William Lane Craig continues to desperately defend the indefensible.

[YGninja]

Esqui really wants to lose another debate??

http://www.cod.edu/people/faculty/fanche...tation.htm
"most mutations are neutral; they either make no change in the expression of any gene, or the changes made do not affect the function of any gene product. Of those mutations which do make a difference, most have a negative effect."

Oh god, please, give me more references from fucking community colleges! Clearly they'd be at the cutting edge of scientific research.

Just an ad hom against the source. Notice esq has offered absolutely nothing against the point but a brazen ad hominem.

I said "almost exclusively", not "exclusively", and hence your post doesn't refute anything.

You're overstressing your point, is the refutation. Irrespective of the eventual nature of mutations- and these things accumulate over time, so that even a negative or neutral one can pave the way for a positive one in future- they do happen with sufficient regularity to shape the diversity of species; natural selection selects against just as much as it selects for. Your point is a distinction without a difference.

This is -imagination- not science. YOu complain about my sources from colleges, but assume that you don't need any sources for you to be believed. All hail esqui!

Italian wall lizards didn't evolve anything, their DNA is identical to the original ones, the change was just a reversion to a previous type, utilising pre existing DNA which had merely been out of use.

Entirely new cecal valve systems, not present in others of the species. Bare assertion that it's not aside (read: the "nuh uh!" school of creationist debate), there's no rational way to argue that it's not a new feature. Whether it arose from pre-existing genetics or not- it did, but your inability to understand how mutations work is no problem of mine- it is a new type of genetic expression for them.

You do understand the basic contention of evolution, don't you? You need new information, not reactivation of old information. Why is your evidence so weak? No surprise to hear the "YOu just don't understand", typical response of the hilariously arrogant yet diabolically ignorant.

Nylonase isn't new information, a small amount of the original population held a mutation allowing them to digest nylon, when placed in the environment only the ones who could digest nylon survived, and only they reproduced, eventually becoming 100% of the population.

... Yes, and the initial population that held that mutation were in possession of the mutation, which is new information in the genome. This contention of yours isn't even relevant.

Its a mutation, no-one is arguing whether or not mutations occur. Mutation isn't evolution. How, using that exact same process, could a bacteria develop into man?

Rattlesnakes, if it were true, would be an example of losing something, not gaining something. You can't get from a single cell to a human only by losing things.

Yes, please do keep simplifying a complex topic to create a strawman based on a single example, that's super honest.

Im creating the straw men?
My point remains unrefuted, losing things doesn't prove we all gained so much stuff that we became humans from bacteria.

My original statement "The mutations observed are almost exclusively negative or neutral. Data is corrupted or deleted."

Perhaps to clear up confusion it would be better put "The mutations observed are almost exclusively negative or neutral - data is corrupted or deleted".

Again, distinction without a difference.

Again "im going to write this because i think it makes me look like i have a clue".

There are ways for a genome to acquire "new" information, Just the "new" information is just duplicated old information, which then has to mutate to become "new" information, but mutations are almost exclusively neutral or negative, so this process simply isn't effective or common enough to support the idea that all life came from a single cell.

Why do you think that only positive traits contribute to evolution? They don't; there are plenty of overtly negative mutations present even in the human body that we developed along the way to becoming what we are, and they're still here. So long as a mutation isn't outright lethal it doesn't disqualify the organism in question from the gene pool.

As for the commonality of mutations, are you aware that each individual human being is born with at least sixty of them, and that we accumulate more as time goes on? It's plenty common, regardless of your inability to understand the topic you're discussing.

1: You are missing the point. Its simple maths; You have a bicycle, it contains 50 parts. You can change any part randomly for a part from a scrap heap. If you want to add a part, you need to delete 5 first. Now, "evolve" that bicycle into a jumbo jet, please.

2: Again the "You are just too stupid" defense. Yes i am aware that each person is born with new mutations, like i am aware that a photocopy of an original painting will not be perfect, and the copy of the copy less so, and the copy of the copy of the copy, even less so, until we end up in a forum listening to some bright spark repeatedly use the "Youre too stupid" defense while thinking hes smart.

Lets ask Richard Dawkins.

Yes, let's do watch Richard Dawkins express his shock that he'd been railroaded by deceptive creationist creeps, operating to further the very agenda you're trying to push. That'll... demonstrate how dishonest and ignorant your side tends to be on this issue.

Oh, and also? Don't care what Dawkins said. Dawkins can be wrong too, you're not going to sway anybody with an argument from authority.

Seems to me he was trying to answer the question, and couldn't, then got embarrassed about it so wrote a stinging blog on his webpage to save face infront of his congregation. Yet again you offered nothing but your own word to support your claims.

Also see my above comment. Mutation is in no way sufficient. Imagine a book, and the more people who read and enjoy the book the more the book is "naturally selected", and widespread it becomes. Now imagine randomly deleting and changing the letters in the book. Maybe 1 in 1000 of those changes, will accidently add humour to the book, and make it more popular, but the other 999 will make it incomprehensible and actually shorten the length of the book. Whats going to happen if you repeat this process 10'000 times? You inevitably end up with a very short, defunct book of gibberish. You aren't going to end up with a better, bigger book, hence the same process in evolution is not going to create humans from single celled bacteria.

So, your position basically boils down to an argument from ignorance? "I don't understand how this could happen, therefore it couldn't"? That seem at all cogent to you?

Yawn, yet again an erroneous scream of "FALLACY!11". Argument from ignorance? No-where did i say i don't understand or i don't know, my argument is grounded in what i DO understand, and you've responded again with with what amounts to an ad hominem.

But you're- I think purposefully- ignoring that natural selection is a thing, and that the pressure of that reduces the amount of total gibberish within the "book," and selects for intelligible "words" within it. That's where your argument falls down; for your comparison to be remotely valid we would only be allowed to count those books that people didn't throw away for being unintelligible.

The book will inevitably become gibberish with or without natural selection. YOu need a mechanism which can grow "ajojkfeofkok", into a thesaurus, and you've given us nothing

Since you like Dawkins so much, he has a nice little thought experiment to demonstrate this concept, in the Weasel Program: factoring in natural selection, it takes relatively few generations to get from even a string of random letters, to an intelligible sentence. Now, obviously the analogy isn't perfect, as evolution isn't selecting for a goal nearly as specific as the program, but evolution also has millions of years and plentiful specimens. It works well enough as an example.

Even if natural selection were that precise and influential, which it isn't... How'd you get more letters?
I think this is a side point, but you are overplaying the role of natural selection. No minor mutation is going to make any difference either way, in 99.999% of cases. Take a lizard which can change its colour to blend in with a rock, its not gonna take 1 mutation, but hundreds or thousands, each useless by themselves, and even then theres a million ways that original colour-changing lizard could be killed and all that extremely unlikely "evolution" would be thrown away.

There is no mechanism which halts mutation, and hence humans are weaker and have smaller brains than our ancestors. In the last 100 years alone western IQ's atleast have dropped an average of 14 points. This is your 'evolution' in process, it is change over time, but its effect is only negative, deconstructing things rather than building them better, and hence this isn't a theory that supports all life emerging from a simple cell and growing more complex, rather, it supports all life being perfect at the time of creation, and then degrading.

So, you don't have any evidence for your position? You think just poking holes in established science makes whatever you believe right by default?

Yawn, that there is a mechanism which halts mutation isn't my position, never has been. That actually IS a straw man, just so you know...

If evolution were true, we'd be able to model it in a computer like we can for all other, actual scientific theories. It would be very simple, as simple as simulating a single cell with reproductive abilities and mutations etc, coupled with a synthetic environment. We could turn up the speed of the program, and watch intelligent life evolve as we eat pizza. Needless to say, we have no such program because all attempts have failed.