William Lane Craig continues to desperately defend the indefensible.

[YGninja]

Esqui really wants to lose another debate??

Oh, that's cute.

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

Mostly because your point is largely irrelevant, and the source below par for academic standards. The fact that you choose to selectively interpret a broadly sketched description of mutation doesn't obligate me to refute you as though you'd provided something substantive.

If you don't offer a refutation in a debate environment, it can, and is, taken as tacit agreement. Agree or refute, but don't sit there just hoping that condescension will win you the day.

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!

I'm sorry you don't understand basic concepts in evolutionary theory, like the idea that natural selection selects against harmful mutations, or that mutations happen, but again, this isn't my problem. Do I really need to go this basic with you? Are you questioning the existence of natural selection or mutations?

You claimed "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", with no citation.When i ask for one you say: "natural selection selects against harmful mutations", Which seems directly contrary.

You do understand the basic contention of evolution, don't you? You need new information, not reactivation of old information.

And you're just asserting that it's old information, based on nothing but personal opinion, when factually speaking it is a new set of cecal valves that aren't present in the original populations of lizards. You bitched about my lack of sources a moment ago, and now you expect us to just trust a bare assertion from you?

We aren't talking about cecal valves, we're talking about genetics. If the creature is genetically identical, which it is, then clearly no "evolution" has taken place. This is even more apparent when you understand the change occurred over just 30 years; to imagine they "evolved" an entirely new digestion system, by random mutation, in 30 years, is absurd and you know it.

"Tail clips taken for DNA analysis confirmed that the Pod Mrcaru lizards were genetically identical to the source population on Pod Kopiste."

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/200...112433.htm

Why is your evidence so weak?

It's not, and a bare assertion like the rebuttal you gave is not actually an argument.

Its a question, not an argument. Every single creature that is alive today, should have a flick book of ancestors in the fossil record. The evidence should be profuse and undeniable, if evolution were true. You shouldn't need to present Pod Mrcaru lizards and pretend they have evolved, when all they've done is reactivate dormant, preexisting DNA. The evidence should be abundant.

No surprise to hear the "YOu just don't understand", typical response of the hilariously arrogant yet diabolically ignorant.

Says the person who still won't even consider the possibility that he really doesn't understand.

Will you consider the possibility that you dont understand??

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?

Mutation is the driving force of evolution; small changes in the genome, introduced to the population via natural selection. So you bray that I shouldn't accuse you of not understanding evolution, and then promptly demonstrate that you don't understand evolution.

I'll ask again because you seem to have missed it. Lets make it simple for you. "gfjiejgie", is my genetic code. You can mutate any of these letters - change 1 for 1 - as many times as you like, please let me know when you have mutated them into a thesaurus. You are just baring all the traits of someone who blindly believes something because an authority figure said so, without ever critically examining it. Thats the problem with teaching this stuff at school, you become accustomed to being rewarded by teacher and parents for telling the teacher the "right" answer, and so you develop an emotion bond even to your delusion and anticipate reward for giving the "right" answer, throughout your life.

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.

But when I provide evidence of genetic gain you just go "nuh uh! Is old information!" and we're supposed to believe you presumably because you said so?

Both sets of wall lizards are genetically identical. How can you have genetic gain, if they are genetically identical??? Moreover, just using common sense; how could an adaptation so specific for the environment be born of random mutation in just 30 years?? Think about it for 2 seconds, will you??

[quote]
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.

Give me millions of years, a big enough junkyard, and remove this arbitrary "delete five parts" rule, and I've no doubt that I could. Yet again, this is an argument from ignorance mixed with an argument from analogy: you don't understand how it could happen, therefore it couldn't. Nonsense.

No, its that i do understand how its meant to happen, you just cannot see that the emperor has no clothes. Again you havn't argued what is wrong with the analogy, you are just 'playing to the home crowd', and trying to surf on their predisposition.

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.

So how on earth can you be claiming that mutations aren't plentiful enough, knowing that?

Mutations are 1 for 1 swaps, so they will never be plentiful enough to substantiate all life from a single cell. What i was talking about is a process called "gene duplication", as a means of acquiring new information (which fails).

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.

I've offered nothing but my own words? Dawkins' response has already been posted, and you are the one gainsaying the man's response, claiming to know more about what someone else was thinking, at an event you weren't present at, than the man himself. Do you think if you just say the most arrogant, presumptuous thing possible, the burden of proof suddenly reverses?

Oh really? So, where can i send you a copy of the NT? Seeing as its unreasonable to question anyone on what they're saying when you weren't there, you've got no reason to reject their claims. Dawkins was clearly trying to answer the question, and couldn't. Y'know why? Because there is no known way for a genome to acquire new information, and the emperor has no clothes. He still avoided the question in his online rant.

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.

You posted an analogy for the sole purpose of demonstrating that we don't know how that analogy would work, as an argument against evolution. That is the argument from ignorance: if your position is "you can't make X analogy work, therefore evolution can't be true," that is the argument from ignorance. And if that wasn't what you were saying, then you weren't saying anything

Nope, my analogy does work, and it demonstrates that evolution cannot work. You've offered no refutation, but still assert that evolution is true, so by inference that makes you the one arguing from a position of ignorance.

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

I just supplied natural selection as a mechanism, and your response was just "natural selection isn't a mechanism." You're relying on "nuh uh!" an awful lot, here.

I didn't say "natural selection isn't a mechanism", its not a mechanism which can ADD information. Its a mechanism which SELECTS information. You got "ajojkfeofkok", you can SELECT as many letters as you like, you aren't going to get MORE letters, and you need billions and billions MORE letters to turn a single cell into a human. Why is this concept so difficult for you to understand?

Even if natural selection were that precise and influential, which it isn't... How'd you get more letters?

Gene duplication is one method, just off the top of my head. Oh, didn't know that could happen? How fucking surprising.

/facepalm. Ive already been talking about gene duplication. "There are ways for a genome to acquire "new" information, Just the "new" information is just duplicated old information".

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.

But if that color changing lizard's genes enter the gene pool when it survives to propagate more freely, then so does the mutation, which if it's a successful enough survival trait- again by natural selection- will spread through the population in subsequent generations, giving you many more chances for subsequent mutations to extrapolate on that. That's how natural selection works.

Its ability to change colour would be a consequence of thousands of mutations pertaining to, for example, creating the chemical, activating the chemical at the appropriate time, reabsorbing or neutralising the chemical, etc. Each of these would be incredibly complex and offer no benefit until the full process is complete, so they would not be naturally selected at all, and at various stages could be selected against. ie not being able to control the colour change, or having the wrong colour change, or having no ability to change back, or having no ability to stop continually producing the chemical, etc etc etc, would all kill off the lineage before it got a chance. The odds against any complete mutation like this are just astronomical when you break it down. This is why Barrow and Tipler in "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle". List ten steps of human evolution, all so unlikely that before any could have occurred the sun would have "ceased to be a main sequence star and would have burned up the earth. They estimate the odds of the evolution of the human genome by chance to be on the order of 4 to the negative 360, to the 110,000 power."

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 there's not a mechanism, then mutations will add up over time, accumulating to the point where we can no longer classify the resultant organism as a part of the species it came from. A- let's say- dog with thousands upon thousands of small changes will not look the same as the dog it first came from, it will be too morphologically different to be classified as a dog.

Mmm, no, you don't need a mechanism to halt all mutation, just to limit the scope of mutation.

We know small changes occur. We know they accumulate. You're claiming that somehow, those changes will stop accumulating before they result in a morphologically different organism, and for that to happen, you would need a mechanism for that. It's kinda like any other inexorable force: if gravity is making an object fall, and your claim is that it's impossible for that object to continue falling, then you'd need a mechanism to stop the fall, as what we know about gravity shows that the fall will continue. Sorry if you don't like that, but it's how rationality works.

Thats not what i am arguing, what you are describing would be lateral evolution, ie a dog mutating so many times that it no longer resembles a dog, but has no grown any more complex. This doesn't really concern me, the only issue which really pertains to atheism and religion is the ability of evolution to grow something simple into something complex, ie vertical evolution.

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.

Oh, we've failed at that? So, I couldn't find an example on literally the first result of a google search for "evolution simulation"?

Yah, you have failed at that. What you present is little more than a game. If a proper model had been created, it would be being run at 1000000x speed on super computers, be funded to the tune of many many billions because we'd be looking to interact with these things, learn from them, even.