So your an Athiest

[God of Mr. Hanky]

You can attain it, but it's a matter of what ideals and principles you adhere to as well. It's not always about smart or education. It's also about intellectual integrity.

Ok, so what do I have to do to attain it?

I don't really know much of anything by my own research, I'm just an average Joe who reads a lot and never got it together. But when I read what the brightest (or so-called brightest) minds have to say, I keep my eyes and ears open and run their ideas through the ultimate, and very easy-to-use bullshit filter - it's called the Scientific Method! I'm sure you've heard of it, the problem with those of you with Design on the brain is that you don't seem to understand that the five steps are supposed to be done in order. You go and scramble it up, beginning with your conclusion (Step 5 - there MUST be a designer). When I see a so-called expert doing that, then I know I can look elsewhere for sound ideas.

[Cyberman]

I just want to point out that the beliefs of scientists are completely irrelevant to the work that they do. Sir Isaac Newton was a practicing alchemist as well as a mathematician and physicist, but it's his work in the latter fields in which he made the greatest contribution. Scientists like everyone else have to show their work, or it doesn't mean a damn.

[Mermaid]

Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I won't be a good researcher. Look at virtually every researcher before the 1800s.

Not because you are a Christian. Because you don't accept the most basic biological facts due to your religious beliefs.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

I very much appreciate that someone is actually answering my questions with specifics. You sound like a busy guy, so if you don't have time to respond then that's fine, but I have some questions.
1. Point mutations (frameshift are a class of this) do not seem sufficient to actually produce new information. The only point mutation that adds new information is a frameshift, and it results if it lands in a protein coding sequence, it results in non-functional protein product due to the fact that it now changes each of the following codons (and therefore amino acids). Do you think point mutations have creative properties?
2. Transposable elements are pre-existing DNA and their insertion into DNA sequences are still not the creation of new genetic information. I still do not see how they could arise by evolutionary means. They have the inverted repeats and genes for proteins for their own removal. How does mutation lead to this type specific DNA sequence? 
3. Aren't recombination events still just the alteration of existing DNA without producing new sequences (I know that it is going to be copied later), but isn't the gene just moving from one homologue to the other?
4. Gene duplication is the most convincing. However, it makes sense to me that having an extra gene would lead to having twice the protein product of that gene, which I feel would cripple the cell's functions and be a waste of resources. If it is a waste of resources than wouldn't it get selected against before it could diverge into a new sequence?

I'm not necessarily trying to convince anyone of anything, I just think intelligent design has been laughed off by the scientific community and I'm not sure why.

No problem. I have a little bit of (much-needed) "downtime" right now, so I'll try.

1) Where do you get the idea that a point mutation is not "new information"? If I change a letter in this sentence, it is new information. If I change a letter in this sentence, it is now information. Just like in the written languages, depending on which base mutates, it can have radical changes on the outcome of the protein produced, and if the mutation occurs in a gene that directs other genes (such as the "Hox" genes), the effects can be radical from a relatively small change. There is zero reason to think that an altered protein would be non-functional; in fact, we observe the opposite of this in nature, in many common proteins (such as hemoglobin), which have a wide range of functional variants. Because a point mutation may alter the amino acid coded for completely, or may insert a "stop coding" codon where Tyrosine used to be (see chart under hide tag), it can change everything.

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2) Transposons interrupt other genes, or they land near other genes which influence one another by proximity (I am sure you will cover this in your genetics textbook), or they induce frame shifts, or a number of other forms of interference. Again, by definition, they alter the information and may produce "new information". Think of them as parenthetical phrases inserted into the middle of a sentence, occasionally into the middle of words. If you th(because of your predjudices)ink that this doesn't change a sentence, you're confused.

3) Yes, except that it's not always 100% accurate, pieces can come off completely, or invert, or a number of other changes. And again, any change in the "wording" of the codon sequence changes the sentence, as far as the chemistry is concerned.

4) There are places in your body where you have 30 or more copies of one gene. If TOO many copies keep being spawned, it can lead to a likelihood of cancers emerging due to problems with regulation of the site, but the short version is that your genes don't make proteins 100% of the time-- they are regulated, switched on-and-off, as needed. If you have two copies, your body can turn them on until the job is done, then turn them back off. But the point, again, is that a duplication (which eliminates almost completely the issue of a mutation damaging the first gene's survival-related job, if it's that kind of gene in the first place) allows for new information because it lets evolution "play" with the duplicate copy to do other jobs. It's how they proved Michael Behe's "irreducibly complex" bacterial flagellum was a bogus claim; they showed where genes had been appropriated from other functional systems in the bacterium to make that motor, etc.

I think if you keep your mind open and ask your professor good questions (after class!), you'll find most of the answers you're looking for are already fairly well-known.

Sorry I took so long to reply... the aforementioned fiancee called me in the middle of typing this to tell me about a problem with our new house in KC, and to drone on about how un-ready our kid is for his part in her church's Christmas play. (Today is dress-rehearsal.)

[Mermaid]

Thanks, TRS. Clearly I am too lazy to write all of that out, but instead choose to sit here and snark in short sentences. I am helpful.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Half my field biology team (at least) were Christians. All were evolutionary biologists. My fiancee is a Christian (see immediately above) and she is an evolutionary biologist. Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, is an evangelical Christian and wrote a book on the subject of why evolution must be true, and how it works-- he goes on to make some pretty wild claims about physics, which is not his field, and for which he was roundly criticized by the physics community, but overall you should check it out: The Language of God.

[AAA]

Ok, so what do I have to do to attain it?

I don't really know much of anything by my own research, I'm just an average Joe who reads a lot and never got it together. But when I read what the brightest (or so-called brightest) minds have to say, I keep my eyes and ears open and run their ideas through the ultimate, and very easy-to-use bullshit filter - it's called the Scientific Method! I'm sure you've heard of it, the problem with those of you with Design on the brain is that you don't seem to understand that the five steps are supposed to be done in order. You go and scramble it up, beginning with your conclusion (Step 5 - there MUST be a designer). When I see a so-called expert doing that, then I know I can look elsewhere for sound ideas.

I don't start with the idea of design, I conclude design. Based on the same scientific method that Darwin used and Newton before him. When we have something that we want to study, but can't make observations, we should appeal to our experience to answer the question at hand. Our experience tells us that information comes from intelligence, and complex specific machines come from intelligence. Based on this you should conclude design. You can (and should) still look for a different explanation. But until a good one arises you are relying on faith that one will come.

[Mermaid]

I don't really know much of anything by my own research, I'm just an average Joe who reads a lot and never got it together. But when I read what the brightest (or so-called brightest) minds have to say, I keep my eyes and ears open and run their ideas through the ultimate, and very easy-to-use bullshit filter - it's called the Scientific Method! I'm sure you've heard of it, the problem with those of you with Design on the brain is that you don't seem to understand that the five steps are supposed to be done in order. You go and scramble it up, beginning with your conclusion (Step 5 - there MUST be a designer). When I see a so-called expert doing that, then I know I can look elsewhere for sound ideas.

I don't start with the idea of design, I conclude design. Based on the same scientific method that Darwin used and Newton before him. When we have something that we want to study, but can't make observations, we should appeal to our experience to answer the question at hand. Our experience tells us that information comes from intelligence, and complex specific machines come from intelligence. Based on this you should conclude design. You can (and should) still look for a different explanation. But until a good one arises you are relying on faith that one will come.

So many of your statements about how life works have overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You are not thinking like a good scientist. You can be one and a Christian at the same time.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Our experience tells us that information comes from intelligence, and complex specific machines come from intelligence.

Um, no it doesn't.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_hole...on_paradox

[God of Mr. Hanky]

People have done what calculations? You would cite if you knew.

Chances are that somebody may have done calculations and found that life as we know it, origin redux is unlikely, but that does not make our own existence particularly remarkable. Even if so, and this is doubtful because such an endeavor to prognosticate would be taken up by a narrow-minded Christian who's goal is not to discover anything but to disprove the work of others, this would not eliminate the possibility of life evolving elsewhere in a different form. Our universe is actually finite, but just how finite it is has been debated, and those like you with an agenda to prove would surely low-ball that figure.

As for life itself, the definition of this has broadened greatly over the past four decades, what with oceanographic research revealing life forms thriving, under conditions where it was previously believed that no life possibly could.
http://www.indiana.edu/~g105lab/images/g...nities.htm
No, Virginia, life does not depend on conditions to fall into place for it. Life digs its cleats into any toehold which it can hang onto, and then it makes its own ecosystem of any resources which it can draw energy from. It works this way because it's life which is alive, not its physical conditions and not its chemical elements. There's no evidence for your god in any of this.

Yes life exists in places you would not expect to find it. But extremophiles are more complex than normal bacteria, so even if you believed in evolution these would certainly not have been able to be the first that evolved. I think the most broad definition of life that could be given is something capable of taking molecules from the environment and use them to produce accurate copies of itself. I don't think I'm being narrow minded, and I want to discover new things. Just because I'm a Christian doesn't mean I won't be a good researcher. Look at virtually every researcher before the 1800s.

Whether or not that uncited claim is true or not is not above debate, but the possibilities they imply for life under a broader range of conditions remain strong.

That you call them "extremophiles" is rather interesting, considering how life, when it first began 4 billion years ago, did so under similar conditions - the atmosphere and ocean was choked with volcanic activity and no oxygen. It was hardly extreme to these life forms, which made do with what it had available. That's what life does.