught in terms of straight up facts. A while back I posted what I thought was an excellent example of this to do with human hearing:
http://web.mit.edu/2.972/www/reports/ear/ear.html

This one is good also:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/sound/earsens.html

No speculation. No ideological attachments, only real, empirical science. Basically, I think the biology can and should be taught in the same way as math is, especially in public schools.

What I don't think should be taught is asinine, conjectural, religious junk, like stating as fact that this is an early whale:
http://static.flickr.com/113/302480866_14768c2748_o.jpg

8. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #219068 by txpiper on July 26, 2008 at 8:25 am

Goldy,

Txty, insteaad of reading the layman's explanation, why not go to the proper article?
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/117997009/PDFSTART

Did you read the actual paper? The one I linked? Or are you maintaining the pop-science for dummies version is the real McKoy?

Unless I overlooked something, this is a paid subscription article, and I'm not willing to pay. The paragraph you quoted doesn't offer anything beyond what I was pointing out; their ideas about how echolocation developed are all imaginary.

I would like to know what the writer is talking about when he mentions "Subsequent modifications and sophistication of the early biosonar system, as documented in the fossil record" Does he mention specific fossils or ancestral forms?

==

Scientists cannot say something is without the evidence before tham. If you have a bunch of data showing nothing, how can one make even a hypothesis

Well unless Pyenson presents his evidence in the paper you linked to, this exactly what he has done. The closing statement in the paragraph you quoted doesn't summarize his evidence:

"All available palaeontological, phylogenetic, ecological and evolutionary data that we have been able to identify and examine do not refute this hypothesis, and it remains viable for further testing."

He doesn't mention data that affirms his hypothesis, only that no data refutes it. Any proposal can stand on that basis.

"Horses grew wings and flew cross-country."

Anything you would use to oppose this can be applied to Professor Pyenson's hypothesis, including normal personal incredulity.

your speculation that things don't change ignores the fact the morphology is not indicative of something being the same. A newt is similar to a crocodile - are they the same?

No, of course they aren't the same. But that isn't a valid comparison. When they find croc fossils, they recognize them. The DNA of the fossil produced an animal virtually identical to the modern ones. There is no reason to assume that significant changes took place. Besides, stasis is an admitted reality. If it was not, Gould and Eldredge would have never felt compelled to formulate the idea of periodic bursts of evolution to deal with the fact that the fossil record illustrates stability of form.

By deliberating purposeful agent, you mean God, I take it. Not environmental pressures.

This is difficult to discuss because I don't argue against adaptation. I just don't believe accidental mutations produce the adaptations. As a matter of fact, I don't think mutation is involved at all.

Current, conventional evolutionary theory is confused on this issue. There is a general hostility towards Lamarckian ideas, but invoking "environmental pressures" is exactly the same thing. Giraffes getting long necks to reach the high branches is exactly the same thing as whales getting sonar to find the squid in the dark, except the giraffe already had a neck.

No, things change to fit the environment they find themselves in, if they can.

But there is no "can" to it. They either get beneficial mutations, or they don't.

====

Quine,

Suppose there are two friends, Anjika and Baljinder, who are Hindu and Sikh respectively. If they get together and start talking about their supernatural beliefs, how can they know when one or the other is correct faced with the simple fact that the supernatural is not subject to objective testing?

I would point out that their particular supernatural beliefs are not subject to testing. That does not hold true for Christianity on account of prophetic considerations. If something was forecast, and it happened, that is testable. The problem is that the only test that is generally applied amounts to finding a liberal historian or theologian who will post-date the prophecy. But even that does not help with the ones that are in the future.

But I'm amazed at how you can be camped out in the middle of a theory that is ripe with conceptual fantasies, and act as if the things you believe in have been, or even can be tested.

====

The Reverend Dark,

Did you actually read the paper that the article was about? Can you claim, in a clear and honest prose that you read the paper, and then insist that in contains 'not a tablespoon of applied science or scientific method.' The paper has been made available to you.

The first thing I did upon seeing your link (besides giggling quietly to myself at your desperation), was to get the journal article and sit down with it.

So quote the examples of scientific method you found.

you, who still hold out that the tiny god voice screaming in your brainpan knows more about Biochemistry than Dr. Kornberg

No, I don't think that at all. But you have no choice but to believe that millions of species are the product of beneficial mutations, in spite of the fact that "No more than one error in 10,000 characters can be tolerated, if a cell is to function", as Kornberg's presenter noted.

The typical creationist confusion between evolution and abiogenesis.

No, this is an artificial barrier that evolutionist have constructed. You have the statistically impossible claim of all species coming from an original organism. That would be the horse growing wings and flying cross-country. And then you have the preposterous idea that this original form, with a minimum of 350 vital genes, and able to reproduce itself, formed accidentally by "natural processes". This would be the horse growing wings and flying to Saturn. It's just a matter of relative absurdity.

So laughing boy, where is your typical I-don't-believe-it-goddidit explanation of the demonstrated evolution of baleen in whales, something you claim impossible?

I'll get back to you on this, but in passing I'll note that the article you linked to did not demonstrate anything.

Where is your explanation of the reason why all the skull worldwide didn't at a single moment, go Jewish (Yes, I know Noah, was technically proto-jewish) in the years post flood, losing all regional characterstics in a single moment.

This is a sappy idea, loaded with sappy assumptions, not the least of which is that Shem, Ham and Japheth and their wives had identical skulls. All you are doing is imagining something and then believing it, which is so often what happens. The descendants of Noah's sons are recorded in Genesis 10. There is no "single moment" involved.

====

Philip1978,

The experts on this site have shown you to be completely and utterly wrong

And of course they have not. What they have shown, when they actually tried to address the real mechanics of evolution, is low-level studies that were rarely even speciation events. No one has made even a cursory attempt to track the evolution of a single biological component showing how mutations/selection could do that. What the experts on this site have actually done is proclaim that other experts have done this.

Weren't you supposed to dispatch the idea of the Babylonian captivity?

====

phasmagigas,

the explanations of whales migrating to follow squid work in an evolutionary framework

That is not even close to the claim. Not even remotely close.

the dna bit could be looked at in time and used to see if the assumptions are unfounded or not

Yeah, that's just a detail. I'm sure they're working on that.

when and architect designs a building he/she doesnt have to describe how to set brick and mortar in the papers

The architect has the advantage of actually having seen bricklayers laying bricks and knows that if he specifies a brick exterior, that's what will be installed. What you are saying is that the bricks showed up by accident in response to the building needing a veneer.

I can appreciate your invocation of the need for an architect.

it [evolution] gives a mechanism, one that can be tested

You can't describe this mechanism adequately, and you can't describe how to demonstrably test it at all.

explain in non evolutionary terms why we share more of our DNA with chimps than with any other species, a bit less with lemurs, a bit less with dogs, a bit less with snakes, a bit less with goldfish, a bit less with sharks, a bit less with tunicates, a bit less with star fish, a bit less with dragonflies and even less with pine trees, why is this??

You've been taken in by the tree of life illusion. In terms of shared genes, we are 96% similar to chimps, and 85% similar to zebra fish. But what distinguishes humans from other forms is not simply the 4-15% dissimilarity. Gene expression and regulation are the keys. In other words, we share common genes, but we use them differently.

I would ask you to explain, in evolutionary terms, why chromosome counts show anything but progressive levels of sophistication?

====

epeeist,

Of course txp might want to claim that they aren't really Christians...

No, but I have been in many a discussion with such folks. It is my perception that they are generally ignorant, using the word with no inference about intelligence.

====

Scot Rafkin,

He never has any in depth analysis.

But you do? Look at what you said here:

Assuming it could cool quickly enough before it completely boiled away, some of it might freeze. But then it would begin to sublimate.

Now have they not determined that there are significant amounts of water on Mars, as evidenced by photos that I linked to? And is not that contrary to the idea you expressed? You said:

"And, by the way, we see the the topmost layers come and go from year to year. It ain't water flowing out."

I don't think you answered my question. If it isn't water, what is it? And how would you account for the sedimentary layers that have been detected on Mars?

We had an extensive discussion about this at our weekly science meeting in our office. What it does is help to refine the impact theory by rejecting some ideas and supporting others.

Was this discussion what you would call an in-depth analysis? Were you and your colleagues able to clear up the problems with the impact theory in this meeting? Are you going to publish these resolutions soon?

The stubbornness and cognitive dissonance is not what bothers me. Well, OK, it bothers me a little

I could tell it did as you apparently worried about it while you were on vacation and came back to check in at ChristianInformant. But what I don't understand is why it would bother you. In your worldview, ultimately you will die and no matter how in touch you may or may not have been with scientific knowledge, it will be meaningless. I mean from your perspective, it's not like Sagan is going to be there to escort you into the Cosmos.

Why, if you really believe what you say you believe, would any of this matter? What is the point of getting all spooled up over what one lousy Christian thinks? Is it the inevitability of your own personal extinction that disturbs you? I can easily qualify my own inquiries, because I think in terms of destiny, whereas you can only think in terms of fate. If I believed what you believe, I wouldn't give a red rat's about what anyone else thought about anything. I'd just do my best to stay stimulated.

9. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #217895 by txpiper on July 24, 2008 at 6:31 pm

fizhburn,

I'm not your research assistant.

I'm not asking for your assistance. I'm simply asking you to outline something that you insist happened.

Do some homework instead of using your ignorance as a purported (but not actual) counterexample to the synthetic ToE.

Oh, but I have done lots of homework about this. That's why I keep asking you, or anyone else, to illustrate what you believe happens without resorting to magic. Materialists make quite a big deal about natural processes. But when called on to actually apply the ones that evolution is completely dependant on, you don't seem to be able to do it.

It's not clear to me how a method of thinking (counterfactual reasoning of the same kind we employ every day) suddenly becomes "imaginary" when you don't like or don't understand what it yields.

And once again, nice try. But the problem is not what I dislike, or my lack of comprehension. The problem is that your theory, when it comes right down to it, is no more scientific or sophisticated than spontaneous generation. "Things just evolve".

You still don't understand at the conceptual level how environment and genetic variation cause evolution, as evidenced by your mistaken belief that synthetic ToE's mechanism is wholly accidental, or random, or else requires agency of some sort

One of the two things you mentioned has to be true. There is no available alternate. It has to be unintentional, unguided, random errors and accidents, or there is a deliberating, purposeful agent involved. Your theorists have simply fluffed up natural selection into being the influential player.

====

Quine,

He doesn't get that we simply do not believe that religion is true, and are working to use evidence to find out what is true.

Well technically, I am not a religious person in taste or practice. But the nature of materialist science excludes evidence on the presumption that it can't be there. What it boils down to is acceptance of evolution because of atheism, not the other way around.

Correctness is everything to us; we are willing to forgo what may be true, but also may be wishful thinking, and stick to the scientific method, just so we can have knowledge that does not contain falsehoods.

Come on Quine. The ScienceDaily piece on echolocation I linked to above is nothing but speculative wishful thinking. There was not a tablespoon of applied science or scientific method involved. If you truly want to avoid falsehoods, you should start with conjecture. I think you just license the practice when it pets your worldview. (I also think you are uninformed about prophecy and reject it for precisely the opposite reason).

10. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #217028 by txpiper on July 23, 2008 at 8:19 pm

fizhburn,

Concepts txpiper just showed he doesn't grasp (an abridged list):

I think I actually do have a good grasp of the terms you listed. But including "demonstration/proof" seems odd inasmuch as you don't seem interested in tracking kidney evolution. Being able to imagine something is one thing, but applying the foundational concepts of your theory to that accidental process is entirely another.

You are not alone in completely divorcing the ground-shaking engine of selected DNA copy errors and going ahead purely on the basis of what you can conceive of, rather than whether or not any given scenario is realistic. In my last post I said that "What you have done here is switch into the evolutionary mentality which as you indicate, is completely imaginary." That is very often the case. I was prompted to read all kinds of stuff about whale evolution after reading the article that Reverend Dark seems to find quite convincing (which I will respond to when I get the time). This piece illustrates the fantasy production mentality that is rampant in evolutionary propaganda. This illustrates what a sham the peer review process is when the reviewers share the fantasy:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/09/070905143411.htm

No mention of mutations, DNA or anything like that. Just your own "evolution did it" magic.

11. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #214734 by txpiper on July 20, 2008 at 8:50 pm

fizhburn,

I set this aside in a word doc till I had the time to address it. Sorry for the delay.

So you accept that "accumulation of adaptations, in addition to varied environment for populations originally of a single species, can lead to speciation (and has)." That is, you accept that evolution of new species occurs.

No, I accept that adaptations occur, and that some of these might be extreme enough to prohibit normal offspring. It is also obvious that special features can continue to develop in more than one adapted form in a given geographical area.

One can easily imagine brown and polar bears adapting further in such a way as to be unable to interbreed. Further adaptations could lead to polar bears' becoming more and more aquatic, like sea lions, otters, and seals are; even, in a long period of time, becoming fully aquatic, like cetaceans.

Absolutely not. This is beyond the scope of adaptations. Changes in teeth and fur is within that scope. Teeth accidentally changing into baleen over time is not. What you have done here is switch into the evolutionary mentality which as you indicate, is completely imaginary.

Processes like these are just the sorts of speciation events we find in the fossil record, that is, new populations diverging from common ancestors."

No, that is not what you find in the fossil record at all. This claim flies in the face of acknowledgements, often coming from devoted evolutionists, that the fossil record shows unprecedented appearances, stability of form, moderate adaptations and extinction. The divergence that you speak of, exists on paper and in the minds of evolutionary theorists, but it is not in the fossil record. That is the reality.

It would only be a lack of imagination that prevented one from accepting that this framework explains the fossil record all the way back to single-celled organisms.

And, once again, I have to point out that the fossil record points out, as do the several papers that have been posted here, that those single-celled organisms rarely even exhibit speciation, much less the imaginary advance to fish/amphibs/reptiles/mammals and birds.

I say framework because you have at times disputed various models within ToE, as if that particular models are problematic undermines the theory as a whole; but that doesn't follow.

A breakdown in one model does undermine it. All the fantasy connections in fossil forms are meaningless without a realistic mechanism for getting from one class to another. You do not have such a mechanism. You have statistically improbable beneficial mutations and inflated notions about selection, and that is all. I don't think these are even the source of adaptation.

Now you seem to think that given the physical evidence no model in ToE can actually account for speciation without the addition of some "supernatural" events.

I think that such things as enzyme function show that something decidedly unnatural is involved at the molecular level. Disputing this is not easy. To do so, you have to explain how sequenced chains of amino acids actually decide to start and stop their function, or discriminate between correctly and incorrectly placed nucleotides, removing and repairing errors.

Materialists are forced to discount such things as being nothing more than complex chemical reactions. But chemical reactions, no matter how complex, are about reaching a point of equilibrium, like an alka-seltzer dissolving in water or iron oxidizing. Enzyme and protein activities are not about neutrality. They involve measured precision and correctness. You may be able to ignore this, and deny the obvious implications of deliberation and volition involved, but I cannot. In my view this is simply an intellectual surrender.

Notice that IC commits you to accepting evolution.

It does no such thing. It simply gives me reason to accept the idea that intellect is always involved in anything that reflects purpose and intent.

But even IC, when not bolstered by YEC, accepts the time scales at which ToE operates. I'm not going to consider options for ToE or IC alternatives to it that include a young earth, since we know on independent grounds that the earth is old.

No, we do not know this at all. I've conceded that an old earth is a possibility, but this view is challenged by lots of obstacles and anomalies. I've spent a lot of time looking at the arguments, and there are reasonable points to consider coming from opposite directions. In my view, a young earth accommodates the data better than an old one.

No insights from biological theory (like "mysterious" T. rex remnants) can undermine geology, which rests on chemistry and physics.

It is chemistry and physics that must be ignored when things like this come up. If you followed that story the instant evolutionary response was that some unknown molecular level protein substitution process must be involved, an imaginary one. A realistic assessment of dating methods and taphonomy was not on the table, not because it isn't called for, but simply because it is not allowed. Materialist science has restrictions backed up by volatile attitudes and punitive reactions. The threats translate into such things as loss of tenure, funding and not being published. The establishment community is a highly politicized environment.

So, if we are to continue this discussion, you'll have to accept as a background assumption that we have long timescales to work with; otherwise you're rejecting basic physical theory without proposing a nonmagic alternative

Nice try, but you want to ignore your own "magic" and exclude mine.

Your claim, so far as I can tell, is that there just can't be enough mutations that are potentially "beneficial" for selection to produce the relevant evolutionary changes. You think there are good reasons to conclude that "an obviously very small number of accidental, random DNA copy errors" is not enough to generate adaptation, or at least not enough adaptation.

Check, with the notation that adaptation is not really the issue.

Note that you tried to ply your statistical refutation of standard ToE here a while ago and it flopped. That recollection might help with what follows.

I have no such recollection. There were no reasonable opposing arguments, only complaints about personal incredulity, which is to be expected in view of your impoverished list of beneficial mutations.

You demand that your theory be falsified only when science has produced "a reasonable interim role for every single component every minute step of the way."

This is not unreasonable in view of the fact that your theory guarantees that there was such a role every step of way. I don't think falsifying is even necessary until some reasonable attempt has been made to truify that premise. I don't recall even one serious proposal. If I were speculating about why there were none, I would say that anyone who is trying to think of one recognizes that it is a ridiculous pursuit.

You mistake the state of the dialectic. It is incumbent on the person offering a proposal against the standard theory to offer some evidence why the alternative is better.

Again, nice try, but this is simply an artificial rule that attempts to keep the TOE and every tepid sub-theory it depends on in a hands-off safe zone. All or part of it can be evaluated without reference to any other ideas. In trying to frame up the argument with parameters like this, you are saying that it is necessary to accept something stupid until something less stupid is proposed. This is bad science. There is a reasonable position called "unknown". Even if I were not a convinced creationist, I would not accept the TOE for the reasons I've explained in this forum. It does not stand on its own. As a matter of fact, it is in my view, hemorrhaging and shored up with nothing but excuses and bad attitudes.

In order to do this you need to have an example case where it is in principle impossible for a purely physical explanation to account for some biological system.

Nonsense. No reasonable example case has ever been presented that shows in principle precisely how a bio-system was ever assemble by accident in the first place.

In the absence of such an example, there is nothing for IC to do, and so it does not constitute a serious alternative hypothesis for explaining the available data.

I don't see irreducible complexity as being a alternative hypothesis. It is just an assessment of the probabilities concerning accidental system formation. This problem, by the way, is not going to go away. What evolution is always going to be up against is real thinking people who live in a real world where complexity and organization do not just happen without someone doing something. Noise, ridicule and declarations will never cancel out reality.

We have previously noted that the appearance of design does not indicate design.

Yes, that was a fine proclamation. My counter-proposal would be that a functioning design demands a designer.

Similarly, a failure to understand the explanation for a phenomenon does not indicate the phenomenon does not have an explanation. If you think "some paper or article... doesn't adequately address" the relevant biological system's complexity, it is incumbent upon you, the reader, to provide an account of that failure. You don't get to just declare that it's inadequate.

And you don't just get to declare yourself the winner for having said something. What is said must be reasonable. So far, the papers linked to have been either conjectural, irrelevant or about lateral, insignificant adaptations.

No known biological system is widely accepted to be in principle unexplainable. (If there were such a thing, wouldn't biologists be lathering at the mouth to research it?)

No, they absolutely would not. You are welcome to prove me wrong by actually trying to explain one.

So, if you were doing a Behe-style IC argument, you would be required to produce an example of a biological system that is in principle unexplainable by purely physical phenomena, of which there are no current instances.

Ditto the above response and challenge. How about renal function? No imaginary stuff allowed. Just a reasonable outline showing how replication errors repeatedly occurred in the appropriate genes in the DNA of gametes which were involved in reproduction, in successive generations for as long as it took for kidneys to develop. And a reasonable proposal for how any given animal managed to survive until there were functioning kidneys.

This is why the "what's the use of half an ear" -- or whatever -- argument fails: we have explanations for the emergence of all the known candidates. Pointing at something you, personally, don't know how to explain is not sufficient for anyone here or in the scientific community

Okay, so you have the explanations. Repeat one here and show that the problem is simply my personal comprehension.

And Behe for instance hasn't proposed as far as I know anything that hasn't been explained by subsequent research; biological experts who know more than you do about biological systems can't come up with examples of in principle unexplainable phenomena. Even imagining such a thing isn't good enough, since you'd have to go out and find it in the world.

Well, there are plenty of critical component kidneys functioning in the world. All you need to do is show how they got here.

The onus is on the IC theorist to produce the hard case, so as to create a need for a new explanatory apparatus. Notice that if you did produce such a case you could publish it

If you can realistically accident those kidneys into existence given the obstacles and probabilities involved, you'll probably be able to do a pilgrimage to the Galapagos all expenses paid.

but the best proposals have not, in fact, been in principle unexplainable, and explanations have been provided whether or not people who think IC is correct understand or accept them. Nonacceptance on your part says nothing about an explanation's falseness, just its recalcitrance with respect to the beliefs you hold.

Reasonable explanations should be able to reasonably address discrepancies. No free rides for ideology. You can simply declare "evolution did it", but don't try and call that science. No magic for you either.

But your IC is apparently based on a different reading of the available evidence. According to this view it is possible to give a statistical demonstration that ToE cannot explain speciation, or at least not the whole of the variety of life, of which we have a fossil record

Until you have a realistic way to link the fossil forms together, the fossil record is open to interpretation. If you can't demonstrate accidental system and specialty development, there is no link.

without adding in certain interventions from a "supernatural" force, or at least of an intelligent "intervention" (so as not to exclude aliens guiding life's direction---after all ID does not imply a deity's intervention) to boost the number of times that mutations occurred in such a way as to benefit a species. Presumably such adaptations account for speciation from single-celled organisms forward, and so the IC in question is the fact that there are wide varieties of life at all.

Okay, so no intervention. All accidents, all the time. Just show how it happens.

Note that if you were able to produce such a demonstration, you would revolutionize both biology and chemistry. Seriously, this is a feat that would be Nobel-worthy. Now since you, txpiper, are not an expert in biochemistry and statistics, it's not likely that you have on hand or could produce such a demonstration.

What you are saying is that it is up to someone to disprove something that has never been proven in the first place.

You'd have to rely on work done by experts with the relevant qualifications. If any such expert(s) were able to produce such an explanation of the in-principle-inexplicability of the diversity of life based on "mutation" rates, they would publish it. And publication would bring a great deal of interest, since it would revolutionize biology and chemistry.

You're kidding yourself about this Fizhburn. This monumental thread is the result of a movie that shows that trying to publish things that do not kiss the paradigm can in fact, ruin your career.

Since such a publication doesn't exist, I can only conclude that no such demonstration exists, and that any attempt at such a demonstration has not been shown to be conclusive---which is to say it has failed as a demonstration.

Oh, the publications are there. They just are not accepted by the materialist community. They are conveniently declared to be unscientific by the "peers", the questions go unanswered and the community says that they were never asked.

What I've been pushing here is this: we don't have to show you all the explanations for ToE to be accepted as correct by people who aren't already for other reasons committed to ID/IC. You are advocating an alternative, and in order for this to be legitimate you have to show why an alternative is needed.

Well that's a lovely circular closed loop. You don't have to show the explanations, but I have to show why an alternative is necessary.

I doubt you'll be swayed by this, but I hope it helps you understand why coming in here and demanding we demonstrate that an already well-supported, elegant, abductively powerful theory is correct just displays to us that you don't know what you're talking about.

I think I do indeed know to a reasonable degree what I'm talking about. But I'm not demanding that you demonstrate anything because I don't really believe that you can. I'm just explaining that I don't believe what you believe, because your beliefs are not about demonstrations. Yours are based on the mistaken notion that someone else, who you can't name, has demonstrated something that you can't describe or repeat. I don't see a mountain of evidence. I see misplaced faith.

12. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #213725 by txpiper on July 18, 2008 at 8:25 pm

Tyler Durden,

If the article you posted on moon formation reckons water came from the Moon's interior and was delivered to the surface via volcanic eruptions over 3 billion years ago. Yet you claim the Earth to be approx 6,000 years old - why the discrepancy?

I posted the article in response to your apparent confidence in the current prevailing theory. I don't believe the dates or the theory are correct.

In rereading that piece, I think they could have done a more thorough job of connecting the title to the reason why the current theory is dampened by the presence of water on the moon. Basically, like T rex collagen protein and Israel, it shouldn't be there. If the impact theory is correct, any "light elements" like water should have been completely vaporized, which the article mentions.

This theory is still rank with complications, anomalies and problems. They try to deal with these the way Gould and Eldredge dealt with an uncooperative fossil record; they formulate more low-probability events to explain the shortcomings.

For anyone not familiar with the list of ideas about the origins of the moon (and and you should be before you believe this nonsense), this is a pretty good overview:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/tothemoon/origins.html

You don't often hear about it, but note the baggage that comes along with the prevailing theory in the last paragraphs of part 2.

=

I'd be interested to know if you've heard of Cognitive Dissonance?

I think I had heard the phrase in passing, but I never pursued a definition. The link you link to says:

"In psychology, cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling or stress caused by holding two contradictory ideas simultaneously."

I can surely understand the concept. I can see how knowing the true nature of mutations and the demands evolutionary theory places on them as being stressful. Perhaps this explains the ebullience exhibited when that contradiction is highlighted.

====

kyle_02_rev,

When do we get to hear him debate my boy Ravi Zacharias again?

Is this online? RZ has an amazing mind.

====

Styrer,

1. Do you talk to your deity?

All the time. I require frequent laundering, so between that, recognizing what I should be grateful for, and petitioning for what I want, I am in frequent contact.

2. Does he ever talk to you?

Circumstantially, yes I do. This is more than an adequate response, and I am quite spoiled in that regard. If you are asking about hearing an audible voice, no I do not and don't want to.

====

The Reverend Dark,

Like usual you forget the natural selection part of the process, but that again, is standard for you.

No, I haven't forgotten about selection, I just recognize it for what it is. As I've pointed out several times, evolutionary theorists have morphed a circumstantial grim reaper into a helpful doer of evolutionary good deeds.

But again, you seem to have trouble grasping the sequence involved, so let me illustrate with another analogy. Let's say that beneficial mutations are parcels and packages, and natural selection is Federal Express. If nobody is shipping anything anywhere, which in the case of beneficial mutations is the statistical reality, the pilots and truck-drivers don't have anything to deliver. Crocodiles, for instance, as evidenced by the fossil record, haven't received any packages for tens of millions of years.

The transition from one class to another, neatly documented in the fossil record.

Neatly documented? With the icon fossil icons in the Nature article abstract? I don't think so.

You have to consider also that some folks don't think that the Ellesmere/Greenland/Latvia northern fossil fish aren't the strongest, or the earliest contenders. They are competing with Australians entries: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/10/061019093718.htm

BTW: http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/life_sciences/report-19188.html

This is a fine illustration of selection fairy illusions, but this is an interesting quote:

"The study of speciation has a reputation for wild speculation because every time we find a curious genetic element, we suspect it of causing speciation," says Daven Presgraves, lead author on the study and postdoctoral fellow at the University. "We know embarrassingly little about a core process in evolutionary biology, but now we've nailed down the exact sequence of a gene that we know was involved in keeping two species separated. We can see that it was natural selection that made the gene the way it is."

After his candid admissions, all he did here is look at a nuclear pore complex gene that has apparently endured a mutation which resulted in the loss of function. When flies which have this altered gene interbreed with the ones who do not, the offspring die before reaching maturity. What is the big deal "selected for" advantage of this?

This just illustrates the predictable nature of replication errors which have a deleterious effect, but don't kill the organism outright or render it incapable of reproducing mutant forms. I think you need to find a paper that shows how essential NPC genes were assembled by accident in the first place.

Things that beg an explanation? So rather that looking for an explanation (or even researching the current scientific understanding of these phenomenon.) You make up a story, without a hint of evidence to support it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5034026.stm

Explanations? Did you see explanations in this? I didn't. The first of the three papers said:

"The core revealed that before 55 million years ago, the surface waters of the Arctic Ocean were ice-free and as warm as 18C (64F).
But the sudden increase in greenhouse gases boosted them to a balmy 24C (75F) and the waters suddenly filled with a tropical algae, Apectodinium.
When current climate models were applied to this period of the Earth's history, said Dr Sluijs, they predicted North Pole temperatures to be about 15C (27F) lower than the core shows."

So far, all they've explained is that their predictive models were off by a huge factor.

The second paper says that 50 million years ago:

"The water changed from salty to fresh, and the ocean became covered with a thick layer of freshwater fern, called Azolla."

The explanation for this?

"there was lots of fresh water coming into the basin via precipitation and giant Canadian and Siberian river run-offs"

What caused the hot greenhouse to change into an ice-box? Too many ferns:

"When you have so much of this plant in this giant sea, you have a mechanism to pump out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It is sort of an anti-greenhouse effect"

Maybe we should all be combating global warming with ferns.

The third paper was about observations about the formation of ice in the Arctic that lead the author to say:

"Before we did this, it was thought that the ice field in the Northern Hemisphere only began about three million years ago; but now we have pushed that back to 45 million years ago."

I don't think that really qualifies as an explanation either, do you? It sounds more like an admission about a terribly wrong assumption.

Whatever precipitated the ice age, it must have happened really quickly. Perhaps that's why the 45 million year old trees on Axel Heiberg Island never fossilized. Or maybe they just aren't that old.
http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF7/788.html

Especially when those histories are written and re-written to match past predictions… when those predecitions are so ludicrously vague…

You aren't really too familiar with the subject of prophecy, are you?

I notice that once again you ignored the question of skull morphology in the archaeological record

This seems important to you, and I have ignored it because it sounds sappy. Why don't you post the link to whatever you're reading.

So you know more about cell structure then Dr. Kornberg?

No, but I do know that "No more than one error in 10,000 characters can be tolerated, if a cell is to function" means that the beneficial mutations/selection foundation your theory rests on is not a realistic idea. It's just all you are allowed to consider.

====

Mark Smith,

are you convinced by Nostradamus too?

No.

I've vague memories of you referring to the restoration of Israel earlier in the thread. Is this a prime example of 'history recorded in advance'? If so, can you please explain how you distinguish it from other non-biblical political predictions.

Prophecies and predictions are two different things. Predictions are guesses, perhaps reasonable guesses based on current circumstances. (For instance, Joel Rosenberg has been uncannily accurate concerning political events in the last several years. But he is not, and does not claim to be a prophet.)

Prophecies may or may not be predictive. Some are quite explicit, and others are deliberate, obscure references parked in the text that don't make any sense at all until after the fact.

13. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #212237 by txpiper on July 16, 2008 at 9:47 pm

The Reverend Dark,

I claim beneficial mutations can occur; and can demonstrate so (using one example of many)
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2697,Bacteria-make-major-evolutionary-shift-in-the-lab,New-Scientist

Well you need something a little more demonstrative than this. All this shows is an adaptation. After 44,000 generations, they had the same species they started with.

What you are really claiming is that billions of beneficial mutations occurred and produced features as complex as echolocation and bio-luminescence. With this amazing demonstration, you are up to about what, 6? And these of course include such profound examples as sickle cell anemia.

You would think that really focused scientists would have mentioned the remarkable stability illustrated in their experiment. But the closing comment in the article by Jerry Coyne shows that there is really a religious expedition involved:

"The thing I like most is it says you can get these complex traits evolving by a combination of unlikely events," he says. "That's just what creationists say can't happen."

I claim mutations over time winnowed by natural selection can result in specification; and can demonstrate so. (again, I use one source of many here.)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/faq-speciation.html

So do creationists, but speciation is light years from animals from one class evolving into another.

I thought one or two things in the piece you linked to were interesting. This one for instance:

"Flies from apple trees take about 40 days to mature, whereas flies from hawthorn trees take 54-60 days to mature. This makes sense when we consider that hawthorn fruit tends to mature later in the season that apples. Hybridization studies show that host preferences are inherited, but give no evidence of barriers to mating. This is a very exciting case."

That is exciting, isn't it? I had to get up and walk around to compose myself before reading on:

"It may represent the early stages of a sympatric speciation event (considering the dispersal of R. pomonella to other plants it may even represent the beginning of an adaptive radiation). It is important to note that some of the leading researchers on this question are urging caution in interpreting it."

Rev, these are not evidence for evolution. They are in fact, a pitiful excuse for that. These are all experiments conducted on species that, in your evolutionary time frame, have been essentially the same for millions of years. What is really observable is stasis. I think you ought to work on that problem, or find another TO piece that addresses it, before you try to use stuff like this to support the idea that millions of species erupted from one single original life-form.

You claim a supernatural anti-christ. What proof can you bring to the table?

Nothing that you would accept. But then I'm not trying to convince you. What I can show you is the mentality that will probably be involved in the ac taking the reigns. It has happened many times in history. I've heard it called the Caesar syndrome:

"We do not want another committee, we have too many already. What we want is a man of sufficient stature to hold the allegiance of all the people and to lift us up out of the economic morass into which we are sinking. Send us such a man, and whether he be God or devil, we will receive him."

- Paul-Henri Spaak, 1st president of the United Nations General Assembly

We know a lot about him, what he will do and how he will go about it. Nobody knows when he will show up and nobody knows who it is. But the circumstances that will permit him to gain control will undoubtedly be malaise, chaos and unstoppable violence on every front.

You claim an ice lens or similar structure. Where is your proof?

I don't have any proof for that at all. I only know that there are things that beg for an explanation. A different atmosphere and atmospheric conditions. Fossils at the poles that indicate a tropical environment. The giant sizes of some of the dinosaurs and extinct mammal species.

You claim your imaginary friend exists. What proof can you bring to the table?

Prophecies are convincing enough for me, though they are not really there to convince. History recorded in advance is a conspicuous override of natural law.

You don't have the faintest idea about standards of evidence.

I'm afraid I do, and what you believe does not meet the threshold. You're stuck with a basket of tepid examples, weak theoretical premises and lame excuses.

====

Tyler Durden,

If so, can you point to one example where you changed you mind on an issue?

Yeah, I was convinced for many years that the crucifixion happened on a Wednesday. A couple of years back I had to come to terms with the fact that it was Thursday.

====

alan baylis,

eminent scientists, such as Kornberg, who has studied the structure of cells at this level for decades, have no doubt that these complex systems evolved.

I'm sure that they think that. But studying and understanding that structure, and accounting for how such architecture was achieved by accident are two entirely different things.

If you studied the science links that you are constantly given here instead of just stupidly dismissing them as propaganda you might just avoid making yourself look such a prat. But I doubt it would make you any less of a YEC fantasist.

I usually read the articles, but unlike you, I look for the brown spots. They are usually pretty obvious, but you've been conditioned to ignore them and not ask questions. It isn't allowed.

I don't really consider myself too much of a fanatic about anything. My worldview is actually very close to Isaac Newton's except I don't agree with his take on some theological things, and I think he was wrong in calculating the end date.

14. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #211350 by txpiper on July 15, 2008 at 9:28 pm

The Reverend Dark,

http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/laureates/2006/presentation-speech.html

Interesting link. I assume you posted it in response to me telling Dr. Zara that:

"You can prove me wrong easily enough by posting or quoting their assessment of the idea of DNA copy errors producing biological complexity and organization"

Professor Thelander didn't exactly address precisely that in the presentation speech, but he did note, concerning DNA to RNA transcription that:

"Transcription has to fulfil two different requirements. The first is that the copy must be exact. No more than one error in 10,000 characters can be tolerated, if a cell is to function."

This is the kind of thing that shows that random, accidental mutations can't realistically be responsible for producing specialized features in any organism.

Thelander even emphasized how unlikely this is, as he also described what realistically should be expected when molecular level accidents do occur:

"Errors in the regulation of transcription may result in illnesses such as cancer, heart disease and various inflammations."

He also does a fine job of describing things that do not qualify as chemical reactions:

"we now understand, for instance, how the transcription apparatus chooses where to start copying on the DNA strand, how it selects the correct RNA building blocks and how it moves along the DNA strand while the copy is being made."

See what I mean? Chemicals don't choose starting points, and they don't select RNA nucleotides. Quine might be disappointed in Professor Thelander's choice of words, but they do express exactly what is going on: function that involves purpose, deliberation and intent.

You seem to have some difficulty in separating possible and impossible things. I think that's why you've probably set a record of some sort for personally typing the phrase "personal incredulity". It could be that imposing this sort of inculcation on yourself has resulted in you actually believing that you're rationally responding to problems like the ones the Professor highlighted in this speech when you try to excuse yourself with that.

Let's try briefly to put incredulity in a realistic perspective.

If you tell me that you can run a 6 minute mile, and you appear to be in good shape, I won't have a lot of room to dispute your claim. A 4 minute mile? I'll doubt that, but if you look the part, I'll concede it as possible. Lots of people have. A 3 minute mile? I'm not going to buy that unless it shows up in the sports headlines. But if you claim that you can do it in under a minute, I know you have a problem of some sort.

That's where you are. Completely isolated from what is normal, possible and realistic. You're not even close to the grey area of doubt. You are in fantasyland with a problem of some sort. Actually several I think.

15. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #210971 by txpiper on July 15, 2008 at 10:17 am

Quine,

Language need not be "necessarily" sloppy.

Sloppy? I think the terms quite naturally. I can see where the writers forget themselves though. Even the Reverend Dark can't help but quip "You have a problem with mutations … creating these".

(I have stopped saying "design" re natural things, and no longer call living beings "creatures" unless they were created in the lab).

Well you won't be using the word at all since absolutely nothing has ever been created from scratch components in the lab.

Fossils don't "appear;" we find them.

No, you find fossils appearing. Nice try, but when they mention the appearances, they aren't talking about fossils hopping out of the rocks. They are noting the fact that there are no antecedent forms leading up to them.

Every time we find a fossil of something new, the ToE makes the prediction that there was an ancestor, and so far, our luck at finding those has been very good

That's the kind of thing that is said from behind lecterns that leaves the people who heard it with the impression that it's matter-of-factly true. The reality is that the list is pathetically short and the entries on it are always disputable. Not to mention that what is almost always found is something that has been found already.

But the more serious problem is always going to be about the mutations. The only defense of that sorry theoretical excuse for a mechanism is that it should be believed because it is necessary to believe it, or evolution is a fraud.

No biologist is afraid of looking for transitions or working on the problem of identifying the selection advantage involved.

Oh, I wouldn't assume it is about fear. It is about astonishing faith that something is actually there or that there is a realistic purpose for a shrinking jawbone riding the mutations bus towards the middle ear. What you are saying about that is that at some point, if further lucky mutations don't occur (like with the crocodiles) in an animal with every hearing or sight component intact except one critical one, it would stay locked in stasis like that until the mutation happens. This had to have happened in your view, because in the undirected scenario you believe in, there is no next step towards integration.

====

Steve Zara,

You say you aren't particularly bright, but you suggest we rate your ability to interpret data over that of Einstein and Hawking.

No, I don't suggest you do anything. What I suggest is that physicists probably don't spend their time evaluating geology or biology. You can prove me wrong easily enough by posting or quoting their assessment of the idea of DNA copy errors producing biological complexity and organization.

====

Tyler Durden,

"The prevailing hypothesis today is that the Earth-Moon system formed as a result of a giant impact. A Mars-sized body (labelled "Theia") is believed to have hit the proto-Earth, blasting sufficient material into orbit around the proto-Earth to form the Moon through accretion."

Yeah, that's at the top of the list of grasping-for-straws ideas about the origins of the moon. But after I read this last night, I have to think that now isn't a good time to lock in on it:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-07/ci-mwd070708.php

Moon water discovered: Dampens Moon-formation theory

"Lead author of the study, Alberto Saal of Brown University remarked: "Beyond the evidence for the presence of water in the interior of the Moon, which I found extremely exciting, I learned that the contributions from scientists from other disciplines has the potential to produce unexpected results. Such a scientist is able not only to ask questions that no one has asked before, but also can challenge hypotheses that are embedded in the thinking of the scientists working in the field for many years. Our case is a typical example. When I suggested we measure volatiles in lunar material, everyone I talked to thought that such proposal was a futile endeavor. We 'knew' the Moon was dry." "

This guy has a nerve, doesn't he? Asking questions that lots of bright experts hadn't asked, and now a prevailing theory is sagging worse than ever.

Maybe someday, the biologists can come to terms with the mutations idea being a dry hole.

16. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #210588 by txpiper on July 14, 2008 at 9:17 pm

Quine,

Unfortunately, when trying to put scientific concepts into the everyday language of a popular audience, researchers will often drop into anthropomorphic or teleological idioms.

I wouldn't say unfortunately. I think it is better described as "necessarily".

For instance, you very often see the word "appear" used in reference to the fossil record. The reason for using it is fossil animals abruptly showing up with no apparent ancestral forms. The same thing applies with the use of "designed" when someone is describing some specialty feature in any given organism. The word is used because it obviously fits the observation. (It is mildly amusing that both of these words wind up in the iconic buzz phrase "appearance of design").

It is a bad habit exactly because folks that are looking for trouble will use the language to find it.

I don't think it is trouble that those folks are looking for. Evolutionists have to be so cautious about what they say these days. Gould found out the hard way about being too candid with the facts when he was trying to patch up a leaking theory, and wound up admitting how big the hole really is.

Though Gould is no longer around to defend himself, I am quite sure that he never considered the mutations to be directed, or seeking some kind of perfected final state.

I don't know what he considered, but I know from the jawbones quote that he wasn't realistically focused on mutations.

That's the problem with supposed evolutionary transitions. You can either let your imagination run wild and envision a gross oversimplification like nostrils combining, moving to the top of the skull, developing a valve and turning into a blowhole.

Or you can consider the plausibility of beneficial DNA copy errors occurring in just the right germ cells, in just the right gene positions so that they code for just the right proteins, in thousands of successive generations, for millions of years.

But you can't do both. The facts are brutally antagonistic to the fantasy.

Remember that while these mutations were happening to these bones in some individuals, other mutations were happening to the same bones in other individuals.

Now just what, in and undirected scenario, would make that happen? This only complicates the problem.

Folks can go on and on about how they can't think of how the steps on the way were of any benefit, but that is just arguing from incredulity.

No, that is just being realistic. You can't just use that whine line as a wild card.

Evolution makes no promise that a sequence of mutations is going to be easy for us to understand. If it works, it gets selected.

Right. But what I want to know is what it was selected to do; a reasonable explanation for the interim function of any given transitioning part. But you guys not only won't touch that with a ten foot pole, you won't even try to touch it with someone else's peer-reviewed ten foot pole. You want to sneer at ID as not being science, but then you want a free pass to dismiss billions of temporal service problems with nothing but selection jargon.

====

Scot Rafkin,

The thing is, the water history of Mars, which does include liquid water, is a remarkable thing.

Yeah, that's sortof what I was pointing out with the articles after you said that:

"And, by the way, we see the the topmost layers come and go from year to year. It ain't water flowing out."

And you continued with:

"Finally, think about the state of the Martian atmosphere and ask yourself what would happen if large amounts of liquid water were exposed at the surface."

And I noted that the most recent data seems to indicate that it froze.

17. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #210067 by txpiper on July 13, 2008 at 9:13 pm

Scot Rafkin,

Who exactly interprets these being events where water is coming from the interior? My guess is only Txpiper the Brilliant.

Oh gosh no. I don't think I'm brilliant at all. I just read articles about stuff like this and ask questions. I was taught when I was young that inquisitiveness is one of the things that drives science into discovery, but the religious quality of materialism might have throttled that back somewhat.

I sure don't. And either do my other planetary scientist colleagues.

So you are a planetary scientist? How cool that must be. I hope we can discuss your ideas about the origins of the moon sometime. But for right now:

And, by the way, we see the the topmost layers come and go from year to year. It ain't water flowing out.

Well what is it then? And where to the layers come from and go to?

The articles I've read seem to indicate that it must be water. I notice yours was from 1999, but this one from 2004 is pretty explicit:

"we now know that Mars has vast fields of perennial water ice, stretching out from the south pole of the Red Planet"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/03/040319074237.htm

This one is as well, published after the Mars Express mission instruments were functioning:

"ESA's Mars Express has found large reservoirs of water underground using its radar experiment MARSIS. All are frozen, with the largest in Mars's polar regions. Such frozen underground lakes might be driven to temporarily thaw and flow across the surface by changes in temperature, caused by changes in illumination from the Sun or, possibly, by local variations in the underground pressure.

In addition, much water is locked into so-called hydrated minerals that have been found by the OMEGA instrument on ESA's Mars Express.

The new observations demonstrate the crucial need for continuous monitoring of Mars. Only by studying the same areas over and over again will any temporary processes by revealed. In an extremely lucky case, instruments may even catch the water flowing."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/12/061207161026.htm

Now that would be something, wouldn't it? To catch the water flowing before it froze and subsequently sublimated away? You do have a good point about that, but you'd think that if the ice had been around for a really long time, that sublimation would have already claimed it.

This one is quite recent, from back in March of this year. It is about the south polar region of Mars, and it says that:

"A broad sheet of ice, which is an extension of the south polar ice cap is located south of the lava flow, to the left in the (nadir) image. The steep flanks clearly show white, clean ice."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080312115427.htm

Be sure to click on that gorgeous picture. Now I'm not an expert, but I have a hard time imagining ice like that not having been in a fluid state at some point. Doesn't it look like it was flowing towards the edges to you? And to be honest, and this is of course just a personal impression, but looking at the photo, the word "ancient" doesn't seem to fit. Does it look like really old to you?

This is another interesting article, though it will probably be disappointing to anyone holding onto hopes about life on Mars. Too much salt. Drat the fill-in-the-blank luck.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/05/080529141404.htm

18. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #210008 by txpiper on July 13, 2008 at 6:27 pm

decius,

even though we were joking about it, would you care to comment on pi being 3 according to scripture?

Pi isn't mentioned. The description of the bronze basin Hiram cast is not there to teach Euclidean geometry. But even if it was, any calculation that uses Pi in a practical application, rounds it off. In my business, we often use 3 to get rough cross-sectional areas of pipe or vessels. The .141599265… is negligible, just like any fractions of a cubit in either the cross diameter or the circumference are negligible to this context.

you didn't answer to my Poseidon analogy demonstrating the fallacy of special pleading.

No I didn't, for two reasons. Homer's narrative is irrelevant and I don't play the argument fallacies game. This is most often just a tactic to steer the discussion away from the facts.

====

Scot Rafkin,

I've said before, sedimentary deposits can result from a lot of things besides river deltas. Oceans, seas and lakes can produce deposits. As can volcanic eruptions.

Yeah, but you say that as if conventional geology has all the details worked out. They don't. It is by and large, arbitrary, as-needed application of the "lot of things" you mention. Even the article you linked to said:

"However, for reasons poorly understood, the beds of the Colorado Plateaus remained mostly horizontal through both events even as they were uplifted an estimated 9000 feet"

The reason for the poor understanding is on account of data that is anomalous to uniformitarian assumptions.

By the way, volcanic eruptions, unless you are talking about displaced or reformed sediments like those at Mount St. Helens, are typically going to be about igneous rock.

=

Also on Mars are the polar layered deposits:
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/images/11_22_99_spld/index.html
These are quite thick, too. Must be another global flood

No, these are interpreted as representing long ages, but they are probably the result of relatively recent geological events on Mars, where water is coming from the interior of the planet and spreading out before it freezes in successive layers. You would think that a planet hung in the chill of space for billions of years would have cooled down by now, but below the Martian surface, there are still large, unfrozen reservoirs. Do you harbor hopes of a primordial soup? You know what they say; Find water and you have a good chance of finding life.

====

Mbee,

Sorry tx but I don't have a problem with the sedimentation over thousands of square miles (Amazon Delta!)

Well, I hadn't ever really read much about the Amazon concerning this, but it probably isn't the best example to use, as it terminates in a large estuary rather than a delta. We used to go watch to bore tides come into the Turnagain Arm in Alaska, and they have the same thing along the coast where the Amazon terminates:

"The tidal bore starts with a roar, constantly increasing, and advances at the rate of from 15-25 km/h (9-16 mph), with a breaking wall of water from 1.5-4.0 m (5-13 ft) high. The bore is the reason the Amazon does not have a delta; the ocean rapidly carries away the vast volume of silt carried by the Amazon, making it impossible for a delta to grow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River

Where did all the water go from the great flood?

We've talked about this before here. As I think you mentioned, a lot of it is bound up in ice. I've read that if if all completely melted, the ocean levels would rise between 200 and 250 feet. But there is also Wadsleyite:

"Estimates show that if all wadsleyite was fully hydrated the volume of water contained in the mantle would be greater than that of Earth's oceans."
http://www.minweb.co.uk/silicates/wadsleyite.html

Your question though, assumes that the exposed landmass after the flood is the same as it was before it happened. That is not likely in my view.

If you read the article that Scot links to, I'd be interested to hear specifically what you see there that "flies in the face of geological knowledge".

====

alan baylis,

The same goes for your queries about tear ducts etc. Rest assured that the explanations (not necessarily proofs) that you find there will be reasonable and robust.

Wonderful. So either summarize these explanations here yourself, or post a link to one of these robust explanations.

Einstein and Hawking have greatly expanded our knowledge of the Universe and added further weight to the certainty that both the Universe and the Earth are very, very old.

Okay, and I'm willing to entertain the possibility that the universe and the earth are very, very old. I used to think that was the case. Finding out I'm wrong would not be painful.

But I posted a quote from Gould that supposed the transformation of jawbones into the three tiny bones in the middle ear. I don't believe that mutations do things like this. If you do, again, explain in your own words why, or post a link to a paper that specifically explains how the mutations kept happening in exactly the right genes until this transformation was perfected.

19. Lying for Jesus?

Comment #209490 by txpiper on July 12, 2008 at 12:30 pm

Goldy,