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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 7:14:49 AM | Evolution and such...
Oh interest to those who enjoy the topic of genetics. It would seem that a Canadian University, I believe it is McMaster (not positive), has recently begun mapping the genetic code of the Wooley Mammoth, with the hopes of re-creating the species when the technology becomes available.
Wow, that opens up a plethora of ethical and scientific issues right there.
Oh by the way Wonka...the analogy to earthquakes / engineers / science methods was good, and I may borrow it in the future. (Obviously I will take credit for the idea  , kidding you will be cited.) | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 8:52:16 AM | Genetics point out a common Intelligent Designer utilizing the same building blocks for a fruit fly as a human. A good analogy would be the automotive field. Many designs using anywhere from 1-18+ wheels, different sizes, shapes, colors, styles, purposes, engines, etc, etc. They all are predominently built from steel, plastic, copper, rubber, glass, etc.
A search on Google for "junk DNA" lists a large number of scientific sites are coming to the conclusion that it isn't as much junk as was previously thought.
The common DNA strands between the species is actually more proof of an ID than it is for Evolution since these ultra-conserved regions shouldn't exist. The odds of mice and humans for example having over 500 strands of similar DNA strands is impossible at the rate the observed DNA changes from generation to generation. For even one strand to be the same the odds against it over 100 million years is 1: 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000.
At this point DNA research is too incomplete to be developing theories and hypothesizing that it is "blatant" poof of evolution. The opposite is true for anyone who is truly objective in fact. I'll go out on a limb here and say that it will likely be found that there are DNA sequences in extinct species that were useless to it but were required for supposedly subsequent species "millions" of years later. Similar to a car manufacturer installing a wiring harness for an option that won't be available until later. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 9:12:18 AM |
hypothesizing that it is "blatant" poof of evolution.
Oh, yah definately. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 9:49:00 AM | Let me re-invoke the same analogy as above. Do you know anything about structural engineering? You might; for all I know you might have a degree in structural engineering, but let's say for arguments sake that you don't. Now let's say, from our previous example that two people each design their own house and build it (assuming we are factoring out the inspection process.) One house is built by the structural engineer and the other by Cletus the slack jawed yokel, and you have the option of being in one or the other during an earthquake. Which house do you choose? Wait, though- you don't know anything about structural engineering, so why would you choose his house? Hmmmmmm...... see where I'm going? i would have a friend check out both. He is not trained or has a degree in structual endgineering but could build a structure which would stand the winds of time and would also stand the largest earthquate by x factor. would you pick the structure designer if he had any part building the World Trade Center. In NY many buildings had to redesign and rebuilt per se, bucause of poor designed work by experts in their fields.
see where I'm going? The point is that you can understand the methodology of science and have a higher degree of trust in a scientific theory, knowing that the methodology is sound. If you read the vast majority of the diatribes in this forum against the theory, what is most shocking is not ignorance of the theory, but the clear misunderstanding of scientific methodology in general. Quantum physics is a highly complex discipline, one that a layman can only really understand superficially without devoting nearly a lifetime of study, but do you disavow quantum physics? generally there should not be any higher degree of thrust from this boards or boards like it. number one its free and one gets what they pay for. Since you admit the vast majority is diatribe but you are a large contributor i unfortunate for you put you in the same catergory. You are one of the most negative contributors and you push your ideas where there is little to no room left for others to participate. this note was written much better since you decided not to use those $50 words. Quantum physics is physics on the small scale, right? It is when physics begin to fail quantum physics is the rule. It is like physics but operates at the levels of atom and and modeclues. For example a model car built at 1/1000 will not work like the full size model because oil will begin to fail as it moves closer and smaller to a quantum model. As one can see here both physcics and quantum physics begin to fail as either physics is reduced to a size of failure and quantum begins to fail as it reaches largeness.
you understand the value of the more overarching methodology by which it operates. In fact, there is such a wealth of specific disciplines in the sciences that you couldn't possibly be profoundly familiar with the details of them all. In fact, biology alone is so highly specialized that Dawkins would criticize Gould for seeing the issue too much from a paleontologists perspective, while Gould would levy the opposite criticism against Dawkins as approaching the issue from too much of a geneticists reductionist perspective. I would also point out that, understanding the more comprehensive dictates of critical thinking, you would not say that any theory is "correct" so much as "on the right track." Again, theories are richly complex constructs continually open to refinement. They are algorithmic models if you will- representations of natural phenomenon, but not the phenomenon itself. That Evolutionary theory is on the right track is practically undeniable, even with only a cursory understanding of the details of the theory. The shared ancestry of all life is blatantly obvious to the naked eye, not to mention that shared ancestry is proved by genetic science. The fact that our DNA contains the exact same sequences, some of which are no longer active (and this point is important) as a fruit fly is pretty conclusive that we share ancestry. If all life were created at once, why include genetic sequences from other organisms that aren't even utilized by the organism in question? You may legitimately argue the specific mechanisms by which Evolution operates, but THAT evolution operates is blatantly obvious. Scientific Theory is easily explained when they say ST can never be proven it is there to be disproven, in other words there are no theories which have proven to become law. All the lip service up to this point is just that jibberish. A bone collection is just that a bone collection | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 10:32:27 AM | "A good analogy would be the automotive field. Many designs using anywhere from 1-18+ wheels, different sizes, shapes, colors, styles, purposes, engines, etc, etc. They all are predominently built from steel, plastic, copper, rubber, glass, etc."
This is not a good analogy. A car, although built from essentially similar building blocks, is very specifically engineered part for part to serve an integrated, but economical, function. Engineers do not design superfluous parts into an engine, chassis or body. To do so would be economically foolish. Cars also do not employ redundancy or degeneracy, both of which genetic coding does. I must question the sources from which you derive your information. What you are misunderstanding about "junk DNA" is not the invalidity of the basic premise, but that the term is a misnomer. The issue is one of semantics. It is not "junk" for various reasons. One being relative frequency- there is some debate over what percentage of DNA is active. Another being that the conservation of nonactive DNA itself may serve a larger adaptive function. Also genome size seems to be unrelated to complexity, so it's not additive, but non-linearly emergent.
"The common DNA strands between the species is actually more proof of an ID than it is for Evolution since these ultra-conserved regions shouldn't exist."
You make this statement, again, because you don't understand the theory of Evolution or Genetics.
"The odds of mice and humans for example having over 500 strands of similar DNA strands is impossible at the rate the observed DNA changes from generation to generation."
Honestly what source are you getting this drivel from? Your extrapolation of probability is unfounded and does not relate at all to modern Evolutionary theory. Perhaps as an extension of strict anagentic gradualism it may be more applicable, but your "understanding" of Evolutionary theory is antiquated. Seriously, slow down Don Quixote. For the gazillionth time- it is senseless to argue a complex theory, developed over more than a century, with a sound byte understanding of it. Again, you don't understand how science operates. Theories are not fixed constructs, but are continually refined. If you are arguing against literature a century old, then you are pissing in the wind.
"I'll go out on a limb here and say that it will likely be found that there are DNA sequences in extinct species that were useless to it but were required for supposedly subsequent species "millions" of years later. Similar to a car manufacturer installing a wiring harness for an option that won't be available until later."
Actually, in a crude way, you have touched upon an actual element of modern theory- exaptive spandrels. Speciation and the multidimensional multivariate web of causal pressures is a very complex issue. Sometimes morphological "trends" are randomly tied together, perhaps on the genic level (the relative frequency of importance of levels being a valid debate) and neutral adaptations can serve a later function. To understand modern theory, you should have at least at casual understanding of Chaos and Complexity theory, relatively recent branches of physics, as well.
Charlie- there's honestly not much worth responding to in your post, because you are repeating issues that I've already addressed. If you didn't understand the first ten times, then I don't see the point in repeating myself. I'm sorry if you think I'm mean, but it is merely an observation, and not a value judgement that you don't understand science or epistemology in general. There's a lot of things I'm not deeply familiar with. I just don't express vehement opinions about them. You say that I'm negative, but you're wrong. You still don't understand what I'm saying. I have no problem with your beliefs, just with your denigration of something you don't understand. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 10:54:06 AM | "Perhaps as an extension of strict anagentic gradualism it may be more applicable"
I should add to this, that you can't extrapolate everything from the genic level without any attention to the various modes of causality. There are allometric levels of causality, from gene, organism, species, clade, and possibly ecosystem (although the degree to which ecosystems can be classified as Darwinian individuals is under debate) that all act upon each other (and individually) in a non-linear fashion. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 11:40:28 AM | Wonka, your post spoke volumes about the level of understanding you have for the subject matter. Charlie has been correct all along that your $50 words are being used to cover your own ignorance of the material. You constant harping on how others don't understand or realize the complexity of the theory is a judgement on your own ability or lack of in grasping the theory. Your inability to see the parallels in my analogy tells me that the moment a topic goes past the language that you have learned it in, you are quite lost. Therefore it appears that you aren't being an intentional jerk by not "dumbing" it down for us mere mortals but it is indicative that you can't. Somewhat like a person who has a photographic memory can remember the exact picture but can't actually understand everything in it. Not a perfect example but close.
BTW Car designers do employ both redundancy and degeneracy. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 11:41:38 AM | You constant harping on how others don't understand or realize the complexity of the theory is a judgement on your own ability or lack of in grasping the theory. Your inability to see the parallels in my analogy tells me that the moment a topic goes past the language that you have learned it in, you are quite lost. Therefore it appears that you aren't being an intentional jerk by not "dumbing" it down for us mere mortals but it is indicative that you can't.
This is what is known in psychology as projection.
Seriously, Wonka has gone into specific and general detail concerning evolution in this thread and used very clear logical reasoning and plenty of examples. He just gets frustrated when he answers a question and then someone like you comes back and asks the same question by merely changing the wording as though suddenly it will produce a different discussion. If you can't understand him it isn't because he is overly verbose (he's not, he's just articulate). | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 12:06:25 PM | | Coffee- I understood the parallels in your analogy quite well, and I explicated why they are fallacious. As for this spurious $50 word nonsense, I use the word that is appropriate in the context, period. I'm not going to deconstruct every polysyllabic word into an explanatory paragraph because you don't care to access a dictionary. I'm an avid reader, so I come across words I'm not familiar with all the time. You know what I do? I look them up. Your suggestion that I have a photographic memory is misguided. I don't. I understand the picture both because I see the picture globally and in detail. My words are my own; I am not operating from a photographic memory, but from the reconstruction of concepts in my own mind with which I am familiar. Every person on this thread who understands science does not see it your way, so your accusation that I don't understand the theory is illogical by extension. By no means am I a professional Evolutionary Biologist, but my understanding of the theory greatly exceeds yours which is eminently clear from your posts. As for redundancy and degeneracy in car design, I am not an automotive engineer, so perhaps in some small regard they do, so I'll leave it to you to tell me in what capacity they employ them, and don't tell me dual carburetors, because that's not an example of either. I can see how modern engines may possibly employ a level of redundancy, but I doubt they employ degeneracy, as the term contains a temporal factor. Are there engines I am not aware of that reconstitute synonymous information through time? | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 12:13:34 PM | The first sentence and a half got me a headache and I stopped at "poly-whojamawhatzit".
Talk to us on a layman's reading level, please. We're not all Graduate School professors. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 12:20:01 PM | | jackyfrost- if you go back through the history of this thread, you will see that I gave many general layman's descriptions of the theory as have others, and detractors still stick their fingers in their ears and start yelling "la la la la la la," and then post the exact same argument that was just roundly debunked. This is what I mean when I accuse people of sophistry. It get's old after a hundred pages, so I've taken off the kid's gloves. If they want to pretend to play science, fine. Let's play science. I am now giving more specific and detailed rejoinders, and, in so doing, I will use the terms that apply to the concepts I'm describing for sake of brevity. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 12:55:17 PM | Wonka, in order to get this back on tract, I have a ligitimate question for you . Its my understanding that DNA cannot function without at least 75 preexisting proteins, but proteins are produced only at the direction of DNA. Because each needs the other, a satisfactory explanation for the origin of one must also explain the origin of the other. The components of these manufacturing systems must have come into existence simultaneously. right. wouldnt this suggest that they were created?
Also When a cell divides, its DNA is copied, sometimes with errors. Each animal and plant has machinery that identifies and corrects most errors.. If it did not, the organism would deteriorate and become extinct. If evolution happened, which evolved first, DNA or its repair mechanism? Each requires the other. Just wondering what your thoughts were on this .not to mention that this needs to get back on topic | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 1:57:23 PM | Davie- this relates obliquely to the issue of engineering. It is very clear from the structure of DNA that it is not spontaneously engineered, but the result of a more trial and error process. This is also very clear simply by a study of the anatomy of various organisms without even needing to invoke DNA. Organic systems are just that- organic.
"Its my understanding that DNA cannot function without at least 75 preexisting proteins."
As a point of metaphorical comparison, if you think of DNA as an alphabet, it has only four letters. Most useful DNA forms three letter words, and the entire Dictionary is limited to 64 words. These words are called codons. Some of these codons are synonymous with other codons which is where degeneracy comes in. Now these codons are manifest as 21 phrases that form 20 amino acids and a punctuation mark, and those phrases can form an almost unlimited amount of sentences, protein molecules we call genes. By the way, I don't claim authorship of the alphabet metaphor- it is Richard Dawkins'
"Because each needs the other, a satisfactory explanation for the origin of one must also explain the origin of the other."
You are inverting causality. Because the system is interdependent in it's present state, does not imply that elements of the system can't exist in less complex relationships, or that elements can't be subsumed by the system to serve a tangential function. Just look to the history of technology to see how a component that served an initially different function can be subsumed for a different purpose in a new technological innovation. Still this is an issue of the origin of all life, which Evolutionary theory does not really encompass. Evolution studies the mechanisms of and relationships between life, but the theory would still stand if God threw down the initial "protoplasm" to set it all in motion. Whether or not that is true is really irrelevant to Evolutionary theory. This broaches issues of self-similarity and reproduction of form that we do encounter outside of Organic Chemistry. The study of "the soup of life" if you will, is still a nascent science, but some progress is being made.
"Each animal and plant has machinery that identifies and corrects most errors.. If it did not, the organism would deteriorate and become extinct. If evolution happened, which evolved first, DNA or its repair mechanism? Each requires the other"
It's quite possible that early life was far too variable to form complex organisms at first, but this is where Chaos and Complexity theory comes in. Random systems can manifest predictable and structural consequences. Evolution does not progress to the more complex- that is a fallacy generated by a parochial assumption in early incarnations of the theory. When considered in context, bacteria, for instance, are the most successful organisms, they are more resistant to extinction, have more bio-mechanical diversity and habitat range than any others. In fact, when compared in the context of a geological time scale, all other organisms seem relatively insignificant, so the "drive" to complexity is the exception, not the norm. If you run the clock farther back, you will likely find that pre-organic compounds likely inhabited the earth for far vaster stretches of time, and the natural physical constraints and patterns of complex dynamical systems eventually led to rare emergent symbiosis. In fact, computer models of non-linear dynamical systems, starting with a basic set of elements, show exactly this type of behaviour. The patterns of the weather are a good example of higher level complexity emerging from semi-random non-linear relationships. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 2:28:06 PM |
Charlie- there's honestly not much worth responding to in your post, because you are repeating issues that I've already addressed. If you didn't understand the first ten times, then I don't see the point in repeating myself. I'm sorry if you think I'm mean, but it is merely an observation, and not a value judgement that you don't understand science or epistemology in general. There's a lot of things I'm not deeply familiar with. I just don't express vehement opinions about them. You say that I'm negative, but you're wrong. You still don't understand what I'm saying. I have no problem with your beliefs, just with your denigration of something you don't understand.
If i am repeating anything sir it is you latest postings i reply from, there if it is boring to you stop writting the same stuff over and over again.
in my last reply i gave you my interpreation of quantam physcics versa physcics. in your last reply you did not even come close to acknowledging the definition but you went haywire with some jibberish story on auto's. i'm getting to believe you are not alone writing your own stuff as when you post new research on your end it comes in cycles like when one of you are asleep.
- by David Skjaerlund
Evolutionists claim that life originated by natural processes, when one organism changed into another solely by chance. They propose that successive species of life arose over eons of time to produce the vast complexity and diversity of life we see in the world today. However, upon closer examination of these "natural processes," one finds the statistical probability of life originating by chance to be incredibly small and unlikely.
The origin of life by natural processes would involve the following steps: 1) Formation of simple building blocks such as proteins and nucleic acids; 2) Arrangement of these molecules into biologically important compounds such as proteins and DNA; 3) Assembly of these proteins into a metabolically active system, and; 4) Origin of the first completely independent, stable and self-replicating cell. The probability of each step occurring by chance has been calculated by many scientists, and their conclusion has been that life could not simply arise by chance.
The Problem with Jelly Beans
Most of the cell's important functions are carried out by compounds called proteins which are a chain of amino acids linked together. There are 20 amino acids which can be arranged in any combination and the average protein consists of over 400 amino acids linked together. The protein's characteristics and function is determined by the number and particular arrangement of amino acids. A protein can be represented by a sentence which derives its meaning from the particular arrangement of letters, or amino acids.
According to evolutionary theories, amino acids were synthesized spontaneously and then linked together to form the first protein from a generic amino acid "soup." In experiments attempting to synthesize amino acids, the products have been a mixture of right-handed and left-handed amino acids. (Amino acids, as well as other organic compounds, can exist in two forms which have the same chemical composition but are three-dimensional mirror images of each other; thus termed right and left-handed amino acids.)
One would think that the formation of amino acids into protein would randomly use both left and right-handed amino acids and result in approximately 50 percent use of each. However, every protein in a living cell is composed entirely of left-handed amino acids, even though the right-handed isomer can react in the same way. Thus, if both right and left-handed amino acids are synthesized in this primitive organic soup, we are faced with the question of how life has used only the left-handed amino acids for proteins.
We can represent this dilemma by picturing a huge container filled with millions of white (left-handed amino acids) and black (right-handed amino acids) jelly beans. What would be the probability of a blind-folded person randomly picking out 410 white jelly beans (representing the average sized protein) and no black jelly beans? The odds that the first 410 jelly beans would be all one color are one in 2 410 or 109 123.
To put the odds in perspective, there are only about 10 18 seconds in 4.5 billion years, the approximate claimed age of the earth, and it has been estimated that there are only 10 30 particles in the universe. Yet the probability of choosing all left-handed amino acids, without even considering their particular order or specific arrangement, is much larger than that!
Monkeys Typing Shakespeare?
Proteins are functional because the amino acids are arranged in a specific sequence, not just a random arrangement of left-handed amino acids. The formation of functional proteins at random could be likened to a monkey trying to type a page of Shakespeare using the 26 letters of the alphabet. Anyone knows that the monkey is not capable of accomplishing the task set before him.
What is the probability of synthesizing a protein with a specific sequence? Let us simplify the situation first. For example, if there are 17 students in a class, how many possible ways exist for them to order themselves in a line? It would take the students a long time to physically try all the possibilities since there are over 355 trillion different ways. If the number of students were increased to 20, equal to the number of amino acids that exist, the number of possible ways would be over 10 18 different ways, the number of seconds in 4.5 billion years!
Remember: this is a simple example of a specific arrangement of 20 amino acids. The probability is even greater when we consider that there are 20 possibilities for each spot. Also, in a specific protein of 100 amino acids, or in the formation of a hemoglobin molecule which has 574 amino acids arranged in a specific sequence, the probability becomes astronomical!
If only one amino acid is changed in the sixth position, the disease sickle cell anemia results. The RNA within the tobacco mosaic virus contains about 6,000 nucleotides. The probability that this molecule resulted by the random chance arrangement of the four nucleotides is 1 out of 4 6000 or 2.3x10 3216 !
A Trillion Years to Solve the Rubik's Cube
Life is not contained within a single protein, however. Several proteins are required for even the basic functions of the simplest living organism. Even the most simple known cell, such as the mycoplasma, may have 750 proteins. The list of proteins essential for survival may be narrowed down to 238 proteins. The probability of forming these 239 proteins from left-handed amino acids has been calculated to be 1 in 10 29,345. Remember, the estimated number of particles in the universe is 10 30. (It seems that the evolutionists certainly believe in miracles ... but not in a Miracle Maker!)
Many times we hear evolutionists using the term "primitive cell," although we have no example of such. One of the simplest living systems, the tiny bacterial cell, is exceedingly complex. Dr. Michael Denton describes the bacterial cell, which weighs less than 10 -12 grams, as: "... in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up of one thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world."1
Our human body has over 200,000 types of proteins in its cells, and the odds of just one of those proteins evolving by chance is vast. Sir Fred Hoyle, still an evolutionist, likens this to a blindfolded subject trying to solve the Rubik's cube. The blindfolded man has no way of knowing whether he is getting closer to the solution or actually farther away. According to Hoyle, if the blindfolded subject were to make one random move every second, it would take him on the average three hundred times the supposed age of the earth, 1.35 trillion years, to solve the cube.2
Out of the 200,000 proteins in our body, roughly 2,000 provided the very essential function of cellular metabolism, similar to that in a bacterial cell. The odds of those essential enzymes arriving by chance is extremely large, almost improbable. As stated by Drs. Hoyle and Wickramasinghe, "the trouble is that there are about two thousand enzymes, and the chance of obtaining them all in a random trial is only one part in (10 20) 2000 = 10 40,000, which is an outrageously small probability that could not be faced even if the whole universe consisted of organic soup."3 This is about the same chance as throwing an uninterrupted sequence of 50,000 sixes with a pair of dice.
Hoyle described the thinking of those who leap to these improbable conclusions as a "junkyard mentality." To believe natural processes assembled a living cell is like believing a tornado could pass through a junkyard containing the bits and pieces of a airplane, and leave a Boeing 747 in its wake, fully assembled and ready to fly!
The magic ingredient in the evolutionists' model is time and chance, but it seems to take more faith to believe in chance than it does to have faith in the creative power of God. Nobel prize winner and discoverer of DNA's double helix structure, biochemist Francis Crick, concedes: "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have to have been satisfied to get it going."4
Dr. Hubert P. Yockey, former chief of the Reactor Branch at Aberdeen Proving Ground in England, accurately summed up our present scientific situation: "one must conclude that ... a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written."
A Dead Cell Is a Dead Cell
When we gaze into the microscope of life, we observe the precision of an unparalleled system. Yet, even if we took all the proteins essential for a living cell and placed them within a test tube, we would still not succeed in producing life. A dead cell has all the essential components to function but something has offset the precision of its operation. Dead cells in a test tube will always remain dead no matter what is done to them, even though they seem to have the ingredients for life. Life does not simply consist of a mere assemblage of the right compounds or proteins.
When God created life in the beginning, He created life in its entirety - living cells, animals and plants. God imparted His life into all living things and was also the sustainer of what He made. Jesus Christ is often referred to as the source of life (John 1:4, John 14:6) and we know that all things were made through Him (John 1:30). It was through Jesus that God created the world (Hebrews 1:2) and by Him all things exist (Hebrews 2:10). The life of God is the very essence of all living things. Not only was it His infinite wisdom that assembled all the ingredients of life in perfect order, but it was His life that charged those ingredients with life itself.
1 Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis (Bethesda, MD: Adler & Adler, Publishers, Inc., 1985), p. 250.
2 Fred Hoyle, The Intelligent Universe (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1983), p. 12.
3 Fred Hoyle and C, Wickramasinghe, Evolution from Space. (London: J.M. Dent and Sons, 1981), p. 24.
4 Francis Crick, Life Itself (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981), p. 88. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 2:37:44 PM | sorry jackyfrost. wonka is on a roll, and it's fun to watch ...
AND it's very impressive.
AND it's very informative.
well done wonka.
jfk could allegedly read 5000 words per minute (wouldnt it be nice, eh?). comes in handy when you need to read policy papers and respond. what are you at? (average person is between 200 and 300 i think). | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 2:42:25 PM | Charlie...
Try re-reading Wonka's post. He clearly differentiates between evolution and the primordial soup.
You post esstentially attack the soup part...which Wonka very clearly admitted was in its scientific infancy.
Also, thank you for posting your source of that article. | |
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Enryk
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Joined: 12/15/2005
Msg: 3043 | |
| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 4:59:40 PM | Hi, I have been away a couple of days and you guys have been pretty active, well done.
Wonka you are doing extremely well and you have all my professional respect, but certainly advise you for the sake of the discussion to keep the position of "science communicator" rather than of a lecturer at uni. What I am saying is that I wouldn't expect to have a state-of-the-art discussion about macroevolution or gene hitch-hiking in a POF forum and I certainly avoid them and refer them to the right "newsgroup" or forum elsewhere. Having said that, I also learn a lot from you guys.
It is just a suggestion.
Now I am adding just bits and pieces here. Sorry if seems redundant.
quoting Coffee
Genetics point out a common Intelligent Designer utilizing the same building blocks for a fruit fly as a human. ....
.....They all are predominently built from steel, plastic, copper, rubber, glass, etc.
Probably because those materials work.
I guess you were referring to proteins and genetic material such as DNA.
Why both components are so common in "living organisms"? well a cell biologist and a biochemist could tell you one thing: they can dissolve in water, especially DNA. Another great thing about proteins is that they are dynamic, they can flip, twist and turn (of course, under certain conditions and the more complicated, the more delicate they get) very quickly in response to the environment around.
We are 75 to 95 % water. Who put it there? do not ask me that.
But I can tell you that we certainly have "building blocks" which can cope with those high amounts of water all around. That is no surprise.
A search on Google for "junk DNA" lists a large number of scientific sites are coming to the conclusion that it isn't as much junk as was previously thought.
The common DNA strands between the species is actually more proof of an ID than it is for Evolution since these ultra-conserved regions shouldn't exist. The odds of mice and humans for example having over 500 strands of similar DNA strands is impossible at the rate the observed DNA changes from generation to generation.
First of all, I do not understand why you put these two things together.
Junk DNA is, as Wonka mentioned, a misnomer. A name given to chunks of genetic material which does not encode a protein. Nowadays we know that it has a lot of functions on gene expression and dynamics within the cell nucleus.
Now, the "common DNA strands" refers to pieces of DNA sequence which are identical/very similar/lookalike in many organisms. We know that a few of them are very involved in very basic functions of organisms such as gene regulation or DNA replication. Nope, those sequences are not there by "chance". They are there because they have a role! And yes, it would be statistically impossible to have them if they were subjected to the normal mutation rate, but so it seems these regions are so necessary in our house-keeping that if any mutations appear... bye bye.
Changing subject to davie, this one was for Wonka but I didnt really get it
Its my understanding that DNA cannot function without at least 75 preexisting proteins, but proteins are produced only at the direction of DNA. Because each needs the other, a satisfactory explanation for the origin of one must also explain the origin of the other. The components of these manufacturing systems must have come into existence simultaneously. right. wouldnt this suggest that they were created?
Davie, were you asking about amino acids (the alphabet Wonka was talking about) or about the DNA "machinery", which is a legion of proteins involved in packing, unpacking, copying, repairing, expressing, chopping and moving around the DNA?
If this was the case, I am going to take it from a different perspective from Wonka... "Evolution does not progress to the more complex" I would say "E. does not necessarily progress to the more complex".
I just can say that what we observe in primitive bacteria is that their DNA systems are way more simple from what you see in animals for example, in the number of proteins involved and its mechanisms of control as well. So we assume that in general, the more PRIMITIVE (key point) the organism (lineage), the simpler the mechanisms and that holds if you compare an archeobacteria with yeast and yeast with worm and worm with human, of course referring to DNA machinery. We humans certainly have not a developed mechanism to deal with hydrogen sulphide or heavy metals as many archeobacteria do.
Chaos and Complexity are certainly not my fields, but yes, I favour the idea of trial-and-error too.
- by David Skjaerlund
Evolutionists claim that life originated by natural processes, when one organism changed into another solely by chance. They propose that successive species of life arose over eons of time to produce the vast complexity and diversity of life we see in the world today. However, upon closer examination of these "natural processes," one finds the statistical probability of life originating by chance to be incredibly small and unlikely.
AHHHHH the statistical probability of a reptile becoming a bird is null, yes. And the statistical probability of a wordless song featuring a stupid annoying frog without a bike to become a No.1 hit in Europe was also very very unlikely...
Well I think that all the "calculations" in that text were based on the assumption of one thing fitting with the other spontaneously, which is not the case in the model Evolution proposes.
What is the probability of synthesizing a protein with a specific sequence? Let us simplify the situation first. For example, if there are 17 students in a class, how many possible ways exist for them to order themselves in a line? It would take the students a long time to physically try all the possibilities since there are over 355 trillion different ways. If the number of students were increased to 20, equal to the number of amino acids that exist, the number of possible ways would be over 10 18 different ways, the number of seconds in 4.5 billion years!
Mami, mami, guess what! I made a protein this morning. 
Sorry, the evolution model does not propose that.
What we see in gene duplication for example is that one protein normally becomes non-functional and later loses or gains domains and eventually acquires a new function. *I can expand on this, but too long post so far....
Oh dear, it annoys me when people put quotations out of context.
Putting Francis Crick, who was talking about the miracle in the origin of life, into a intelligent design argument is completely ludicrous.
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My rant of the day:
I would love to see God quitting, resigning his job. That could make everybody happy.
The believers because they will know that God exists
and the non believers because there wont be God anymore.
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/9/2006 5:56:30 PM |
...but I'd like to know what is actually known about the theory, as well as what is logical inference or deduction and what is simply contrarian surmise.
Yeah, I'm quoting myself, at least since I realised this might lead to some misunderstanding. What I was trying to say was that, while the scientific community disagrees on particulars, they essentially agree on the overarching theory. This quoted portion was to ask about the viewpoints of those who do not comprise the scientific community and, for whatever reason, disagree with the theory of evolution.
Let me re-invoke the same analogy as above. Do you know anything about structural engineering?
Actually, Wonka, please let me re-invoke another of your analogies. Remember the chair defined as something possessing the quality of "chairness?" From my perspective, for the most part, you and I are pointing at a chair trying to convince each other, one that it is a chair, the other that it possesses "chairness." My response to your use of the structural engineering analogy is simply that, in the case of the theory of evolution, there is no impending earthquake (unless one wants to argue that we're in the middle of arguing it now). I am (and other, I'm sure are also) looking at it more as though they themselves are looking to build a house. For my part, I have faith, based on the evidence (certification, college degree, work record, etc.), that the structural engineer is going to build a better house. I'm going with that guy, dig? But, there are plenty of others out there that don't appear to make the distinction (again, for whatever reason) and either do not know of the degrees and license, etc. or are willing to accept the local scuttlebutt that the engineer is a hardcore drinker, wifebeater, whatever. The point being that there are plenty of folks who do accept evolution, many others who don't. Not all of those who do, do so on the basis of being well-informed regarding the particulars, but simply accept that what little they've been taught is sufficient to merit their acceptance. In this way, it is, arguably a matter of faith. Faith based on reliable information, yes, but faith nonetheless. I'm not saying this makes "Darwinism" or "Evolutionism" the massive religious constructs they are sometimes made out to be. What I'm saying is that more education is doubtless needed before folks realise not only what is rational, but why.
The shared ancestry of all life is blatantly obvious to the naked eye...
I'm afraid I disagree. I do not immediately, upon encountering a mosquito or a planarian or a marsupial, assume common ancestry. It's taken the realisations I've come to through thought and study for me to even notice, much less understand. Let me just say that, if common ancestry were as blatant as that, there'd probably be a lot less debate.
A good analogy would be the automotive field.
They also have different and distinct builders, or "progenitors." In addition, the vehicles we use today have observably "evolved" in both form and function from their original forebears. Bad analogy on my part, but I'm sure you see how the comparison to life is equally equivocal.
Genetics point out a common Intelligent Designer utilizing the same building blocks for a fruit fly as a human.
See, and here's the issue. There's no way known or even thought of to test whether that's the case. Likewise, there may be no effective way to test as to whether or not DNA commonality really points towards a common ancestor for all life. Here's the point both sides can agree on: Genetics points to a common origin for all life, yes?
would you pick the structure designer if he had any part building the World Trade Center.
Wait. Is this supposed to imply that the designer of the building was somehow responsible for it being destroyed?
Its my understanding that DNA cannot function without at least 75 preexisting proteins, but proteins are produced only at the direction of DNA.
I was not aware of a specific number of proteins being necessary for the functioning of DNA, however, one hypothetical precursor to DNA, RNA, is believed to have possibly spontaneously occured under favorable conditions. RNA catalyses molecules and proteins and, in an environment without DNA, could have, in its "life cycle," catalysed its environment into one eventually conducive to the existence of DNA. It's also my take on this that, while, yes, DNA does produce proteins, proteins are naturally occurring and do seem to "spontaneously generate" without the prior existence of DNA.
Also When a cell divides, its DNA is copied, sometimes with errors. Each animal and plant has machinery that identifies and corrects most errors.. If it did not, the organism would deteriorate and become extinct. If evolution happened, which evolved first, DNA or its repair mechanism?
As I understand it, saying "each requires the other" is not the actual issue. From my take, they are each part of each other. The same underlying principles, basically. One of the issues is that folks look at the concept of cell division and they see "machinery" building a new cell. This may be an effective visual for people in a technologically advanced society to understand some of the concepts involved, but it's not necessarily particularly accurate. Again, this is the way I understand it (and if I'm way off, someone set me right), but the "parts" of the whole process are literally outgrowths of one another. On a chemical level, they're merely catalysing or reacting with the materials around them, but as an organic unit, they are not so much "performing their function" (although that is how we see and understand it) so much as they are "in the right place at the right time." Possibly, this could be interpreted as being the case "by design," but it's not so much necessarily by the design of a world-creating supernatural entity, as that these are the materials and components that saturate that environment.
It's quite possible that early life was far too variable to form complex organisms at first, but this is where Chaos and Complexity theory comes in. Random systems can manifest predictable and structural consequences.
Interesting, Wonka. I hadn't actually focused on that. In my "vision" if you will of the development, it's kind of like my last paragraph, almost a "progression" (not to be confused with the "directed progress" that many people envision of evolution) of environments evolving as a result of their components.
Evolutionists claim that life originated by natural processes...
Charlie, I don't mean to "jump on" you about this, but, when the article you post starts out with what is either the blatant misrepresentation of the stance of evolutionary thinking or a figment of an ideology's collective imagination (the straw man that there are "evolutionists" and that they, as a group, espouse a particular "origin of life" scenario), how exactly is it expected that folks take it seriously?
This is long, and I've already gone and wiped a lot of it, simply because it was either me ranting, or it was just irrelevant, or both. Mostly both. Anyway, I'll get back to the article Charlie posted. It does look interesting, but the question I've asked is still valid. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/10/2006 4:45:20 AM | Who cares?
It was a long time ago, know one will ever know what happened and doesn't really matter.
The chicken or the egg? Who cares?
Whats the next silly debate? Are Zebras white and black or black and white? hmmmmm. just silly | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/10/2006 6:42:27 AM | Just silly...
What if I suggested that posting your opinion in a thread that you think is pointless qualifies as silly? (Wink, Wink, nudge, nudge). | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/10/2006 6:51:38 AM | Because it probably caught her eye like it did to me and gave in to the need to throw in her 2 cents. Like I just did lol
Personally in respect to the OP, I don't care either. I think if evolution is wrong, then its odd how much scietific evidence there is to support it both on Earth and in the cosmos' movements.
Whereas Creation theory is mostly theory. (not trying to be insulting) Something snaps its fingers and stars appear out of nowhere. whatever, if it makes you happy to believe that, then great. I'll stick with the supportive evidence myself. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/10/2006 7:36:28 AM | Sunshineface2
"Whereas Creation theory is mostly a theory."
This thread is long, and as such many topics have been discussed on a few different occassions. One such discussion has dealt with 'what is a theory'.
In an effort to be short, a theory is essentially a scientific construct that is constantly changing and evolving to account for new data / methodology / evidence. Evolution is an excellent example of a thoery. It is constanting changing, updating, and reorganizing itself to best account for the available evidency. On the other hand Creationism is more of a story then a theory in terms of scientific methodology. So when you suggest that Creationism is a theory, I think that may be a little bit misleading.
I hate to quibble about semantics, but it is a pretty important distinction. | |
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| Creation vs Evolution
Posted: 1/10/2006 7:40:24 AM | Evolution is a theroy,
Creation is a fact
To suppose that the eye could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. Statement made by Charles Darwin | |
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