(March 15, 2016 at 3:39 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(March 14, 2016 at 6:48 am)AJW333 Wrote: I have two choices, one is to believe that amazingly complex living systems created themselves via random activity, or that each of these systems has a unique design from an external creative source. You believe that the odds of the former are acceptable and I believe the odds are far better for the latter.

You continue to dodge the question, which isn't surprising by this point, but you also aren't able to cover for your critical weak spot: there are more than two choices. In the scenario you describe- and apparently I'm just going to have to go with the fact that you have no positive evidence, since if you did you'd have presented it by now- then the odds don't matter at all.

Odds always matter. If the chances of something happening are extremely remote, why would that not matter?

(March 15, 2016 at 3:39 pm)Esquilax Wrote: In the absence of positive evidence for a position, even if you don't like the odds for a falsely dichotomous alternative (and I'll get into why that is something you've chosen ignorantly in a moment) then the position is "I don't know," not "I know it's god." Assuming that your statements are absolutely correct, and that you aren't actually baselessly dismissing one option (you are, but we'll get there next) then what you have, by your own evasive admission, two positions with zero evidence behind them. You don't then get to assign the other alternative a positive value without evidence simply because you like it better: your god is not some default position. In the absence of evidence for any other alternative, you still don't have anything to rationally accept the god claim with.

There is a stack of evidence that life is the product of design. I can't do anything about a person's choice to ignore it or deny that it exists. If I walk down the street and find a wristwatch on the ground, I don't assume it evolved by itself. I examine it and find evidence of organized design and conclude that it has a designer. If the watch had no markings, how could I prove the existence of the designer? I couldn't. Does that mean I have to take the position that the watch has no designer? That would be illogical.

So it is the existence of design that proves the existence of a designer. 

I will answer the other parts of your post shortly - I have to log off.

(March 16, 2016 at 10:01 pm)Minimalist Wrote:

(March 15, 2016 at 6:24 pm)Stimbo Wrote: What someone - even scientists - believe is irrelevant. What they can show to be true is not. That you keep referring to "many scientists" but haven't given even one name or published paper that we can factcheck is revealing. It's like that bit in the bible where Jesus invents the "yo momma" joke.

Hey, Stim.

You don't suppose he's full of shit, do you?

But the answer is yes.

(March 16, 2016 at 10:22 pm)AJW333 Wrote: Odds always matter. If the chances of something happening are extremely remote, why would that not matter?

Because if you happen upon any given phenomena, crying "that's so improbable!" doesn't actually make the phenomena not be happening. The odds don't exert any influence over events that have already occurred. You pointing out the improbability of an event will not cause that event to cease to exist: if the evidence for a given conclusion points one way, then that is where your conclusion should lie, no matter how improbable. Did you forget that "improbable" is still a positive probability? We live in a vast universe: there is enough chance for every improbable thing to happen.

... Not that you've bothered to demonstrate how you determined the odds in this case, anyway. You've made a claim that you seem content to provide no justification for, like you somehow suspect we'll just take your unqualified assertion as fact. Can you actually justify your conclusion?

Quote:There is a stack of evidence that life is the product of design. I can't do anything about a person's choice to ignore it or deny that it exists.

You would need to present some first, rather than just insinuating that I'd unreasonably reject it out of hand. Surprisingly, your passive aggressive well poisoning does not count as evidence of your god.

Quote:If I walk down the street and find a wristwatch on the ground, I don't assume it evolved by itself. I examine it and find evidence of organized design and conclude that it has a designer.

So I asked you for positive evidence of design, and you respond with "I found evidence of design." That's what you think, not why you think it. Present this evidence, don't just demand that it exists.

Quote:If the watch had no markings, how could I prove the existence of the designer? I couldn't. Does that mean I have to take the position that the watch has no designer? That would be illogical.

But again, you've not presented any indications of design. Just saying they exist isn't sufficient: point some out specifically. So far you've shown yourself to be shockingly ignorant of evolution and even basic science: consider for a moment that what you find to be design has a perfectly natural, demonstrable explanation, that you're simply not privy to... because you won't look into it before you come to a conclusion about it. Every time one of you guys blusters in with an example of design, it turns out to have a scientific answer. Sometimes, that even happens in court. You won't have anything new, but then, we won't know until you actually present some evidence, rather than just repeating that you have it.

Quote:So it is the existence of design that proves the existence of a designer. 

So what evidence led you to conclude the existence of design? You're being remarkably evasive on this point: don't you have any?

(March 15, 2016 at 3:39 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Oh, by the way? How did you determine there were only two possibilities? Can you even tell me how you've ruled out an unknown alternative? Or panspermia? Multiverse theory? Literally anything else, other than the one possibility you've presupposed, and the other that you've simply asserted without justification, based solely on your own ignorance and incredulity, is impossible? Just because you won't consider anything else, doesn't mean there are only two options, even if your fiat nothing were actually a rational argument.

Concerning panspermia, you have the same problem as developing life on earth, any extra terrestrial life would have to have evolved from non-life. I don't see that as a major rebuttal of anything I've said. The multiverse theory is basically saying that other dimensions exist. This isn't in conflict with the Scriptures. The 12th century Hebrew scholar Nachmonides concluded from his studies of the book of Genesis that the universe has ten dimensions: four are knowable and six are beyond perception..

(March 16, 2016 at 10:22 pm)AJW333 Wrote: There is a stack of evidence that life is the product of design.

Kent Howind kind of evidence, Ray Comfort kind of evidence. Ken Ham kind of evidence. In short, absolutely useless evidence.

(March 15, 2016 at 4:04 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

(March 15, 2016 at 7:25 am)AJW333 Wrote: Plenty of substance that you choose to ignore. Is it "silly" to say that our  actual experience of genetic mutation in humans is overwhelmingly negative? Absolutely not.

Actually, it is silly, given that what you're saying isn't, you know, true? Your lack of knowledge on this subject is really very embarrassing: you asked in an earlier post "how many mothers wish that their babies have genetic mutations?" and in turn, I have a question for you: do you know how many mothers are going to have babies with genetic mutations?

All of them.

I mean, hell, man, did you even look this up before you spoke? Human beings have about sixty genetic mutations from birth, inescapably. We gain more the longer we live. The vast majority of mutations are small and entirely neutral: my hyper-extending elbows are mutations, and they haven't done me any damage. I know the popular, uninformed conception of mutations are the big, dramatic ones, but as usual, the reality is far more low key and, well, realistic. Unless you're a direct clone of your parents, every single difference in appearance between you and your parents are mutations. I'm taller than anyone in my family: mutation. Big feet? Mutation. And so on.

Contextually, I was using "mutation" to refer to substantial changes in the DNA. What you are calling mutation here, I would regard as "variation" but If you want to score points, that's OK with me. The major issue at hand is that substantial DNA mutations are typically harmfull to the organisms survival - a point conceded by others on this thread.

(March 15, 2016 at 4:04 pm)Esquilax Wrote:

Quote:Is it "silly" to question how a 3 billion piece code mutated itself into existence when all we tend to see is mutation doing damage to human DNA? Absolutely not.

We don't tend to see that. You don't even see that, because I'm fairly convinced you've never so much as attempted to look.

Of all the major mutations that would substantially change human DNA, the trend is overwhelmingly negative. Here is a list of just some of them;


   Achondroplasia
   Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency
   Antiphospholipid Syndrome
   Autism
   Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease
   Breast cancer
   Charcot-Marie-Tooth
   Colon cancer
   Cri du chat
   Crohn's Disease
   Cystic fibrosis
   Dercum Disease
   Down Syndrome
   Duane Syndrome
   Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy
   Factor V Leiden Thrombophilia
   Familial Hypercholesterolemia
   Familial Mediterranean Fever
   Fragile X Syndrome
   Gaucher Disease
   Hemochromatosis
   Hemophilia
   Holoprosencephaly
   Huntington's disease
   Klinefelter syndrome
   Marfan syndrome
   Myotonic Dystrophy
   Neurofibromatosis
   Noonan Syndrome
   Osteogenesis Imperfecta
   Parkinson's disease
   Phenylketonuria
   Poland Anomaly
   Porphyria
   Progeria
   Prostate Cancer
   Retinitis Pigmentosa
   Severe Combined Immunodeficiency (SCID)
   Sickle cell disease
   Skin Cancer
   Spinal Muscular Atrophy
   Tay-Sachs
   Thalassemia
   Trimethylaminuria
   Turner Syndrome
   Velocardiofacial Syndrome
   WAGR Syndrome
   Wilson Disease
https://www.genome.gov/10001204

In terms of positive changes that mutations have brought to humanity, I don't doubt that there are some. But I would argue that they are more subtle than radical. How many gene mutations radically changed humanity for the better?

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(March 15, 2016 at 6:24 pm)Stimbo Wrote:

(March 15, 2016 at 6:13 pm)AJW333 Wrote: How do you reconcile the theories of extra dimensions and SCIENTIFIC fact? No one's proven that they exist but yet many scientists are convinced that they are real.

What someone - even scientists - believe is irrelevant. What they can show to be true is not.

Pretty much rules out a whole chunk of physics, especially in the quantum world, which pretty much always begins with the theoretical.

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(March 15, 2016 at 8:44 pm)Esquilax Wrote: "A scientific theory is a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that is acquired through the scientific method and repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation."[/url] A theory in science isn't distinct from a fact, a theory is made of multiple facts, posed as an explanation of why they happen.

"Repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation." So if this is the case, how was the theory of evolution tested and observed? Did anyone observe one species turn into another species, ever?

(March 17, 2016 at 5:51 pm)AJW333 Wrote:

(March 15, 2016 at 3:39 pm)Esquilax Wrote: Oh, by the way? How did you determine there were only two possibilities? Can you even tell me how you've ruled out an unknown alternative? Or panspermia? Multiverse theory? Literally anything else, other than the one possibility you've presupposed, and the other that you've simply asserted without justification, based solely on your own ignorance and incredulity, is impossible? Just because you won't consider anything else, doesn't mean there are only two options, even if your fiat nothing were actually a rational argument.

Concerning panspermia, you have the same problem as developing life on earth, any extra terrestrial life would have to have evolved from non-life. I don't see that as a major rebuttal of anything I've said. The multiverse theory is basically saying that other dimensions exist. This isn't in conflict with the Scriptures. The 12th century Hebrew scholar Nachmonides concluded from his studies of the book of Genesis that the universe has ten dimensions: four are knowable and six are beyond perception..

The rebuttal is that you've seemingly just pulled your odds out of thin air, and haven't based them on anything factual. All the rest was just to illustrate that "abiogenesis/intelligent design" is a false dichotomy, and by the way, going back and eliminating my other suggested possibilities- which were just there as throwaway suggestions to show that your claim is wrong from top to bottom- doesn't resolve the central issue, which is that you have not even started demonstrating that there are only two possibilities, and not more.

Now, is there any particular reason why you opted not to show us how you derived your odds, and why you seem to be selectively responding to questions so that you never answer for the utterly insubstantial nature of your claims?

(March 17, 2016 at 6:19 pm)AJW333 Wrote: Contextually, I was using "mutation" to refer to substantial changes in the DNA. What you are calling mutation here, I would regard as "variation" but If you want to score points, that's OK with me. The major issue at hand is that substantial DNA mutations are typically harmfull to the organisms survival - a point conceded by others on this thread.

You don't get to just redefine words, though. Mutation refers to alterations in DNA, not just large ones, and frankly, it's a little dishonest to only be selectively referring to certain things to make your case seem stronger than it is if you phrase it accurately. The vast majority of mutations that happen are smaller ones, and the dramatic evolutionary examples are accretions of multiple small mutations over successive generations, not single-step large mutations.

What this is, is that you're pointing to a vanishingly small minority of cases, ignoring the majority that directly contradict your point, and then asserting that the minority is what counts. I have no idea why you think that's okay.

Quote:Of all the major mutations that would substantially change human DNA, the trend is overwhelmingly negative. Here is a list of just some of them;

Substantial changes aren't the only ones described within evolution. They aren't even the main form of mutation within evolution; you're literally ignoring the driving force mechanism of the theory in your quest to discredit it. You are aware that evolution as mainstream science understands it most often concerns itself with small changes adding up over long time spans and not large changes in short ones, yes? Or is this another area of evolution you haven't bothered to study before deciding it's wrong?

Quote:In terms of positive changes that mutations have brought to humanity, I don't doubt that there are some. But I would argue that they are more subtle than radical. How many gene mutations radically changed humanity for the better?

Why do you think radical changes are the most important thing, when they account for a vanishingly small percentage of evolutionary changes that, in a non-apex species without the benefit of modern medicine, would have been selected out of the population? Why are you pretending that the rarest expression of evolution is its main component?

Quote:"Repeatedly tested and confirmed through observation and experimentation." So if this is the case, how was the theory of evolution tested and observed? Did anyone observe one species turn into another species, ever?

Yes, actually. Oh, did you think I'd have to say no? Guess you didn't do any research there, either.

Start at 5.0 here. This is a lengthy list of speciation events- that is, one species evolving into another- and I need to warn you in advance: if you look at this list and then come back to me and scoff that it's "microevolution," or "well, they're still fruit flies," or some shit like that, I'm going to demand that, when you do that, you show me the mainstream, peer reviewed, scientific literature that mentions microevolution as a meaningful distinction from evolution in general, or that suggests that evolution is fruit flies turning into something completely different in one generation.

If you intend to read my link and then come back at me with a misrepresentation of evolution, you're going to be discredited for it. You have been warned.

(March 15, 2016 at 8:44 pm)Esquilax Wrote: If there's an afterlife and accountability to a divine judge that'll grant you an unlimited pardon so long as you believe the right things and bow and scrape, like your god does, then the same question could be posed to you: since the entirety of your religious salvation is predicated on escape from accountability via a sacrifice that has already been made and can absolve you of any crime so long as you accept it, why aren't you doing whatever you want, what difference does it make?

Clearly you don't understand the Christian faith. The sacrifice of Christ was not made so that we could go on sinning, it was made so that we could be reconnected to God and to be empowered to overcome sin.

(March 15, 2016 at 8:44 pm)Esquilax Wrote: In my case, I've got about seven billion people on this planet that I'm accountable to, some of them including friends and family that I don't want to lose, and future generations, who will inherit the planet after I'm gone. That's a much more solid level of accountability than some god you can't even demonstrate exists, who's already given you a free pass for life, if your religion is to be believed.

You make it sound like the Christian faith ignores the rest of the world. Atheists, as a subset of our community are a million miles behind what the Church does, and has done for the poor for centuries. When you catch up, feel free to criticize. BTW, can you give me a list of atheist charities?

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(March 15, 2016 at 8:49 pm)IATIA Wrote:

(March 15, 2016 at 6:13 pm)AJW333 Wrote: How do you reconcile the theories of extra dimensions and SCIENTIFIC fact? No one's proven that they exist but yet many scientists are convinced that they are real. 

Everything that we are capable of testing under QM has proven to be true.  QM shows that there are other dimensions.

Can you give me a reference for the proof of these other dimensions?

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(March 16, 2016 at 7:01 am)robvalue Wrote: DNA isn't a code, our intepretation of DNA forms a code for convenience. Yet another equivocation.

What is a codon and what does it do?

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(March 16, 2016 at 7:05 am)pocaracas Wrote:

(March 16, 2016 at 6:56 am)AJW333 Wrote: So if the vast majority of mutations wreak havoc with an organism, and a vast number of positive mutations are required to go from pond slime to human beings, isn't it a giant leap of faith to think you could go from one living organism in the beginning, to hundreds of thousands of wildly different species with virtually no trace of failed intermediates?

The "failed intermediates" never survived enough to breed and pass on their failed genetic makeup. How would you be expecting to spot them?


Also, I think that, in the beginning, there must have been lots of similar self-replicating "organisms" which all self-assembled spontaneously in the same "soup" conditions...

 Failed intermediates may not be the best terminology. I was wondering why we don't see a stack of weird half breeds or transitional species in the fossil record. Given that there are so many thousands of different species that presumably evolved from one life form, why don't we see an abundance of evidence for species transition?

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(March 16, 2016 at 7:49 am)abaris Wrote:

(March 16, 2016 at 7:20 am)AJW333 Wrote: So out of the estimated 107 billion human beings that have ever lived, dating back over 200,000 years, what new species have evolved so far?

Stupid is as stupid does, as Forrest Gump used to say. Maybe keep up with research and recent fossil finds, if that's not too much to ask.

You haven't asked why there are still monkeys so far. But I'm sure that's on the horizon too, since it's in the book of apologist 101.

"The term “Cambrian Explosion” refers to the appearance and rapid diversification of most major living animal body plans (phyla) in the fossil record within an interval of perhaps 20 million years or less, a relatively short period in evolutionary history." http://biologos.org/common-questions/sci...-explosion

We are expected to believe that thousands of different species evolved in a massive explosion of life in the relatively short time frame, 20 million years. Now if man kind has been around for 200,000 years, which is 1% of the time to go from pond slime to a huge number of advanced life forms, why no new species, and why hasn't man changed much?

(March 17, 2016 at 9:26 pm)AJW333 Wrote: Clearly you don't understand the Christian faith. The sacrifice of Christ was not made so that we could go on sinning, it was made so that we could be reconnected to God and to be empowered to overcome sin.

Yeah, it just doesn't matter if you sin, so long as you believe, since sin is inescapable anyway. Use all the positive spin you like, your religion still teaches that there's no accountability so long as you commit to the group's rightthink.

Quote:You make it sound like the Christian faith ignores the rest of the world. Atheists, as a subset of our community are a million miles behind what the Church does, and has done for the poor for centuries. When you catch up, feel free to criticize. BTW, can you give me a list of atheist charities?

The majority of the church's "charity" is in fact just tithes, and the rest generally come with strings attached. Atheist charities do exist- incidentally, did you even bother to search that before deciding none existed, or did you just go with what you want to be true again?- and the upside of them is that, no matter how small, none of them will commit any of the abuses that christian charities do. You won't find an atheist charity, for example, turning away vulnerable homeless women with children because they don't want to risk any unapproved sex going on under their roof, which is a thing that literally happened recently. Not to mention all the lives lost due to christian missionaries and their "charity" in foreign countries; I read a story recently where these great bastions of christian goodwill carried beating sticks on their time abroad, so as to physically assault the natives if they didn't want to go to church, or were anything but deferential during. Shit like that, you will not find among the atheist charities, if you really want to get into a pissing contest.

Atheist charities might not be as large as the church, but they're a million times more effective at their charity.

Quote:Can you give me a reference for the proof of these other dimensions?

So you won't give a single reference for you claims of intelligent design, but you'll happily demand them from others?

Quote: Failed intermediates may not be the best terminology. I was wondering why we don't see a stack of weird half breeds or transitional species in the fossil record. Given that there are so many thousands of different species that presumably evolved from one life form, why don't we see an abundance of evidence for species transition?

Again, your problem is with fossil formation, not evolution. Fossils rarely form, that's in the nature of fossils. Not really our problem: the problem is that you're not familiar with fossils before you decided what their deal is.

Quote:"The term “Cambrian Explosion” refers to the appearance and rapid diversification of most major living animal body plans (phyla) in the fossil record within an interval of perhaps 20 million years or less, a relatively short period in evolutionary history." http://biologos.org/common-questions/sci...-explosion

We are expected to believe that thousands of different species evolved in a massive explosion of life in the relatively short time frame, 20 million years. Now if man kind has been around for 200,000 years, which is 1% of the time to go from pond slime to a huge number of advanced life forms, why no new species, and why hasn't man changed much?

I pointed this out to you the last time you asked, are you just ignoring rebuttals in favor of repeating yourself, now? Evolutionary stasis is a thing, it happens when an organism is well suited enough to its environment that there are no selection pressures selecting for new traits at a sufficiently high level. It happens with sharks, it happens with crocodiles, and it happens with man at a way crazier rate because man, unique among the animals, is a complex enough apex species to completely change their own environment to best suit them. Humans aren't cranking out new species because all of human technology is based around removing hostile selection pressures from our environment.

... In addition to, you know, 200,000 years being the blink of an eye on an evolutionary timescale. Also, I object to you characterizing life before the Cambrian Explosion as "pond slime," because... no, that's not anywhere near true. There were Trilobites during the Precambrian phase, in addition to the common ancestor of molluscs and arthropods, and a number of other hard-bodied creatures. "Pond slime" it was not, and in fact, I'm not even certain you understand what the Cambrian Explosion actually did, since what diversified was physiological distinctions, not clear cut new animal life. Seriously, do your research for a change, instead of stopping at the question you think can stump us.