Disproving the Bible

[The Grand Nudger]

I am pointing out that the "facts" do not disprove my worldview.

If your worldview contains some statement along the lines of "evolution is not a proven fact" then yes - they do.

There is no way in the world that 99% of the evidence points to common ancestry of all life. The only strong evidence is that biologist can breed organism and get them to adapt or evolve some sort of new function in the species or genus levels. To then extrapolate that to all living things across family, order, class, phylum and kingdom is a huge leap.

No, that's not "the only strong evidence", that's not even remotely evidence for common decent. Want me to explain this to you again - from the beginning? Or, will you just clam the fuck up when we reach the "eureka" moment again? What that is...is a strawman that you feel comfortable arguing against. Don't get me wrong, I understand, -your argument- is ridiculous, common decent is not. I'd rather argue against -your argument- as well.

You do realize that common decent and evolution are not interchangeable, don't you? We could have found that evolution had occurred in multiple lineages of uncommon decent - or that evolution had occurred in one lineage but not the other, or that evolution had occurred in none of the non-evidenced multiple lineages of uncommon decent. The door was wide open to any of that. That's just not what we found when we figured out how to look.

I actually read the links you posted on the fossil record. Listing a few dozen or even hundreds of transitional forms does not conclusive evidence make.

Any form can be said to be transitional.

The explanation can easily be that these were different animals. What would be conclusive evidence (99%) is what we don't see--organisms with small changes into a totally new one.

Not something that we would expect to see. Biology has limits. You're looking for a crocoduck, and I won't be surprised when you don't find one. Evolutionarily speaking, you haven't "changed into" anything. You are now what your species has always been. Your not -just- a homo sapien, you're a primate - all the way back to being a bony fish...and even further still. We never stopped being these things, we haven't "changed into something totally new", we simply have a longer list of modifiers than our ancestors. That's all our system of classification is - a list of modifiers. We already need new rungs, as we have observed existing species - speciate.

Nor do we see organisms with strange appendages that would later become something.

Take a look at your feet and tell me they aren't strange hands.

We don't see organism with organs that are not fully functional. The predictive powers of evolution in the fossil record fall well short of your 99%

Non-functioning organs would be something we'd expect to find as an exception, not a rule. Genetic economy. What evolution predicts is that we would find that organs can have more than one use. That structures can be re-tasked or re-purposed. That "feet" can make workable "flukes". Ever seen a whale stand on his feet? That's what we might call "not fully functional". They seem to do aight though, eh?

In the area of genetics, we have some orphaned genes that show up out of nowhere. You have groups of genes showing up in branches of organisms where the theory predicts they should not be. The counter argument is "look at all the common genes" or "see the junk DNA from older organisms". Some common genes are expected for all living things.

-Sure, if they're related. Your genes come from your parents...remember? Their genes from their's......and so on and so forth. This is where they come from. Would you like to present some other source...so that we don't have just this one to consider? That would be all you had to do to erode the notion of common descent.

We are finding uses for junk DNA so that is certainly not in the 99% range of proof. When you draw out the genetic tree of life, you get convoluted connections that don't make sense. Genetics is certainly not the conclusive proof that evolutionist thought it would be.

Actually, it is. Always willing to explain this to you again.......

In micro-biology, we are finding that things are more complicated than they seemed to be (actually a better phrase would be mind-boggling complicated). How did DNA evolve? How did a cell evolve? How do GRNs evolve? Do you honestly think we know within your 99%?

Pointing to any particular thing we don't know won't have the effect of waiving away what we do.

The origin of life challenges, the first domino in this chain of events, is a massive mystery. Does that fit into the 99% certainty or is that a separate issue? Because it is a necessary ingredient and proving that life could come from non-life would be an immense proof that all this could have happened.

You're not bitching about evolution or genetics anymore - you're whining about abiogenesis. We don't know. End of, for now, maybe forever - we.....don't.......know. Understand? However this occurred - even if a god "poofed" the first living thing into existence, what we do now...is that since then, life has been evolving.

Has there been enough time for all the necessary mutations to occur, accumulate, and evolve all the necessary organisms? What is the rate of beneficial mutations? Is there are flaw in thinking that minute random mutations accumulate toward a beneficial end--getting "selected by the organism even though there is no immediate functional value or is it more probably that mutations that are not of immediate beneficial use are corrected, selected out, or die off. To make this even more complicated, multiple mutations are needed in multiple genes to effect even the first step in the chain to make a beneficial change--requiring an exponential amount of time, during which the organism has to keep around genetic material of no immediate use. While I am not a scientist, this does not sound like 99% certainty.

A mutation does not need to be beneficial for it to persist in a population. It need only be non-deleterious. Nothing is "accumulating toward a beneficial end" - there is no "toward" and there is no "end". Get it? That shit - would be the purvey of ID, not evolution.

Regarding the article, you want to give the impression that these people are uneducated hacks.

They are -educated- hacks. That makes it even worse.