William Lane Craig continues to desperately defend the indefensible.

[YGninja]

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.

Typical evasiveness.

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.

Still no citation for negative mutations not being selected out, and then proving to be positive sometime in the future.

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.

Again, you've given an example of LOSING something, and then just written over it with conjecture. Our oldest human brains are larger than what we have today, by some 200cm3; another instance of losing something rather than gaining, and another instance of the facts matching the Biblical version of events rather than those of evolutionary theory. Why is it that you have to try and frame LOSING stuff as evidence that everything came from nothing?

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.

The facts of the citation agree with me, the fact that they still try and frame it as evolution is neither here nor there, it just amounts to evidence that there is indeed a conspiracy to frame everything as evolution, even when it clearly isn't.
The lizards are termed genetically identical because they are for all intent and purpose the same, ofcourse they aren't truly genetically identical as there will always be mutations, but the development of a cecal valve system, if it were original, would be a consistent difference in the genome, precluding the reference as genetically identical.
Mutations are all random, if there were any guidance to it then evolution theory would get your no-where, as it invokes an intelligence. Natural selection has to act on mutations, which are so unlikely that you need to posit billions of years for evolution to work. 30 years is clearly not enough time, even if the system could work, which we've no reason to think it can. First you've got to get the 1 in a billion mutations that could start to develop the valve system, then you need hundreds or thousands of other similarly unlikely mutations all occurring by chance one after the other, all building upon the previous mutations (by chance) until the cumulation of mutations actually makes a difference to any surivival chances and can be selected by natural selection. It'd be like winning the lottery every day for 30 years straight, and then some. Why do you invoke the miraculous for an unguided, unintelligent process but deny it from an intelligent, all powerful being? Further research shows the whole thing is a lie anyway, as the "new cecal valves", are actually just enlarged pre-existing muscles. “The ‘new’ muscular valve they found between the small and large intestine is simply an enlargement of muscles already present in the gut wall at this juncture." David Menton, Anatomist.

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.

Fossilisation is a rare process, but every creature who ever lived should be evidence of evolution. The simple fact is that you have to imagine that one fossil evolved into another, while we don't have to imagine they didn't change, because there are creatures purported to have billions of years ago, which are identical today. http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/scient...lion-years
One such creature hasn't changed in over 2 billion years! But they still want to claim it as evidence for evolution!

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.

Inference to the best explanation, given all the evidence at hand. I am referring to atavisms. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atavism
"Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type. In biology, an atavism is an evolutionary throwback, such as traits reappearing which had disappeared generations before.[2] Atavisms can occur in several ways. One way is when genes for previously existing phenotypical features are preserved in DNA, and these become expressed through a mutation that either knock out the overriding genes for the new traits or make the old traits override the new one. "

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.

Obviously i am simplifying, but that simplification actually works in your favour. I am being favourable by giving you a 1 for 1 scenario, as we know that the vast majority of mutations are neutral or negative. It is arguable as to whether we have ever seen a positive mutation,much less through gene duplication or insertion, but we witness negative mutations and deletions all the time. If the general tide is negative, how'd you get a human from a bacteria? You need to show that the general tide is positive, but the evidence is against you.

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.

What argument? You are constantly bleating about how you don't need to present any argument, and denying any BOP.

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?

I refer to my previous example. The mutations all happen by random, you need them to randomly fall in your favour, time and time again, each one in a billion directly building upon the previous one in a billion until you have even built a system which would have survival implications for natural selection to select upon.

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.

That wasn't my anology, which was to delete 5 parts for every one you ADD. And this is generous, as again, it is arguable whether or not we have ever seen a positive mutation or an increase in information which wasn't negative or neutral, while we see deletions and negative mutations continually.

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.

The vast majority of mutations are 1 for 1 swaps. Of the others, the majority are negative and again, its arguable whether we have ever seen a positive one. Hence my trying to simplify things for you actually works in your favour.

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?

We've not established "creative editing", "dishonest means", or any of Dawkins claims, you are just taking his claims as fact because you are on his side. What we've both got is an uncut (atleast for the relevant part), video of Dawkins being asked a simple question which the entire theory of evolution is predicated on, and him not being able to supply a coherent answer.

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.

These are called "Gene Disorders", and they aren't a mechanism, atleast not in the common sense of the word, they are errors and they create defective genes by repeating existing information.

"Trinucleotide repeat disorders (also known as trinucleotide repeat expansion disorders, triplet repeat expansion disorders or codon reiteration disorders) are a set of genetic disorders caused by trinucleotide repeat expansion, a kind of mutation where trinucleotide repeats in certain genes exceed the normal, stable threshold, which differs per gene. The mutation is a subset of unstable microsatellite repeats that occur throughout all genomic sequences. If the repeat is present in a healthy gene, a dynamic mutation may increase the repeat count and result in a defective gene."

Here is a big list of known diseases and sydromes caused by this error.http://neuromuscular.wustl.edu/mother/dnarep.htm

All this and there is not a single, known, positive effect, and you want to present it as evidence that all things evolved vertically from bacteria. . What is true, is that natural selection would select against sequence repetition because of all of the observable problems it causes, while having no observable benefits. It is associated with so many issues that natural selection probably has selected against it, but it persists because genomes can only degrade, in line with the Biblical teaching and second law of thermodynamics, and contrary to evolution theory.

/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.

Already responded. These aren't reliable functions that have been shown to produce more information which could explain the vertical development of life from most simple to complex. These are the exact opposite, they are malfunctions which have been shown to create dozens of serious diseases and syndromes which natural selection would surely select against. Just read the "Repeat Sequences: Disease Associations" section on this page.
http://neuromuscular.wustl.edu/mother/dnarep.htm

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.

Here will have a typical reversion to screams of fallacy with no explanation. Care to even explain what an "argument from big numbers", even is, and why its fallacious??

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?

I don't need a working counter theory to recognise that the proposed theory can't work.

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.

Just a deferment of responsibility.

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.

I am not moving the goalposts. You hav'nt supplied a working model of evolution. If there were any such model, it would have such huge implications we'd all know about it. What you've got is a simple program which makes deformed limb-looking things try and advance towards food. We should be seeing ever increasing complexity and intelligence, we aren't.

[downbeatplumb]

Just watching the theist make a fool of himself.
Was gonna way in but figured Esq would do it better.

Sometimes a little education goes a little way.

[Pizza]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNTxr2NJ...Ambibabe86

[robvalue]

Well you know, people like WLC are not going to be converting anyone. I highly doubt it, certainly not any significant numbers. It's all about pats in the back and providing rationalizations to believers.

However, to the new generations, they are going to be a clear demonstration of how antiquated and ridiculous the beliefs they represent are, given the desperate measures they take to try and pretend it has anything to do with reality.

Vile as these people are, I think overall they will help the atheist cause. Do you think?

[Esquilax]

Just watching the theist make a fool of himself.
Was gonna way in but figured Esq would do it better.

Honestly? Feel free. I'm quickly running out of patience for the way this one flaunts his ignorance as though it's something to be proud of, and I have precious little time as it is- living in a rehab center as I am right now- to write multiple lengthy posts explaining in excruciating detail how biology actually works, only to have him disagree in the end anyway, because he came to his conclusion without looking at any of the evidence.

It's only fun when there's some indication that the other person even vaguely understands what's being said, and I genuinely think he's incapable of doing so. I may weigh in later when I have the time and inclination, but I have much better things to do right now, like take care of my wife.

[abaris]

I'm quickly running out of patience for the way this one flaunts his ignorance as though it's something to be proud of, and I have precious little time as it is- living in a rehab center as I am right now- to write multiple lengthy posts explaining in excruciating detail how biology actually works, only to have him disagree in the end anyway, because he came to his conclusion without looking at any of the evidence.

Wasted effort anyway, since he is proud of his ignorance. He's the guy who gave us the Age of enlightenment/Lucifer shitbomb after all.

[Esquilax]

Wasted effort anyway, since he is proud of his ignorance. He's the guy who gave us the Age of enlightenment/Lucifer shitbomb after all.

Oh. Oh right. I forgot that.

In that case, I have to ask YGNinja why he'd bother arguing science at all, since he thinks it's a plot from Satan. To be consistent he'd need to deny science entirely and just lean on faith... but then, Mr Luciferian Conspiracy wouldn't want to seem unreasonable, I suppose.

[Crossless2.0]

Oh. Oh right. I forgot that.

In that case, I have to ask YGNinja why he'd bother arguing science at all, since he thinks it's a plot from Satan. To be consistent he'd need to deny science entirely and just lean on faith... but then, Mr Luciferian Conspiracy wouldn't want to seem unreasonable, I suppose.

Not only that, but his ability to strut and bray would be seriously hampered without access to the electronic communications systems Lucifer (blessed be his enlightened name) has made possible.

[Thumpalumpacus]

The mutations all happen by random, you need them to randomly fall in your favour, time and time again, each one in a billion directly building upon the previous one in a billion until you have even built a system which would have survival implications for natural selection to select upon.

You clearly don't know what the fuck you are talking about.

Mutations are random. When they have phenotypic presentation, then natural selection can act on them. They need not fall in the favor of the species, because evolution is not teleological. And natural selection can act on anything which has phenotypic expression.

Natural selection winnows out those mutations which are too deleterious. Mutations which have neutral effects will be pruned more randomly, and be subject to genetic drift. Mutations which are positive will be selected-for so long as there is selection pressure involved.

Additionally, mutation doesn't happen only in one individual, in sequence, as you seem to think. It happens constantly in all individuals in a population, which then mingle their mutations by way of sex.

Seriously, when you type shit this stupid, you damage the case you're trying to make. Surely you god has a representative who is capable of understanding what is, after all, a simple concept. If you're the best he's got, he's scraping the bottom of the barrel.

---

Just watching the theist make a fool of himself.
Was gonna way in but figured Esq would do it better.

Honestly? Feel free. I'm quickly running out of patience for the way this one flaunts his ignorance as though it's something to be proud of, and I have precious little time as it is- living in a rehab center as I am right now- to write multiple lengthy posts explaining in excruciating detail how biology actually works, only to have him disagree in the end anyway, because he came to his conclusion without looking at any of the evidence.

It's pearls in front of swine, brotha. The ignorance is strong with this one.

I may weigh in later when I have the time and inclination, but I have much better things to do right now, like take care of my wife.

Regards to the both of you. May her recovery be as quick and complete as possible.

[robvalue]

My best wishes to your wife as well