(May 22, 2013 at 8:45 pm)little_monkey Wrote: I would suggest to you, politely, that you enroll into a biology program at a renown university -- Harvard, Columbia, to name a few -- get yourself a BSc, then go for a PhD if you're that smart. And when you have published a dozen articles in peer-review journals, then we'll talk. As it is now, I won't waste my time.
Have a nice life.
I do not need any of that to know how a
species is defined, that’s basic level stuff you seem to be ignorant of.
(May 22, 2013 at 11:18 pm)smax Wrote: A liar called me liar, and then lied some more. LOL.
You were caught falsely and dishonestly attributing a quote to someone; stop whining.
(May 23, 2013 at 1:35 am)Stimbo Wrote: Paraphrasing The Amazing Atheist: "Explaining evolution to a creationist is like throwing boloney at a tank. Wasted effort! Plus you lost boloney."
Fallacy of the faulty analogy.
(May 23, 2013 at 4:30 am)Esquilax Wrote: Someone clearly hasn't heard of a hybrid, if he's still sticking to that fucking story...
If two organisms produce a potentially fertile offspring, those two organisms are by definition of the same species (Biological Species Concept).
(May 23, 2013 at 4:43 am)cato123 Wrote: Oh yes, let us define a species.
Who was the mother of Enos?
How is that relevant to the definition of a species? Enos was the son of Seth and son of one of Adam and Eve’s daughters.
(May 23, 2013 at 9:55 am)pocaracas Wrote: So you think that a radiometric dating system is faulty at its core?
Yes, it relies upon unverifiable and apparently faulty assumptions.
Quote: An alternative method for dating rock is using plate tectonics and the measurable rate at which continents are drifting apart... of course, assuming they've been drifting at a constant pace (will you claim that they drifted much much faster at the start so to make it seem as if they took millions of years to drift at a constant velocity?).
Plate tectonics also helps to account for the finding of similar fossils in continents now separated by oceans... and they have all been radiometrically dated in such a way that is consistent with constant tectonic drift.
Yes, catastrophic plate tectonics is part of the modern Creation model, so their current rates cannot be a valid method of dating. How are they radio-metrically dating fossils? I didn’t think that was possible.
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"inference"... yes, you keep changing the name of it to convince yourself that others do assumptions and you don't... -.-'
You lost me there; whenever we are dealing with historical sciences we must make an inference to the best possible explanation.
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ok, I admit I kind of doubted my sanity a bit with that one...
But your model does not account for ice ages, where all the water is locked and that mechanism doesn't exist, thus bringing the moon a bit closer.
Now, how many ice ages has the planet seen? How often?
But radiometric methods yield the same age for the moon and Earth. Consistency is good.
Ice Ages may have slowed the recession down a bit, but nobody believes the Ice Ages were really that long and nobody believes they removed all Oceanic tides from the Earth. Not only this, but I was being rather generous (in the interest of Christian charity
) by allowing the Moon to actually touch the Earth, the actual limit is a lot farther out than that because once the Moon enters the Earth’s Roche Limit it could not have been formed in the first place, so this is still a huge problem for the current Earth timeline and radio-metric dating as a valid method as well.
Quote: Methinks your method has some shortcomings that need addressing.
Me thinks yours does
Quote: QM tells us the rate of fusion reactions.
Mass spectrometry tells us how much of each element the Sun has.
Plug one into the other and voilá. I don't see assumptions.
You’re assuming the rates observed today were uniform throughout Earth’s history, that’s an assumption.
Quote: And radioactive decay is quite accurate.... also coming from QM.
Then why can’t it ever accurately date rocks of known age?
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What 2 way!?
Only one way required for spectrometry.... -.-'
No, you’re still assuming that light traveling towards Earth from distant galaxies is moving at C; that is not verifiable because all we can empirically measure is the round trip speed of light.
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I don't know.
Are you going to tell me I should accept some storytelling book written in the neolithic?
When a book was written is irrelevant in regards to the truth of its claims. So you do not know how life formed but you have faith that it was by naturalistic means?
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At least they are consistent among themselves.
If none of them are verifiable then consistency doesn’t mean anything, I had plenty of students who would consistently get the same wrong answer to a particular math problem.
Quote: And (at least) two consistent independent measurements of the same thing, sure hint at an accurate measurement by both.
Not if both methods are banking off of the same erroneous assumption.
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Carbon dating IS radiometric dating...
True enough, but I meant when radiocarbon dating conflicts with the radiometric dating of igneous rocks, which one is right in those situations?
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Who said anything about woods? BUHAHAHAHAHAH!
I did. Lol.
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Here, read about those "soft tissues": http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-na...osaur.html
Yup, I have read that article before, but soft tissue and DNA being found in dinosaur fossils is not evidence organic matter can last that long, it’s evidence those fossils are not that old. Every study conducted concerning the empirical decay rates of such organic matter demonstrates that it is absurd to think they could survive for 65 million years.
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Oh, a new insight into creation... not all at the same time... Where did you get this info?
It’s available in numerous creation books and articles, the current model is that God created the different kinds of animals, but a Biblical kind is more along the lines of a family or genus, the different species we observe are the result of natural selection acting upon the genetic information present in the original created kind.
Quote: Look at the evolutionary idea: apes evolve in the safety of trees, as it becomes safer to walk the land, they descend and get nimble at walking up straight, because, at that particular geographic location, there are very few, if any, predators.
Story-telling at it's finest.... dinos and humans...
Dinosaurs coexisting with Humans isn’t any more storytelling than Dinosaurs evolving into birds or Ancient Apes evolving into Modern Humans.
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I'm not aware of any cases where it happens in other species, so there... I don't know.
Weren’t you just telling a story about bacteria gaining an extra chromosome or something of that nature?
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Interesting paper...
Didn't read the whole thing, but I did read some particular bits:
- mutations arise primarily from the father zygote, given that the father produces millions of sperm per day, the odds of some error are greater than on the mother's side, who produced all the zygotes before birth... this checks out with something I read recently that stated that there are more autistic kids from older fathers than from younger ones. IF you're over 35, you have a higher tendency to produce an autistic child than if you're 20.
- Deleterious mutations are removed from the population in about 80 generations.
- On the other hand, there's this gem "In [...] people, recessive mutations may persist for thousands of generations. "
That’s just the paper that I got the 3-5 percent rate from; the implications of that rate and what they mean for the history of man are better explained by Sanford in his book, “Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome.” It’s an excellent book and has really turned some heads in the geneticist community.
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Why would it not be? This was my postulation, I get to make up the rules!
Haha, ok- fair enough good sir.
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I have logical reasons to assume any scripture is man-made and, as such, fallible.
I have logical reasons to give credence to the theory of evolution, in spite of it being fallible.
Care to share your reasons?
Quote: Both can be viewed as storytelling, but one is based on actual empirical (since you like that word) findings... the other, on myth.
I totally agree! Creation is the former and Evolution is the latter right?
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The mechanism which generated life still eludes science, so any such mechanism you do hear about is storytelling, hypothesizing.
Which hypothesis is correct... we'll see when we see. Until then, the best course of action is not assume anything.
What if we have direct revelation from the creator of life? Why do you discount that and wait for a naturalistic explanation that apparently does not exist?
Quote: Concerning the evolution of dinosaurs int o birds... it took quite a lot of time for that to happen and it is based on feather-like imprints found in some fossils, so there's some reason to that.
That’s quite the extrapolation don’t you think?
Quote: Turning helium into other (heavier) elements is something known as Nuclear Fusion, which opposes nuclear fission, whereby the nucleus would be torn apart resulting in lighter elements.
I believe you've heard of nuclear power plants, no?... they operate on the fission principle.
You've heard of Little Boy? That one used fusion, of hydrogen into helium... that's why it was called a hydrogen bomb.
Nuclear fusion and fission are real processes that affect our daily lives, one way or another. They are not myths.
I am well aware that Stellar Fusion is not a myth. However, I am also well aware that we’ve never observed Stellar Fusion producing anything other than Helium and the very rare case of Lithium, so that cannot be used to explain the origins of all of the other natural occurring elements. The current theory is that other elements were formed by Population III starts entering the Super Nova stage of a star’s life, the only problem with this theory is that to date no Population III stars have even been observed to exist.
Quote: I pity your logic that dismisses reality in favor of a story written some 2 thousand years ago by people who knew no better.
Reality? You mean theories that rely upon the existence of stars that have never been observed to exist? You keep bringing up the age of the Bible, I hope you are aware that is irrelevant to whether it is true or not.
Quote: hehe, when I decide to ignore what you write, I'll say something like: "That was utter BS which warrants no reply whatsoever. Lay off the kool aid."
That doesn’t seem to be your style.
(May 23, 2013 at 10:02 am)Rhythm Wrote: 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.
The point was in my favor (creationists believe in evolutionary change so pointing that out proves nothing for you). You do not have enough time for all life on Earth to originate from a single common ancestor; it’d take trillions of years at the observable rates of change. Not only this but there’s more genetic difference between the individuals of a particular people group than there is between the particular people groups themselves, which is completely backwards from what we’d expect to find evolutionarily.
Quote: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.
You’re committing the fallacy of equivocation again; please try to keep things rational. You’re pointing to what you are calling Evolution (changes in allele frequency in a population) and asserting, “See that right there demonstrates Evolution (all life on Earth shares a single common ancestor).” You cannot point to what creationists also believe happens (changes in allele frequencies in populations) as proof that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor which is what creationists reject.
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Oh it didn't have to be, it just came out in the wash that it was the best explanation.
If you do not know the explanation (as you have already conceded) you cannot assert Darwinism happens to be the best explanation.
Quote:Pick your favorite, and make a case. I'll be in that thread as well.
My favorite what?
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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............
In order for a mutation to become fixed in a population it must provide a survival advantage so that all organisms that do not possess that mutation will be out competed (unless in the rare instance of a geographic isolating event). So Common Descent does require beneficial mutations. The overwhelming numbers of mutations we observe are not beneficial to the organism. The problem even becomes more severe though, not only do the mutations have to be beneficial but they must also cause a net increase in genetic information over time. There’s only one disputable observed case of a beneficial mutation ever increasing genetic information, the overwhelming majority of the very few mutations that are beneficial are a reduction in genetic information. Every Darwinist on Earth seems to understand what Common Descent would require except for you, so it’s ridiculous that you think I am the one who doesn’t understand the theory.
Quote: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.
I suspected you’d overplay your hand on this one and you did not disappoint. Here is what really happened….
- Darwinists predicted Humans and Chimps would have the same number of chromosomes.
- Darwinists found out that their prediction was wrong; Humans have 23 chromosomal pairs and Chimps have 24.
- Darwinists postulate a post-hoc explanation about how some ape-like ancestor of Human’s chromosomes fused at their telomeres sometime in the past even though such a viable fusion is impossible inside the cell and despite the fact that the postulated fusion site is not consistent with what one would expect to find if a telomere fusion did occur sometime in the past (even if it were demonstrated to be possible).
- Darwinists claim victory and continue to believe the same non-sense they did before their prediction was proven wrong.
And then you come along and overplay your hand by claiming that this classic example of forcing the data to fit the theory is an example of Evolutionists making a successful prediction, if this ad-hoc rationalization is one of your best examples then that is downright sad.
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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.
But you didn’t get it right, you predicted they’d have the same number of chromosomes, and they do not.
Quote: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.
No, homologous traits do not necessitate a common ancestor at all; you’re just blowing smoke again. Often similar morphological structures are created by completely different genetic means, so our understanding of heredity actually undermines the concept of homology due to ancestry. Your inability to make successful predictions about even something as simple as pairs of chromosomes supports that fact.
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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.
Mutations are preserved through heredity? That doesn’t even make sense, and that isn’t even close to how mutations become fixed in a population according to Neo-Darwinian theory, I think you need to do some more reading on the subject.
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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 conflicting data? Except when you predict Humans and Chimps will have the same number of Chromosomes and they really don’t right? The problem is that the theory has become too flexible, and therefore it becomes worthless.
Again, scientists do not agree with your hubris…
“ No product, discovery, medical procedure, or advance has come out of evolutionary theory. Without evolutionary theory, all practical biology would stand just as it is. No major corporation has a “Department of Evolution” because scientists who have to produce results don’t use it.
In fact, I would like to challenge the readership of this publication to come up with one practical application of biology that would have been impossible were it not for the hypothesis of evolution.”
- Avraham Sonenthal,
The Scientist Volume 11
Quote:You're still dancing around beneficial and deleterious mutations. What fitness cost would a selectively neutral mutation have Statler? Think real hard.
A selectively neutral mutation cannot become fixed in a population without a selective mechanism to fix it. There are not enough trials in order to randomly fix neutral mutations (through genetic drift) in the absence of a guiding mechanism.
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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.
It’s a bit shocking you seem to think that the anaerobic respiratory system with all of its thousands of necessarily fine-tuned parts and intricacies could arise and exist entirely in the background as an unneeded and unused neutral mutation. If Humans didn’t have the ability to undergo anaerobic respiration they’d be unable to move their muscular system fast enough in order to escape predation or danger; it’s a necessary component to survival.
Quote: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.
You’re going to have to stop engaging in storytelling and enter the realm of specifics. What selective pressure weeded out those Humans who did not have the ability to do calculus and advanced mathematical computations thousands of years prior to the development of these computations? You’ve asserted that something had to weed them out so that all the remaining Humans would possess that trait, what was it?
Quote: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.
This has everything to do with your utter inability to defend your theory in a matter that is logically coherent.
I ask you what selective pressure fixed modern mental cognition in the population. You dodge the question by bringing up neutral mutations. I then ask for specifics about these neutral mutations and how they could fix modern mental cognition in the population. You then assert they did not. I then point out that if neutral mutations did not fix mental cognition in the population then a selective pressure(s) must have, so I ask my original question again. You then assert you already answered that question. It’s obvious by now that you cannot defend your own theory, it’s all smoke and mirrors and you merely accept it upon blind faith.
Quote: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.
That’s an unsubstantiated claim that when you give it some thought you’ll find is irrelevant even if it were true. Simply because a particular theory ties together different disciplines of science is not evidence that that theory itself is scientifically accurate. Nice try though.
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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.
No, that’s not my hypothesis at all. The Creator created all of the different kinds of animals, these kinds of animals then underwent speciation over time to give us the thousands of different species we have today. The evidence to support this is the exact same evidence you incorrectly point to in order to support Common Descent (all life possess DNA, changing of the expression of phenotypes in populations over time, etc.). It all supports this hypothesis. In fact, this hypothesis can then be used to unify all of the branches of science and
voila, Creation is now the unifying theory of all science.
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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.
Wishing away evidence that contradicts your position seems to be your calling card.
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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.
Yes, but the types of mutations you need to occur in order to make Common Descent even possible do not occur, that’s a fact.
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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.
You’re committing the fallacy of extrapolation. There is no logical necessity to move from
some life on Earth share a common ancestor to
all life on Earth share a common ancestor.
Quote: There is no such thing as a "created kind". Try harder.
Sure there is, the observable evidence supports that fact, you have not proven there’s such a thing as a single common ancestor; try harder.
Quote:There was no noachian flood. Try harder.
We’re not talking about Mars here; but there was such a thing as a Noahic Flood; try harder.
Quote:There is no creation theory. Try harder.
You have no understanding of the Creation model, but if you try harder I am sure you can get there.
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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.
Sure they occur, but that does not support the Theory of Evolution, if you think it does and can support that belief then be my guest.
Quote: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.
I never claimed mutations were the selective pressure (I clearly identified predation was), I said that the ability to fly was developed through mutations, please stop misrepresenting my position.
Quote: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.
Why would all of the organisms in the population possess the same selectively neutral mutation? You do realize there’s not enough trials to randomly fix that mutation through genetic drift don’t’ you? Please tell me you realize that…please.
Quote: 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.
Stop with the just-so storytelling! What selective pressures are you referring to? I want specifics!
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Tell me, Statler, how natural selection is required - or could even act..on a mutation that is -wait for it- ........selectively neutral?
It can’t and that’s why a selectively neutral mutation cannot consistently become fixed in an entire population and therefore cannot be the driving force of Evolution. Your faith in a process that is so unsupported is staggering.
(May 23, 2013 at 10:37 am)little_monkey Wrote: I like the way some will say, brothers and sisters, from Adam and Eve, married but today, this is forbidden because their children have an unacceptably high risk of being deformed. The more closely the parents are related, the more likely it is that any offspring will be deformed.
{Emphasis added by SW}
You seem to be ignorant of the fact that if both parents are devoid of genetic mutations (as Adam and Eve’s children would have been) it doesn’t matter how closely related they are their children will be completely healthy. Learning is fun eh?
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