William Lane Craig continues to desperately defend the indefensible.

[Cyberman]

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.

What, you mean like John Conway's "Game of Life"? It fits your specifications to the letter. Apart from the "all attempts have failed" bit, obviously.

[Brakeman]

---

I see you have no problem with dishonesty in your "lies for jesus."

Dawkins pause was not that he had been stumped at all but that he had been tricked into letting creationist hacks into his house.

http://www.skeptics.com.au/publications/...challenge/


Why didn't you or your creationist website you took your video link from honestly explain the pause? It is because you use deceit to keep your uneducated sheep in line. If jesus is the truth, why would you ever need to lie and deceive to further his claims?

Again, tell us where is the magic foo-foo dust that your god used to "help" evolution along? Tell us about how his fairy dust makes the DNA strand. Scientists would love to know!

---

There is no answer there, just a bunch of fluff from a grand high priest more engrossed in his dogma than a 6th century roman catholic chaplain.

So .. Lie ... then dodge the question about god's magic foo-foo dust, then lie again.

WWJD?

To assert that the question wasn't answered when you didn't like the answer, is dishonest enough, but you go one lie more! You pretend that science is advanced from authority. That is so dishonest because you know in your head if not your heart that Prof. Dawkins would be nothing but a Mr. Dawkins who lives in England if not for his acquired knowledge of science. He was not given the title of professor, he earned it, and his scientific respect would go out the window in a minute the moment he were found to be materially wrong. Your priests know nothing at all other than the furtherance of a dishonest con game. They claim to be anointed from a god who never speaks his own roles.

Again, I ask you, where is the evidence for the magic FOO-FOO dust your god supposedly used to make the changes in evolution that you claim can't be explained by gradual changes?

[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.

[KevinM1]

Universities are creating computer models of evolution as we speak. A couple of easy to find examples:

http://devolab.msu.edu/
http://ccl.northwestern.edu/simevolution/beagle.shtml

[Thumpalumpacus]

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).[....]

You should probably read more and type less. The genome can be expanded by slippage errors.

Once a gene or subsection is duplicated, so long as it isn't transposed into a vital section, natural selection can use those genes for anything at all.

This is why fish don't freeze in the Antarctic seas.

Because there is no known way for a genome to acquire new information[...]

Except that, as shown above, that is not correct.

I didn't say "natural selection isn't a mechanism", its not a mechanism which can ADD information.

That is a strawman; nothing in evolutionary theory asserts that natural selection adds information.

It is mutations which 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?

And why are you so hard-headed you cannot admit what science already knows: that transription errors can result in entire sections of code being doubled -- and that those sections are then exposed to the natural selection you've just admitted acts to pare the negative and support the positive?

/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".

Hey, speaking of facepalms, save one for yourself, because you've now admitted that mutations can produce extra genes, which are then liable to mutation, which the natural selection you've already admitted xists can act upon.

Except, you're too ideologically blinded to recognize your surrender here.

The odds against any complete mutation like this are just astronomical when you break it down.

Argument from incredulity.

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."

Please lay out the equation used to derive those odds. I've never read those authors, but I want to know your understanding of it.

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

And what mechanism is that, do you think?

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.

Nice to see that you accept evolution from one species to another.

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.

The mitochondria in our cells bespeak that; the genes in our immune system, which correlate to the genes controlling the icing in the blood of Antarctic fish speak to that; the fact that pig organs can be used in humans speak to our biological similarities.

The real shame here is not that you are ignorant, though that's shameful enough. The real shame is that you are actively anti-knowledge. You're wasting what is clearly a well-endowed brain pursuing a vapid ideology.

What a loss.

Which has already been addressed; ergo, you should have no more objections.

[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.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Nor can we we keep up with the dishonest sophistry of the reluctant nihilist.

[Esquilax]

Nor can we we keep up with the dishonest sophistry of the reluctant nihilist.

Do you have a particular point of contention with what I said, or did you just drop in for your usual petty, condescending and presumptuous attempt to dictate other people's positions to them?

[Thumpalumpacus]

Nor can we we keep up with the dishonest sophistry of the reluctant nihilist.

Quit shitposting.

No, really, go back to pleading philosophers from 2000 years ago -- at that least that had intellectual gravitas.

This shitposting you've engaged in the last couple of days is vapid and bespeaks a dessicated mind and thoughtless nature. You're definitely losing rep with shit like this, Chad.

Show your better qualities, not your worst.

[dyresand]

Krauss debated WLC 3 times and for the final third time he brought the bullshit button and kept pressing when WLC was doing his usuall.
Krauss knows and he even said it on other events as well WLC is a dishonest snake oil salesman. And you know what i agree with Krauss.