How do you know God isn't dead?

[The Grand Nudger]

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I will try to keep this very simple for you. An organ transplant tissue match requires very similar genetics, so much so that often siblings are not matches for one another. So even though you claim that Aboriginals and Europeans have been separated for thousands upon thousands of years, not enough significant evolutionary change has occurred between the two groups in order to make tissue matches impossible.

Which is why we remain the same species. Thank you for conceding the point. "Not enough significant evolutionary change" is not interchangeable with "no evolutionary change". Had there been enough, it would be a speciation event (even then tissue transplants aren't of the table - ask mice and pigs) - had there be none....we wouldn't find that divergence so well expressed in mutations of those genetic markers related to skin color.

Differing skin colors between groups of people is not Evolution, the genetic information needed to produce those skin colors were present in the parent populations. You’re committing the fallacy of equivocation by changing the definition of the term Evolution in the midst of the discussion.

You clearly don't have any idea what evolution is - so it isn't surprising that you're mistaken yet again. There is a demonstrated change in allele frequencies between populations of human beings, one of which being the mutations and expressions of all of those genes mentioned. You've attempted to sneak in cretinist claptrap with your comment about what was or was not present within parent populations. This is inconsequential - all that is required is change. In the same way that darwins parent population of finches all had beaks- so too did the offspring, nevertheless evolution occurred there, as it has in us.

Why does the explanation have to be Darwinian? Where does this faith commitment to the theory come from? If you do not know the explanation then just admit it and do not try to sell everyone on the idea that it must still be a Darwinian explanation.

Oh it didn't have to be, it just came out in the wash that it was the best explanation. Could've been waffles. That would have tickled me pink, but unfortunately it wasn't. Has the irony of this particular line of argumentation ever dawned on you btw? In addition to being unable to point to anything that requires faith - the very best you could hope to establish here is to suggest that faith is involved - faith as a pejorative.

There are over 20,000 creation articles available for free online and several peer-reviewed creation journals available for subscription; if you cared about the truth you’d educate yourself on the theory.

Pick your favorite, and make a case. I'll be in that thread as well.

Did you not read what I wrote? In order for Common Descent to be valid, you need trillions upon trillions of cases of beneficial mutations that increase the amount of genetic information in the organism to have taken place in our past. Yet, you’d have a difficult time presenting even two observed cases of this actually happening in Nature, it’s all blind faith. The overwhelming majority of expressed mutations are harmful to the organism’s chances of survival.

My rereading your post won't make it any less inaccurate, and clearly my attempts to explain to you where you've went off the rails won't help in that regard either. Laying aside that you've pulled a number out of your ass, and that no beneficial mutations would be required for common descent, and that evolution -by itself- is no indicator of common descent (in the universal sense), and that we can produce beneficial mutations with workaday regularity............

No, no, I guess there's no laying it aside. Your entire response was soup sandwich.

You’re awfully good at making unsupported claims. Who made the prediction? When did they make it? They predicted Humans would have fewer Chromosomes than Chimps? Why?

Reiseberg 2001, Venter et al 2001, Yi et al 2002 - the list is practically endless but any paper dealing with chromosomal speciation hypothesis will reference these three. As they began to hypothesize the vector upon which our divergence from our lca depended their efforts were hampered by our limited access to the genomes of the two organisms involved. The human genome project was a year out of milestone, and the chimp genome project would take two years beyond that. We're currently sequencing other primates, and the results of those projects should give us an even better picture. The overall assumption was that both humans and chimps would have the same number of chromosomes (though there were those that proposed more or less - that would be troubling - we can't really lose chromosomes as primates..they're too important) if we had a common ancestor-but that at least one of these chromosomes would have such a powerful mutation that it produced reproductive isolation - a record of a speciation event.

What we found as both genomes were being sequenced, was at first very troubling - we had 1 fewer pair of chromosomes than chimps. When sequencing had been completed or both species (in 2005) - we found precisely the mutation that had been predicted. Human chromosome #2 is actually 2 primate chromosomes- fused at the telomeres - and containing two centromeres. This is the wonderful thing about genetics (and why it was so important to evolutionary theory), it leaves nothing to the imagination.

So they are primates because someone arbitrarily classifies them as such? That doesn’t prove they are related to other primates at all.

It's a very simple issue of fitting the requirements given for a primate. We could have been wrong about it - we did mis-identify other species relationships. It just so happens that we got this one right. See above.

You have not given me any evidence; you simply made a handful of appeals to homologous traits, which does not necessitate a common ancestor at all; for a theory that you claim is so well supported you sure seem to have a difficult time supporting it.

In leui of any other mechanism for heredity, and in light of the very well demonstrated and very well evidenced mechanism of heredity we discovered, homologous genomes actually do necessitate a common ancestor. Not only is it the best explanation - it's the only explanation. We could play brinksmanship - and state that perhaps only chimps and humans have a common ancestor (for example) - but we'll be at a loss to explain what barriers to this well understood principle justify an act of such idiocy.

Grasping at straws, you were caught being disingenuous. Physics operates completely independently of Evolutionary Biology.

Perhaps you should read back through the thread gigglestick, not that it's going to matter, as pretending that I've been or said something that I did not will still be all you have in the clip.

Science deals with inductive proofs, which I’d accept from you. How do mutations occur and how are they preserved and expressed in a population? You have not established any of this.

Mutations occur when an environmental agent damages dna, or when a mistake occurs in copying prior to division. Mutations are preserved in populations through heredity. I'm not going to waste my time trying to establish every corner of the physical sciences to you - I've already mentioned that. You know exactly what I'll do if you insist upon this.

"Everything we know is wrong, now, without any of the science you don't believe in - tell me what happened"

We've been here before.

Your modern synthesis is nearly 80 years old; it’s not really that modern. What I said was completely accurate according to Neo-Darwinian theory, you asserting otherwise does not change that.

It's stood for 80 years, nary single point of conflicting data. What you said is woefully inaccurate, and I've explained why - in this thread- more than once. I don't see any reason to repeat myself.

No, there’s a fitness cost associated with all classes of mutations, learn your theory.

You're still dancing around beneficial and deleterious mutations. What fitness cost would a selectively neutral mutation have Statler? Think real hard.

Anaerobic respiration serves no purpose? I think the body being able to function without adequate levels of oxygen is a very important trait to have, try to run farther than 600 meters and you’ll find out.

Not an important trait at all to animals with access to oxygen and aerobic respiratory systems. It would be selectively neutral. Good for the creatures in the box eh? Perhaps if you wanted to construct a 600 meter box, fill it with oxygen breathing things, and then turn on the ole kirby - we would see what sort of mutations the residents of that box had been carrying round hitherto unknown - mutations that might help them escape our xenocidal glee - if they have any. Judging by the record of life we have available, the likely answer is that they wouldn't have any. We'd just be staring at a 600 meter box full of dead things.

That does not explain why all of the organisms possessed that trait once it was needed, that implies something weeded out the organisms that did not possess that trait thousands of years before it was needed. Unless you wanted to assert mankind was created with the ability, then that would make sense why everyone seems to have had it.

Who says that they -all- would possess the trait? We'd be at a loss to explain extinction if all organisms in the box possessed the trait. However, once the air is vacuumed out, all remaining organisms must possess the trait. In the case of humans and our ancestors -wed been using our brains for quite some time. So again, you've managed to get it wrong from the floor all the way to the ceiling.

Well you did in fact just say it had to be a neutral mutation, now you’re changing your story; so since it was not selectively neutral, we’re back to what selective pressure selected against it?

This is getting tedious, I don't know if you've realized this, but a very large portion of your responses to me seem to be an issue of your having a conversation with someone else - who resides in your head. Yes, we're back to a question already asked and already answered. Ask a question, receive an answer. Ask a few more questions as filler then re-ask the same question. Common cretinist garbage.

Scientific facts are not established by majority opinion within the Scientific Community, claiming something is the unifying theory of Biology is utterly meaningless. Whether you like it or not you do have to defend your position.

No one said they were. When you're done having a discussion with the man in your head I'll still be here. Modern synthesis is the unifying theory of biology not because I claim it, not because the majority decides that it is so, but because without modern synthesis many sub-fields of biology had no relation to each other - and biology as a whole had weak relations to the other sciences.

Easy, all life on Earth has a common creator, therefore all life is going to possess similarities at the fundamental level; just like all works by Salvador Dali have similar fundamental characteristics. I ask for a prediction that could not have been made unless someone believed in Common Descent and you gave me one that is completely consistent with the modern Creation model.

Laying aside that a "common creator" could have just "created" the first living organism - common descent - and this is all that would be consistent with the data - you've got yourself a hypothesis. Now all you have to do is demonstrate that common creator. Step 1.

So lets see that evidence?

You keep making that baseless assertion. Not a single one of the dozens of Biologists I work with on a daily basis have ever needed to refer to Darwinian Theory in their published work. This is just something Evolutionists like to assert in order to get skeptics to stop asking tough questions.

You seem to be as confused by the term "baseless assertion" as you have been by the term "modern synthesis". You know I'm also skeptical about the biologists you work with - I don't think they exist.

Complete nonsense. Give me a scenario where an organism can evolve without any selective pressures, you keep asserting that is possible and yet you do not support that claim. If you’re answer is going to be mutations then explain what causes the mutation.

Mutation. What is so difficult to understand about this Stat? I'm not asserting that it's -possible- I'm bluntly stating a fact, mutations occur.

They absolutely do support it; you have no idea what you’re talking about.

You could certainly make that case, and as I said, I'll be in that thread. Perhaps what you'd rather not realize (or rather not have mentioned) is that by supporting speciation you will have eroded any biblical nonsense from the outset. To support some observation or theory does not mean "Yeah that happens - except right here, at this line that would threaten my bedtime story, because it threatens my bedtime story". Denied.

“Poorly-informed anti-creationist scoffers occasionally think they will ‘floor’ creation apologists with examples of ‘new species forming’ in nature. They are often surprised at the reaction they get from the better-informed creationists, namely that the creation model depends heavily on speciation.

It seems clear that some of the groupings above species (for example, genera, and sometimes higher up the hierarchy) are almost certainly linked by common ancestry, that is, are the descendants of one created ancestral population (the created kind, or baramin).

There is no such thing as a "created kind". Try harder.

Virtually all creation theorists assume that Noah did not have with him pairs of dingoes, wolves and coyotes, for example, but a pair of creatures which were ancestral to all these species, and probably to a number of other present-day species representative of the ‘dog kind’.

There was no noachian flood. Try harder.

Demonstrating that speciation can happen in nature, especially where it can be shown to have happened rapidly, is thus a positive for creation theorists.” – Dr. Carl Wieland, co-founder of Creation Magazine, Journal of Creation, and Creation.com

There is no creation theory. Try harder.

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You’re the one who believes that Evolution occurs independently of selective pressures, no Evolutionist worth his salt is going to assert that. It’s obvious that you do not understand Evolution or Creation well enough to engage in any meaningful discourse on the subject.

Mutations occur. If you'd like to take issue with that be my guest. Selective neutrality is well understood, if you'd like to take issue with that be my guest.

I never said that it was, please stop misrepresenting my argument.

Perhaps you didn't realize that the way in which you phrased your question regarding human development left nothing else to be implied. If you don't like the implications of your own argument - then stop pressing it- or own it, your call.

More misrepresentation of my position. The ability to fly would not have been preserved in a population unless there was a selective pressure (predation) present that weeded out those organisms in the population that did not develop that ability (most likely by mutation).

Mutation itself is not a selective pressure unless it is deleterious. A beneficial mutation cannot be classified as such without reference -to- a selective pressure, and a selectively neutral mutation is a non-starter in this particular point of ignorance.

Since there is no selective pressure that could weed out Humans that did not have the ability to do calculus thousands of years before there was a need to do calculus it is ridiculous to believe that the entire Human race developed that ability and passed it on for thousands of years before there was a need for it.

Isn't it amusing, that directly after claiming that I've misrepresented your argument you just so happen to be reforming it precisely along those lines in which you made the mistake in the first place. Unfortunately you can't seem to abandon it - and so you've fucked it up again for the same reason that you fucked it up the first time.

Again. We possess mutations which are not "weeded out" because they are selectively neutral. So any question of "why would we have this before we have a need for it" is a non-starter on these grounds alone. Evolution does not respond to needs, it does not respond to top down directives- it lacks this ability as mechanism.

Again, in the case of our ability to do calc, we see -several- pressures, not just one, several - and they go a bit farther back than HSS. Not only is your question DOA in principle it is DOA in practice.

If you could please explain why I have failed to competently communicate this to you after several attempts, I would appreciate it.

Natural selection is still required in order for these mutations to become fixed in a population.

Tell me, Statler, how natural selection is required - or could even act..on a mutation that is -wait for it- ........selectively neutral?

Take your time, you'll need it.