If you don't accept common descent...

Citation?

...how do you explain human chromosome 2?

evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

As I said, I personally know many of them, and I know about very many more. In fact, one of the items I discovered when writing on evolution was that a full third of the books published on the subject of evolution in the twenty years preceding the date of my paper were attacks on the theory. But where were these books? Not even one in the university bookstore, or in the university library. And the reference I used (Cumulative List of Books In Print) did not even list "cheap and paper bound editions."

I already told you what it involved. It was called a science area.

I would be interested in seeing the alleged documentation of this mutation. Unless this included documentation that no individual in the parent stock was able to survive in this cooler environment, no mutation was demonstrated.

In order to document the fact that a beneficial mutation has occurred, it is necessary to first establish as fact that the alleged mutation did not previously exist within the available gene pool for the species in question. Unless this has been rigorously established, the allegation that a beneficial mutation has occurred is pure fiction.

I have never seen even one allegation that such a beneficial mutation has occurred that was not based on an assumption that evolution is indeed a fact, and therefore the alleged new characteristic must have been absent from the previously available gene pool and have arisen through beneficial mutation.

This is an unproven hypothesis based on the assumption that evolution is a proven fact.

If you wish to see examples of objectivity, you need to carefully read the scientific journals I have read, such as the following note I found in the journal of geology concerning hominoid footprints found in carboniferous strata over a wide area of the eastern United States.

"If man, or man's early ape ancestor, of that early ape ancestor's early mammalian ancestor, lived as far back as in the carboniferous period, then the whole science of geology is so completely wrong that all the geologists will resign their jobs and take up truck driving. Hence, science rejects the attractive explanation that man made these footprints in the mud of the carboniferous period with his feet." (This is an approximate quote made from memory. I did not bother to look it up again for this post.)

I have read articles in scientific journals calling for boycotts against publishers who dared to publish books questioning the theory of evolution.

I have known professor level university instructors to teach items as proof of evolution to beginning biology students, and teach their advanced students that these fare not actual facts.

I have known professor level university instructors to publicly rage against students who dare to say they do not believe in evolution, and then privately tell their advanced students that "actually, evolution is not a very good explanation of the facts. It's just the best one we have."

I am not the only one who has been threatened with termination for daring to voice his opinion. This practice has been widespread, and I have heard many complaints of such treatment from others who do not believe in evolution.

And how many of these findings made their way into the peer review section of the scientific literature?

You got a degree in science area.

I don't know if no one in the parent generation could survive the new temperature, but speciation was observed either way.



And speciation was observed, and has been observed myriads of times in both the lab and natural settings. Your refusal of these facts does not make them go away.

Are you saying that no beneficial mutations have ever occurred?

Do you even accept mutations?

So if are in Europe and you have a lot of melanin, and then your offspring have a mutation that makes them produce less melanin increasing the production of vitamin D, it is not a beneficial mutation? While if you were in Africa when this happened, while increased vitamin D would be nice, the increased chance of melanoma would make it a harmful mutation. It is really not that hard to show that the environment largely determines what counts as beneficial, neutral or harmful mutation.

I already said what I would say on another post to you, possibly on the other thread, so I'll just say this: Evolution explains things so well, while we don't know everything, and the ToE will probably be fine tuned for years, the basic principles has stood the test of time and have only been confirmed by new scientific research. Even if this evidence is valid it will not turn over the ToE, it will be an anomily, and anomilies don't make up theories.

Based on what I've seen of the creationist movement I can see why.

And they should be fired.

That is a hard sell as the overwhelming majority of scientists accept the modern ToE.

As always creationists are free to submit their findings to the peer reviewed literature.

When the "peers" are unreservedly committed to the concept that everything can be explained by natural processes, nothing that suggests the possibility that something supernatural was involved can ever pass peer review.

A species is defined as a biological group having unique characteristics which does not breed in nature with other groups. Since the words "in nature" are a part of this definition, this cannot be demonstrated in a laboratory.

I am saying that the beneficial mutation remains a theoretical necessity that has never been proved to exist. I am not aware of even a single occasion in which a beneficial mutation has ever been documented beyond question.
To be documented beyond question, it is necessary to establish as unquestionable fact two distinct points. First, that the alleged "new" characteristic was not present in any individual in the parent population. And second, that the alleged "new" characteristic gives those individuals that possess it a distinct reproductive advantage.

That mutations occur is unquestionable. But the essence of a mutation is what makes the concept of a beneficial mutation so exceedingly unlikely.

A mutation is simply a mistake, an error, in the transmission of genetic material. As a mistake, the probability that such a mistake would actually improve the code is infinitesimal.

Now that we understand genetic code (even though we still cannot read it) we know that it is digital, somewhat similar to a computer program. But the amount of material contained in a single gene is comprable to the amount of material in a very long and complex computer program. I have read that the simplest gene contains about as much code as a three thousand page computer program.

When we realize this, we realize the impossibly small possibility that a mistake in copying such a code would actually make it work better.

Provided, of course, that such mutations have actually occurred, and that the various genetic codes that produced these differences were not present in the original human population.

Evolution appears to explain things so well because so many people simply assume it is true and reason from that assumption. But in truth evolution cannot explain most of the organs of most of the organisms.

In most organisms, most of their organs are of such a nature that, in anything less than a complete state, they would be a liability, rather than an asset. Thus they would have to have arisen in a more or less complete state by somekind of a monstrous super-mutation. If they had started to arise gradually, natural selection would have rejected them.

Here you convict yourself of being so prejudiced that you would be willing to attempt to forcibly shut down debate on this issue.

But the point is, they weren't. "Ontology recapitulates phiologony" continued to be presented as "proof" of evolution long after the fraud of the "research" on which it was based had been exposed.

Similarly, "the Piltdown man" continued to appear in textbooks long after its fraud was exposed, and I think Java man is still in many. (The anthropologist who found the Java bones admitted that he had found the simeon skull and the homonoid femor two years apart, and twenty feet apart, in a live stream bed, and that he had also found two homonoid skulls even closer to the homonoid femor than the simeon skull!)

Similar frauds have been repeatedly exposed.

It was a candid moment by an expert who believed he was speaking to one of his loyal followers. But he was actually talking to a girl I was dating at the time.

The problem is not presenting them, it is getting the "peers" to review them objectively. This is nearly impossible, because any suggestion that evolution even might not have occurred is considered heresy. And in this religion, as in Christianity, heresy is punishable by excommunication!

As someone familiar with science you should know that science is a methodology to understand the natural, not the supernatural. Any mention of the supernatural must be immediately rejected because the scientific method cannot engage the supernatural.

Even if we had this big battle over equivocation and you won, it still wouldn't matter because we have observed speciation in nature as well.

Nylon eating bacteria.

While many mutations can be harmful, the majority are neutral, and some are beneficial.

Genomes aren't digital, they're molecules. If you sequenced out the entire human genome base by base, you could store the information on a 750MB CD.

Since you like to use computer stuff, shall I bring up genetic algorithms? They are a great example on how random changes(mistakes) in computer programs can create outstanding performances that in most cases surpass human designed programs to do the same thing!

My point was that the environment largely determines which mutations are beneficial/neutral/harmful, which you blew off as wishful evolutionist thinking.

Still, are you saying that skin color can't mutate to be lighter or darker?

Eyes have been thoroughly debunked as IC, and the heart and brain show a nice progression from comparative anatomy. I can see the digestive system evolving nicely with what I know. Specifically what organs do you see that prove too high a mountain for evolution to climb?

Creationists routinely lie about known facts, evolution, and a lot of their biggest promoters don't understand the basic concept of evolution...I am prejudice to big names in the creationist movement because it has been shown time and time again that most of them are lying and morally bankrupt.

I saw a recent discussion with Ray Comfort (very famous creationist) and a laymen. Comfort didn't understand speciation, and when the laymen told him what it was Comfort protested that speciation isn't evolution.

I also admit that I am very skeptical of anyone who claims to have evidence for creation as depicted in Genesis. I am still willing to hear out their evidence and if they are correct I hope it finds its way into the peer reviewed literature where it (hopefully) will be recognised as valid information that needs to be adressed.

I worked for many years as a designer of machinery.

Two concepts dominated my design work. I went out of my way to design parts that could be used in as many ways as possible, and new designs were developed from previous designs.

Evolutionists insist that similarities indicate common ancestry. But that is only obvious if your logical system is based on an assumption that there is no God. If we instead admit that there might be a God that designed the universe and everything in nature; then the manifold similarities observed in nature can just as logically be concluded to be evidence of an intelligent designer who used just such design principles.

This is simply incorrect. Science is not a methodology to understand the natural. It is a methodology to understand facts. If the evidence leads to an understanding that no natural phenomena can explain the observed facts, then science must conclude that something supernatural caused them.

The obvious fact that science cannot explain the supernatural does not mean that science cannot accept the existence of supernatural phenomena.

Only since speciation was re-defined in a way that could be easily demonstrated.

Such bacteria cannot be demonstrated to be mutant until it is established that none of their root stock could eat nylon.

This is absolutely incorrect. Of the five thousand mutations I personally studied, 90 % were lethal and 90 % of the non-lethal ones were crippling, such as missing wings or legs. Only about 1% were even questionable, and none were unquestionably beneficial, although at that time there was, as I said before, one undocumented allegation that one beneficial mutation had been observed.

This is utter nonsense. The DNA molecule is a twin spiral ladder with four different types of rungs, which are abbreviated as A. G. C. or T. Each rung is one of these four types, either an A, a G, a C, or a T. The gene sequencing is the order in which these rungs are arranged. This is digital code, with a quaternary basis, rather than a binary basis, as computers use.

In the most common form of DNA, the individual rungs of these ladders are spaced at a distance of 3.4 angstroms. A single DNA strand is thought to be around 10 centimeters long. An angstrom is a millionth of that distance, so an individual DNA molecule is thought to contain one million divided by 3.4 = 294 thousand individual ladder rungs. Since each rung contains twice as much information as binary code contains, 284 million rungs contain as much information as 86.5 gigs of binary code.

It is obvious that a random change in a computer code 86.5 gigs long could possibility make it work better. But the possibility that such a change would improve it is so small that it is not even worth discussing.

Someone's imagination is running wild. I believe you are referring to neuron networks. Neuron networks are basically and essentially different from genetic code, and are thought to replicate the activity in brain tissue.

The information obtained from neuron networks is not derived from errors in copying information.

I did not blow this off as wishful thinking. I ignored it as an extremely minor point. There can be no doubt that a mutation which changes an organism's color would be either beneficial or detrimental depending on its environment. But such mutations are such a small portion of the full range of mutations as to be negligible.

No, of course not. But it has not been demonstrated that the possible variations in human skin color were not alwaus there from the beginning. Of course, you assume that humans evolved. But without that assumption, you cannot prove that the human root stock did not always have the full range of skin color that we observe today.

Eyes have most certainly not been debunked as IC., nor has the heart. The progressive development charts shown for both of these are so grossly oversimplified as to be humerous, if the subject were not so important. Let's discuss the possible evolution of the eye, as it is more easy to discuss...

I am aware of a great number of lies about the basic facts in evolutionary literature. I suppose that some creationists have also lied about the facts, but I am certain that most of their alleged "lies" were mistakes at the worst. For the basic moral mindset that underlies the basis of religious creationism also condemns lying.

I say the basis of religious creationism, because creationism is not necessarily religious in nature. IC does not imply a God. It could imply space aliens. It only examines the basic impossibility that random chance could have produced the life forms we observe today.

I agree with comfort, that speciation, as evolutionists now choose to define it, is not evolution at all.

My favorite among these is the (relatively new) definition of evolution as a change in the frequency of alleles in a population. When this definition of evolution was adapted, it suddenly became relatively easy to demonstrate evolution in action.

But when the old definition of evolution, that the wide variety of life forms we observe today all came about as a product of gradual changes from previous life forms, cannot be demonstrated at all.

But the Bible very clearly teaches that the ecosystem found on the earth today has only been here for approximately six thousand years.

Science has its roots in a very broad term used to mean any empirical data or facts. However, in the contemporary world science has changed definitions and has become the methodology to understand natural phenomenon. Because science is restricted to only the natural it cannot comment on the supernatural (i.e. God). That is why no matter what religion or faith you have, or lack of, you can still do science because science doesn't include God into their methodology.



Science can't accept supernatural phenomena. If there is no known natural cause then that's all science can say. Would you have stopped Einstien from coming up with a theory to explain the path of Mercury through natural means because there was no known natural force to explain Mercury's path around the Sun as Newtonian physics wasn't good enough? Would you have been content with letting Mercury's orbit be supernatural? When has saying that the supernatural did this ever advanced scientific knowledge?

Speciation has always been understood as one population giving rise to one or more new species. What else has it meant?

I guess it doesn't count that they know the exact mutation that produced this rare side affect? I find it odd that you show so much skepticism to beneficial mutations, to the point where it is unreasonable, yet show no skepticism for harmful mutations, to the point where it also is unreasonable but on the other side of the spectrum. So why not be so skeptical of harmful mutations, or mutations in general?

No offense, but this is 2009, you did this paper in 1965/1966 as an undergrad research paper. While I'm sure your paper was good for the time and degree, it is not rigorous science, and science has made a lot of advances in the past four decades. One of them being that the average human zygote has 128 mutations, so by your research paper, statistically we should all be dead. Not to mention the average person gets around 30 more mutations throughout their life. So lets say the average person has between 130-150 mutations, if 90% are lethal how are any of us here?

To talk about DNA as a code is only helpful up to a certain point, when going into fine detail, or beyond basic comprehension, any mention of a code is purely metaphorical to easily demonstrate chemical processes that take place.



Well, from tmsoft.com:
In order to represent a DNA sequence on a computer we would need to be able to represent all 4 base pair possibilities in binary form. This can be done using a minimum of 2 bits, which yields 4 different bit combinations (00, 01, 10, and 11). Each 2 bit combination would represent one DNA sequence. A single byte (or 8 bits) can represent 4 DNA sequences. In order to store the entire human genome on a computer without compression would require around 3,000,000,000 / 4 = 750,000,000 bytes of storage or 750 megabytes. The human genome requires 750 megabytes of storage.


And from bioinformatics.oxfordjournals.org: The inherent structure of [the human] genome data allows for more efficient lossless compression than can be obtained through the use of generic compression programs. We apply a series of techniques to James Watson's genome that in combination reduce it to a mere 4MB, small enough to be sent as an email attachment.

I don't know how you got 86.5gigs, but it looks like that Watson was able to compress it 4MB, and without compression it is 750MB.

I am not referring to neuron networks, but genetic algorithms. Just because you haven't heard of them doesn't mean they don't exist, it just means you don't know everything. Genetic algorithms take the theory of evolution and apply it to solving complex problems from everything to chemical solutions to military operations to chess. Through essentially mistakes in the code with a population all varying in code, the algorithm takes them through a natural selection type processes that weeds out those inferior and keeps those that do the best alive. After a few thousand generations you get programs that can solve some of the most complex problems in the world, all through random mistakes in the code and natural selection.

Lucky for me I'm not talking about neuron networks, but genetic algorithms.

/snip/

Perhaps not, but just because so and so has X amount melanin, doesn't mean that another person can't have a mutation that gives him X amount as well, where as without the mutation he/she would have had X-1 melanin. There is no evidence to suggest that skin color can't mutate, after all it is part of the genome which is subjected to mutations every generation.

While creationism is a branch of Christianity, and Christianity is against lying, it makes it all the more sad, disturbing, and harmful to Christianity as a whole when they do lie.

Unfortunately I would say that the majority of creationists have been lied to by the figureheads of creationism, so technically they aren't exactly lying as they are simply regurgitating lies told to them. However, I see the majority of the creationist figureheads either lying for personal gain, or essentially brainwashed with the lies told to them and they are just as clueless as their followers.

While the intelligent design movement doesn't need a God to work, it was clearly shown in a court of law that ID is just a re-branding of creationism.

While I would agree that someone a-religious could accept ID, ID's roots are in creationism, and nothing can change that.



Then what is speciation? What theory adequately describes speciation?

However, through gradual changes in allele frequencies we see the beginnings of speciation, and ultimately it is evolution.

I wouldn't say that is the definition of evolution at all, but rather the implications of such a theory. And one that is getting more and more evidence in support of it as well. I would say the foundation of evolution comes from observing speciation by mutations and natural selection. And at its most basic evolution is changes in allele frequency plus mutation, and possibly natural selection added in as well.

What do you mean by this? And do you accept the age of the Earth as 4.5GA and the universe as 13.7GA?