The only thing worth responding to...

No it doesn't that is a rank dismissal on your behalf, you cannot dismiss cause and effect. Now, with respect to the different scientific areas of study in abiogenesis and the Big Bang theory... it's like they say, as simplistic as it is, you can't even get to discuss evolution until you have something to evolve.

Evolution is not the theory of how life came about, it is the theory of how life changed once it was about. You're trying to lump in a big straw man, here.

To demonstrate the absurdity - an analogy. I posit that the theory "Darn Republican made a post on this forum " is false, because you don't haven't shown us your birth certificate yet.

If you want to discuss abiogenesis/the big bang, I suggest you make a thread for it.

The only thing worth responding to...

There was nothing you could add... nor defend.

Evolution is not the theory of how life came about, it is the theory of how life changed once it was about. You're trying to lump in a big straw man, here.

How do you come to that conclusion... your comment just now is in direct contravention to what is being taught. So, what are they teaching that is so different?

To demonstrate the absurdity - an analogy. I posit that the theory "Darn Republican made a post on this forum " is false, because you don't haven't shown us your birth certificate yet.

I don't know what the heck you just tried to say there...

If you want to discuss abiogenesis/the big bang, I suggest you make a thread for it.

You brought it up, I was meeting you on the grounds you wanted to play on... but you know, such is the downward spiral, the the collapsing house of cards or whatever analogy you with you anoint a loosing argument with. Your remedial regurgitations aren't helping you cause one bit.... and the sohpstiry... you should have been a Roman playwright.

Originally Posted by Darn Republican

Listen, I am familiar with the term, but I also know the word subterfuge as well.

Yes, quote mining is a type of subterfuge. The next question is why would you trust any group of people who routinely need to do that.

Oh wait, you are republican. You require that also. Never mind.

No it doesn't that is a rank dismissal on your behalf, you cannot dismiss cause and effect. Now, with respect to the different scientific areas of study in abiogenesis and the Big Bang theory... it's like they say, as simplistic as it is, you can't even get to discuss evolution until you have something to evolve.

Which, of course, is a meaningless arguement, since evolution doesn't deal with origins anymore than plumbing have to do with making roads. This is a common arguement that is used to try to build a straw man argument. It's a diversionary tactic, and pretty ignorant.

You can supply all the counter intelligence you want, it's the fundamentals that escape all of your arguments. You have no foundation to build all those cerebrally escapist notions and pseudo-scientific hypothesis on. In order for evolution to have even the slightest modicom of viabilty, time cannot be the catalyst along with change for the possiblity for something to become something else. maybe you need to read some of the quotes from the guys on your side saying it isn't possible... they know a heck of a lot more than you do on the subject - it's faith beyond that, and this is your faith. And to quote Frank Turek, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist, nor evolutionist.

Except, of course, it isn't 'pseudo-scientific' at all, and you don't understand a thing about what evolution is about. It's funny that someone who can't even understand what evolution is wants to yell about the 'fundamentals'

Yet, I am sure you are just so confident that there is this mysterious uncommunicative supernatural entity that is going around helping you in undetectable ways, and is going to give you 'eternal life'




That's fine... I don't need to click my heels here.[/QUOTE]

Originally Posted by Darn Republican

That is true, but it is still a Nylon Bug is not a Nylon Horse... mutations can occur laterally [intra species] but not ascending [something entirely different].

I keep seeing that stated and restated, and yet nobody ever seems to be able to say what the difference supposedly is. As I pointed out to someone earlier, one could readily morph a chimp genome all the way into a human genome without ever making any single change that could not be dismissed, were it to be observed in nature, as a mere 'lateral' mutation.

Nor do I think you perceive the import of what you've just conceded: a nylon bug may not be a nylon horse, but nor is it constrained to be what it was, forever. The universe evidently has no blanket prohibition against novelty - and that means you cannot argue against evolution from the standpoint of inviolable principle, but only upon the substantially weaker grounds of impracticality.

No, it is you young padawan learner... that has been mislead, some of the most famous and noted Darwinian Naturalists such as Crick, Huxley, Lipson... and others have admitted to their own discredit that the entire theory of evolutions rests on chance, here... but here, lets burst that bubble for you a bit more:

I'm sure you reproduce these quotes in good faith, but you ought to know they are not necessarily what they seem. The Darwin quote is a particularly craven quote mine: he was expressing empathy with those of his readers who found it difficult to imagine how such a thing as an eye could evolve by stages; effectively putting himself in their place so that he might more readily take them by the hand and show them how such evolution may occur, with ample supporting evidence from the natural world. I refer you to the Quote Mine Project for further edification.

(An accident on the way to work has a specific cause, yet can be modelled statistically) You wouldn't be able to have that analogy in context... because if there is nothing, cause cannot help you. That is the whole argument... without anything to start you cannot have cause be the agency for events to follow.

But there are ample known causes for such novelty as is required by evolution. Mutation induced by chemical or energetic interference, recombination through sexual reproduction - surely you are not suggesting that these processes do not occur?

Invalid argument to assert that mutations can map a road outside of their assigned task in illogical, where would the information to do so come from?

Since we have observed it happening in the case of the nylon bug, it cannot be the obstacle you presume

It's easy to get lost in abstract concerns about 'information'. For instance, imagine a lock with a three-digit code, like those on briefcases. It's easy to get in if you know the code, but it's also perfectly possible to get in without knowing the code - it just takes longer. If you're right about the way information works, that oughtn't to be possible.

The crucial point is that the lock contains all the information required to open it. That information is transferred to the person trying to open it via feedback: when you get the right code, the case opens. If there was no feedback - if the person was not actually opening the case themselves but was just blindly shouting numbers for someone else to try with no idea if it was working or not - they would be none the wiser.

Similarly, the nylon waste products metabolised by the nylon bug intrinsically possess all the necessary information concerning how they can be broken down. That information is transferred to the bacteria via the feedback of natural selection: the bugs who hit upon the right combination survive, and those who do not, perish. In this manner information about how to survive in the present environment is transferred from the environment and encoded in the genome. No information is being created, it is merely being moved around.

(Evolution is a series of highly likely events)Evolution simply put, is the creation story for secular humanists and nothing more, which in and among itself if fine - I don't personally care if believe we evolved from Mountain Dew, but don't try to pass that off as fact when there is substantial evidence that says otherwise.

On the contrary, there is no evidence to suggest that we have not evolved via common descent. Not in any living creature thus far examined, or any fossil thus far unearthed. We are obliged to seek out evolutionary mechanisms precisely because the fact that it has happened is beyond all doubt.

Again, the only thing worth responding to:

How do you come to that conclusion... your comment just now is in direct contravention to what is being taught. So, what are they teaching that is so different?

You want to prove that, or is this the same sort of statement as "egg cells are multi-celled organisms"?

Originally Posted by Peeling

On the contrary, there is no evidence to suggest that we have not evolved via common descent. Not in any living creature thus far examined, or any fossil thus far unearthed. We are obliged to seek out evolutionary mechanisms precisely because the fact that it has happened is beyond all doubt.

I will further say that 'common descent' (as in all life from a single source), is not a requirement of evolution, it is just where the DNA evidence points us to (at the moment). There is nothing inherent on the TOE itself that demands a single source for all life.

Originally Posted by trebor

There is nothing inherent on the TOE itself that demands a single source for all life.

Indeed. Nor is there a requirement in TOE that says evolution is inherently, always slow, requiring billions of years.

That said, the evidence does suggest at least on this planet, life evolved from a single source and it took a long time.

Originally Posted by trebor

I will further say that 'common descent' (as in all life from a single source), is not a requirement of evolution, it is just where the DNA evidence points us to (at the moment).

Really? genetics has dealt a serious XXXX to homology. features which evolutionists claimed were from common descent turn out to have nothing in common genetically. Genetics support creation and does not help the evolutionists case. Homology involves the theory that macroevolutionary relationships can be proven by the similarity in the anatomy and physiology of different animals.

Since Darwin, homology has been cited in textbooks as a major proof for evolution. A review of the literature on homology indicates that the theory does not provide evidence for evolutionary naturalism, and that the common examples of homology can be better explained by Creation.

Furthermore, increased knowledge about the genetic and molecular basis of life has revealed many major exceptions and contradictions to the theory which, as a result, have largely negated homology as a proof of evolution.

Now prove me wrong with actual evidence rather than just your opinions. Here's some background on the crisis Homology is experiencing since the advances made in Genetics and DNA science.
Homology: A Concept in Crisis. Origins & Design 18:2. Wells, Jonathan

Originally Posted by Archangel

Really? genetics has dealt a serious XXXX to homology. features which evolutionists claimed were from common descent turn out to have nothing in common genetically. Genetic supports creation and does not help evolutionists case. Homology involves the theory that macroevolutionary relationships can be proven by the similarity in the anatomy and physiology of different animals.

Since Darwin, homology has been cited in textbooks as a major proof for evolution. A review of the literature on homology indicates that the theory does not provide evidence for evolutionary naturalism, and that the common examples of homology can be better explained by Creation.

Furthermore, increased knowledge about the genetic and molecular basis of life has revealed many major exceptions and contradictions to the theory which, as a result, have largely negated homology as a proof of evolution.

Now prove me wrong with actual evidence rather than just your opinions. Here's some background on the crisis Homology is experiencing since the advances made in Genetics and DNA science.
Homology: A Concept in Crisis. Origins & Design 18:2. Wells, Jonathan

If Mr Wells is so correct with this, I would be more than happy to see an article from him that manages to meet the peer reviewed scientific standards. Alas, he is unable to write something that can be properly reviewed, and has to resort to trying to publish in the anti-intellectual pseudo scientific publican 'Arn'.

How does homology favour creationism over the ToE? Homology has never been the crux of evolutionary theory, nor is it now a problem for the ToE.

Originally Posted by T.Q

How does homology favour creationism over the ToE? Homology has never been the crux of evolutionary theory, nor is it now a problem for the ToE.

It isn't... besides. Wells is wrong.

http://rnaworld.bio.ku.edu/ID-intro/...ology_v1.1.pdf

Originally Posted by Archangel

Really? genetics has dealt a serious XXXX to homology. features which evolutionists claimed were from common descent turn out to have nothing in common genetically. Genetics support creation and does not help the evolutionists case. Homology involves the theory that macroevolutionary relationships can be proven by the similarity in the anatomy and physiology of different animals.

Since Darwin, homology has been cited in textbooks as a major proof for evolution. A review of the literature on homology indicates that the theory does not provide evidence for evolutionary naturalism, and that the common examples of homology can be better explained by Creation.

Furthermore, increased knowledge about the genetic and molecular basis of life has revealed many major exceptions and contradictions to the theory which, as a result, have largely negated homology as a proof of evolution.

Now prove me wrong with actual evidence rather than just your opinions. Here's some background on the crisis Homology is experiencing since the advances made in Genetics and DNA science.
Homology: A Concept in Crisis. Origins & Design 18:2. Wells, Jonathan

Human Chromosomes are purely homologous to ape-chromosomes-- with the sole exception of Chromosome #2 (out of 23), which is purely homologous to ape-chromosomes 2&3 combined.

It has two centromeres, and two sets of telomeres; meanwhile apes have 24 chromosomes each with one centromere and one set of telomeres; likewise, human chromosome #2 is otherwise proven by DNA-sequence to be a mutated fusion of ape-chromosomes 2 and 3.

This is why humans have 23 chromosomes, while apes have 24; this mutation occurred approximately 4 million years ago, and is primarily responsible for the differences between humans and apes.
This is indeed the "smoking gun" of the link between humans and apes.

Originally Posted by Peeling

On the contrary, there is no evidence to suggest that we have not evolved via common descent. Not in any living creature thus far examined, or any fossil thus far unearthed. We are obliged to seek out evolutionary mechanisms precisely because the fact that it has happened is beyond all doubt.

Well of course, everything evolved from the same self-replicating organic molecule to result from the primordial soup. That's simply inevitable, since simple mathematics indicates that such a molecule would only arise once in a great while- and in the interrim, the offspring of that one molecule would devour or absorb all others, like a hatchling that ate all the other eggs in the nest.

Now the question arises: did a greater intelligence PLAN it that way?
Well if so, then it would have to be SO intelligent, that we couldn't prove it one way or another, at our current level of development.

It would have had to have started at the Big Bang, using some short of mechanism to program a complex chain of events using precise physical principles; however given what we DO know, it would have have most likely depended upon various "uncertainty principles" to permit a general result rather than a precise one, simply setting the process in motion and calculating that life would arise somewhere by the laws of probability (which it also created and determined).

For example, Earth's evolution of humans is more or less a freak-occurrence, since the moon mainly keeps earth's rotation on its axist-- rather than the North Pole ending up on the current equator every few million years (though we DO have "global warming" of a few degrees about every 1000 years).
Therefore without the moon, life could never have evolved on Earth.

But the moon wasn't always there, but is believed to come from the further reaches of space, and have slammed into the Earth and RIGHT THROUGH it (see the "Big Whack" theory, as whacky as it sounds). Otherwise, Earth's gravity wouldn't be strong enough to keep it in orbit.

Likewise, factor in the Yucatan meteorite which killed the dinosaurs 65 million years ago, which was irrefutably essential to human evolution, and the probability of organized planning, rapidly approaches zero-- again, short of an intelligence so advanced, that proof becomes impossible via current means.
In fact, the very term "intelligence" fails in terms of being an epistemological construct, rather than ontological (which likewise fails in terms of being epistemological in itself).

So the notion of "intelligent design" yields only the requirement of proving a negative, with no mutually exclusive positives-- i.e. it's a null argument.

Originally Posted by trebor

If Mr Wells is so correct with this, I would be more than happy to see an article from him that manages to meet the peer reviewed scientific standards. Alas, he is unable to write something that can be properly reviewed, and has to resort to trying to publish in the anti-intellectual pseudo scientific publican 'Arn'.

And yet you post no evidence refuting it. Beside that, how would he get a group of evolutionists to objectively review his evidence when doing so honestly would be detrimental to their careers? Yet they will rubber stamp any pro-evolution papers since they support their preconceived notions. This is proven by all of the peer reviewed papers which have later been disproved by new evidence. Yet, notice that the peer reviewers of the prior bad science they endorsed are never challenged or called out for the process of rubber stamping bad science. The peer review system is rigged, plain and simple. Here is Wells bio, how does yours add up against it as you judge his work as faulty!

Jonathan Wells has received two Ph.D.s, one in Molecular and Cell Biology from the University of California at Berkeley, and one in Religious Studies from Yale University. He has done postdoctoral research at the University of California at Berkeley, and has taught biology at California State University in Hayward. Dr. Wells has published articles in both scientific and religious journals including Development, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, BioSystems, American Presbyterians, and Patristic and Byzantine Review. He is also author of the book Charles Hodge's Critique of Darwinism (Edwin Mellen Press, 1988). He is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute. Dr. Wells's work in developmental biology poses a serious challenge to the neo-Darwinian idea that random mutations can create new body plans and organisms.

Since you refuse to answer my question regarding Homology, maybe you'll answer these? But I doubt it.

ORIGIN OF LIFE. Why do textbooks claim that the 1953 Miller-Urey experiment shows how life's building blocks may have formed on the early Earth — when conditions on the early Earth were probably nothing like those used in the experiment, and the origin of life remains a mystery?

DARWIN'S TREE OF LIFE. Why don't textbooks discuss the "Cambrian explosion," in which all major animal groups appear together in the fossil record fully formed instead of branching from a common ancestor — thus contradicting the evolutionary tree of life?

HOMOLOGY. Why do textbooks define homology as similarity due to common ancestry, then claim that it is evidence for common ancestry — a circular argument masquerading as scientific evidence?

VERTEBRATE EMBRYOS. Why do textbooks use drawings of similarities in vertebrate embryos as evidence for their common ancestry — even though biologists have known for over a century that vertebrate embryos are not most similar in their early stages, and the drawings are faked?

ARCHAEOPTERYX. Why do textbooks portray this fossil as the missing link between dinosaurs and modern birds — even though modern birds are probably not descended from it, and its supposed ancestors do not appear until millions of years after it?

PEPPERED MOTHS. Why do textbooks use pictures of peppered moths camouflaged on tree trunks as evidence for natural selection — when biologists have known since the 1980s that the moths don't normally rest on tree trunks, and all the pictures have been staged?

DARWIN'S FINCHES. Why do textbooks claim that beak changes in Galapagos finches during a severe drought can explain the origin of species by natural selection — even though the changes were reversed after the drought ended, and no net evolution occurred?

MUTANT FRUIT FLIES. Why do textbooks use fruit flies with an extra pair of wings as evidence that DNA mutations can supply raw materials for evolution — even though the extra wings have no muscles and these disabled mutants cannot survive outside the laboratory?

HUMAN ORIGINS. Why are artists' drawings of ape-like humans used to justify materialistic claims that we are just animals and our existence is a mere accident — when fossil experts cannot even agree on who our supposed ancestors were or what they looked like?

EVOLUTION A FACT? Why are we told that Darwin's theory of evolution is a scientific fact — even though many of its claims are based on misrepresentations of the facts?

Discovering Design :: Ten Questions To Ask Your Biology Teacher