William Lane Craig continues to desperately defend the indefensible.

[Esquilax]

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.

Well, I wouldn't want to step on your toes there.

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.

Are you incapable of detecting nuance too? Natural selection does select against harmful mutations, but that doesn't mean it outright eliminates them either: disadvantages aren't the same thing as nonexistence.

As to citations, fair enough I suppose. Off the top of my head, I can point to a mutation in a human gene that caused a shortening in the jaw, leading to impacting of the teeth, and eventually to our current issues with wisdom teeth. However, the shortening of our jaws also correlated with an increase in skull size and, in the end, brain capacity. We owe our intelligence, in part, to an initially harmful mutation that still causes us problems to this day.

I could also point to our spines, wherein the evolution of our spinal set up outpaced our spinal nerves, which are still better suited to quadrupedal motion. The harmful, leading the way to the beneficial.

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

Couple problems here, the first being that the citation you gave doesn't agree with you, given that it characterizes the changes as evolution multiple times. So which is it? Is the citation valid, or not? If it's the former, you're quote mining, and if it's the latter, why are you using it?

Another problem is your equivocation on the phrase "genetically identical," because that doesn't mean that the lizards are all clones. There's natural genetic variation inherent in each individual member of any species; genetically identical, in context, means that they're still members of the same species, not that literally no genetic change has occurred, at all, in the time they've been separated. I've never disputed the fact that they're the same species as before, just that they've evolved new features that haven't been present in other populations in the past, putting the lie to your initial claim.

You also mischaracterize my claim, dare I say it, misrepresenting me, as I never said they evolved an entirely new digestive system. They did, however, evolve new cecal valves, features of a complete digestive system, in their time in isolation. They also didn't do so at random, though it's nice to see you dusting off yet another hoary creationist chestnut. Natural selection played a role there, as their environment was the framework in which their mutations existed; those with the valves survived longer and were better capable of passing on their genes, whereas those without were not. This isn't randomness, it is change within a set of parameters.

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.

The evidence is abundant, though again you resort to old fallacies rather than attempt to understand any of it. Fossil formation is a rare process, requiring very specific circumstances to hold for long periods of time; we wouldn't expect the profundity of fossil transitions your goalpost shifting claims, but that's not to say there aren't plenty of transitionals to look at. Certainly there are enough to pass muster, if you're being reasonable.

But then, you're not being reasonable at all, are you? Because it hasn't escaped my notice that you're continuing to assert, based on nothing at all, that the Wall Lizard's evolution was simply dormant, pre-existing DNA, and you could bring up that excuse for any evidence I bring to the table. Not once do you explain what constitutes "dormant" DNA, or how you know it's there, but you seem to trade in bare assertions just generally, and I expect among the creationist crowd you'd be allowed to get away with it too.

But you're among a better class of interlocutor here, and we can recognize a fiat goalpost-shifting mechanism when we see it.

Will you consider the possibility that you dont understand??

Certainly. However, serious consideration on that topic would require more from you than baseless creationist talking points and the bare assertion that you're right, all of the time.

Believe it or not, I don't actually delve into the muck the evolution-deniers produce for fun.

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.

But mutations don't happen one for one consistently, making the analogy inappropriate from the beginning. New pieces can be inserted or deleted, and even entire sequences can be repeated, for future mutations to work upon.

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.

Given that you've yet to put forward a single factually correct statement on the topic, I think your assessment of why I accept evolution is more based on your need to attack my credibility because you can't properly attack my argument, rather than any factual accuracy.

Both sets of wall lizards are genetically identical. How can you have genetic gain, if they are genetically identical???

Because equivocations are dishonest methods of conducting argumentation?

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??

Because mutation within a framework of natural selection within an environment isn't the totally random misrepresentation your side thrives upon portraying? Have you thought about this for two seconds?

Oh, and also? Argument from ignorance. Just sayin'.

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.

I did too: what's wrong with the analogy is that the "delete five parts for every one you change," rule is completely arbitrary and self serving, having no basis in the actual mechanism of mutation. I also pointed out that what you're analogizing as an impossible situation is, in fact, entirely possible if given on an evolutionary time scale, with an evolutionary sample size, rather than the one sample you want to give me.

Are you reading what I write at all? Because if you went through that entire paragraph and didn't pick up on the first sentence, you might be having some trouble there.

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).

Mutations are not one for one swaps: insertions and deletions are a thing, as are frameshift mutations and sequence repetitions. See my link on that above: the fact that you make declarative statements like you do, when the actual information is so different, is why I think you don't understand the topic you're talking about. It's a rational conclusion when talking with someone who is consistently wrong, and consistently confident that they're right.

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.

That's not what I said, though. What I'm saying is that monitoring the man's facial reactions, through several layers of video abstraction and your own biases, plus the creative editing of a creationist filmmaker that we've already established got Dawkins on tape through dishonest means, is not a better representation of what happened than the man's own thoughts on the subject. Dawkins states "I think this," and your response is "no you don't." How the hell can you know that?

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.

A sequence repetition mutation, followed by any other kind of mutation. "No known way"? Keep wearing that ignorance like a crown, while the rest of us take simple logical steps in stride.

Two mutations in a row? Impossible!

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.

I'm not even going to go back and re-read what the analogy even was, you've so perfectly summed up what's wrong with it here: "You've offered no refutation, and therefore evolution isn't real."

Classic argument from ignorance... hey, wait: do you even know what an argument from ignorance is? Like, the formal fallacy, Argument From Ignorance? Serious question.

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?

You can get more letters though. There are several mechanisms that allow you to do that. It's not that it's a difficult concept, it's that it's a factually inaccurate one.

/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".

But old information can be duplicated and then altered via other mutations, which is well known to happen. Seriously, go look this stuff up before you disagree with it. It's getting embarrassing.

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."

And here we have the subspecies of the argument from ignorance, the argument from big numbers.

As to the mutation contention, neutral mutations, even harmful ones, linger in the gene pool so long as the organism in question gets to breeding age, and is allowed to breed. The only mutations that are selected against with the finality you describe are the ones that prevent the organism from doing so. Problem solved, and all I had to do is understand something simple, like how bad things aren't always the same thing as lethal things.

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

So what is that limit, how do you know it's there, and what peer reviewed research supports this proposition?

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.

Do you know anything at all about how feathers evolved? Feathers that allowed the development of wings? Maybe go and look that up, then come back and argue that a creature literally evolving fucking wings somehow isn't an addition of complexity. I could use a laugh.

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.

I'm sorry sir, I cannot catch up with those moving goalposts. We know I can throw an argument through them, but if you keep shifting them whenever I do and saying it doesn't count, that becomes rather impossible.