A Challenge for Anti-evolutionists

[lucaspa]

The term 'evolutionism' refers to the beliefs and teachings of evolutionists. Anyone competent with the conventions of the English language understands how prefixes and suffixes work. If you prefer, I can consider you incompetent, as you have presupposed the readership to be.

Wow, went to ad hominem there, didn't you.

CTD, "evoutionism" cannot refer to the beliefs and teachings of evolutionists. Because evolutionists have a wide variety of beliefs! There are evolutionists who are theists (such as Ken Miller, me, Mallon, etc.), evolutionists who are agnostics (Niles Eldredge, Gould, etc.) and evolutionists who are atheists (Dawkins, Wilson, etc.). So which "beliefs" are you referring to?

So in this case the suffix makes no sense.

Evolutionists do teach "descent with modification", but that isn't a belief, anymore than teaching gravity is a belief.

 

[Mallon]

Perhaps it is today - It certainly wasn't the case in the 18th century.

What definition of deism are you referring to? There's only one that I'm aware of.

What you describe is the belief I always see claimed by people labeling themselves 'theistic evolutionists'

Like who? Most evolutionary creationists here argue for God's constancy in nature -- even in evolution, as you can see by the fact that we're calling you on your god-of-the-gaps theology.

That's not gonna win friends. Have you tried it out elsewhere, or is it spontaneous?

It's quite widespread, actually. Books have been written on the subject. Try googling it.

Do you believe that God sustains natural processes, CTD? Or do you believe that natural processes occur apart from God?

 

[lucaspa]

What do you mean 'though'? There are a whale of a lot of beliefs held by evolutionists; of course it refers to more than one sloganized concept.

Mallon means that evolution is "descent with modification". But you are using "evolutionism" to refer to much more than that. However, evolutionists simply refers to acceptance of "descent with modification". It doesn't refer to "a whale of a lot of beliefs".

IOW, you are adding a lot of philosophical beliefs to evolution that don't belong with evolution.

I cannot even imagine how to untangle ''science of evolution'' into anything meaningful.

Mallon told you how.

When 'science' is employed as an euphemism, it is customary to mean 'atheism' or 'evolutionism'.

It's not "customary". It is what you are doing. And we are telling you that it is an error to use science as "atheism". Science is not atheism.

Your objection seems to be that I'm not employing the term in a meaningless enough manner to suit your taste.

The objection is that you are using the term as = atheism. That's a mistake. Evolution is not atheism.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

You're using the term "evolutionism" as referring to more than just descent with modification, though. You're using it to mean descent with modification in the absence of God's providence, which is not what evolution teaches. I agree with you in rejecting the theological ramifications of the the latter, but that doesn't make the science of evolution bogus in any way. The theory of evolution (minus the philosophical "-ism") is still completely valid. You're conflating the science of evolution with the philosophical/theological baggage that some tie to it.

Evolution is valid as a theory, and that is to be fair to atheists. Religious people have been force fed a theory by atheists much like hoe religious have force fed the Bible to atheists. The only difference is that atheists have fossils and the religious have books.

But to try and masquerade it as truth? You have to draw the line. ToE teaches that life has been around for 3 billion years. We can play semantics and talk about how organisms have a knack to enhance or mutate over time, but that was never really here nor there. Creationists could really care about that part.
No, the pure and simple fact is that pro-evolutionist theists do not take in the whole picture. On the surface, integrating ToE with religion seems okay, but it really isn't and I'll explain why:

First, lets dig into the more atheistic aspect of science that seems to go completely ignored. Science states the probability of life occurring in other places of the universe not based on actual probability as observed, but rather based on how life just magically sprung up here.
See, life did not happen of it's own accord. Atheists can sit there and argue until their faces are blue, and yet they are just at a loss. There is not even a theory. Decades have been spent just trying to assemble a protein from scratch in a sophisticated, controlled lab.
People simply just have to face the fact that a maker is responsible for life.

And it comes down to faith. You either believe it is the Abrahamic God, or you believe it is Zeus.
God created the world a certain way. He stated it, and it was put into the book of Genesis. If you cannot believe one book, where does it stop? Where it fits into scientific theory?

Theory,, that is all it is, but ToE just has a bunch of militant atheists shoving it down the throats of theists making it seem so much more then it is. It simply just does not stand out anymore then any other scientific theory. Why does that not get through to religious people?

Seriously, science is shady enough as it is anyways. The world has been shown to allegedly be 4.5 billion years old, and yet life started 3 billion years ago. That leaves 1.5 billion years between the Earth forming and providing a bearable habitat and life beginning. So take the mathematical impossibibility and then put into such a tiny time-frame.
It's just foolish for theists to buy into it. Open up your eyes and accept that scientists have simply gone awol with a theory.

 

[Mallon]

Thanks for the clarification, lucaspa.

 

[CTD]

The problem does not lie with theistic evolution, but with the unChristian, unBiblical, and dangerous theology of god-of-the-gaps.

You need to do better than this garbage. ''god-of-the-gaps'' is nothing but a scoffer propaganda tool. Nobody thinks such self-contradictory bunk outside of scoffer imagination.

''God-of-the-gaps'' is not only a straw man, it's a very poorly-constructed one with its makers' fingerprints all over it.

Straw Reasoning:

We use gods to explain everything we don't know

We used to use gods a lot, but the more we learned, the less use we had for them

Little by little we proved God was never involved in this or that

We now know just almost everything

We're down to just a few gaps, and we use God as a placeholder

Eventually we'll know everything and no longer need any god.

--- None of that - none- reflects Christianity. ---

Actual Reasoning of Christians:

God made everything and put man in charge

We do well to investigate

We know God is involved in running creation

We know God has set up rules and systems we call 'nature'

We trust scripture first, then fallible methods

The more we learn of God's creation, the more opportunities arise to glorify Him

--- Now I may have left something out. It's hard to say because the two systems are so totally alien to each other. ---

Of course in apologetic reasoning we don't start knowing God made everything:

God may or may not exist

Apologetic arguments indicate God exists

On common sense, without fallacy or assertions, apologetic arguments succeed

(optional) On common sense, without fallacy or assertions, atheistic arguments fail horribly

Proceed to Christian reasoning

--- Now let's review, so it can sink in just how bad this straw man stinks. ---

}We use gods to explain everything we don't know

Untrue. A personal example: God may or may not be holding the nucleus of every atom together. I don't know. If we continue to investigate, it may be that something God-made device will be found. It may be merely that God commanded the particles to cling together as they do, and there is nothing to find. Only a device is potentially discoverable. Proving no device exists is problematic, so if God is Himself doing it, we cannot discover this. If God's command alone is the cause, and no device, we shall never discover this either, unless we learn to talk to particles.

There are tons of things I don't know; I don't just figure 'God' is the direct answer. What's the optimum bore to stroke ratio for a gasoline engine? Nobody replies ''God is.''

}We used to use gods a lot, but the more we learned, the less use we had for them

}Little by little we proved God was never involved in this or that

Those two go together. The examples given are always pagan, and have nothing to do with Christians. No, I don't believe Zeus was throwing lighning bolts until electricity was discovered and then Zeus had to retire. Nobody does! You can't even find a pagan who believes that.

Historically, it was the pettiness and immaturity of Greek gods that turned so many atheistic - hard to worship a crew like that. That's what they say, at least. You know it wasn't Ben Franklin! (Sometimes I feel like I must be the only one who pays any attention to scoffer stories.)

When Christians do make scientific discoveries, we don't say ''Oh there's one more thing God never did.'' God created everything and ordained all the laws.

}We now know just almost everything

This arrogant claim betrays its source readily enough.

}We're down to just a few gaps, and we use God as a placeholder

Just more silly arrogance, clearly antithetical to the profitable Christian approach. Who says there ever was any gap at all in our knowledge? A gap is an in-between place. That's an odd analogy for learning. Why not think of knowledge as a growing and shrinking sphere?

 

[Mallon]

Evolution is completely valid as a theory, and that is to be fair to atheists.

What do you mean "to be fair to atheists"? What in the world does evolution have to do with atheism? Christians accept evolution, too.

First, lets dig into the more atheistic aspect of science that seems to go completely ignored. Science states the probability of life occurring in other places of the universe not based on actual probability as observed, but rather based on how life just magically sprung up here.
See, life did not happen of it's own accord. Atheists can sit there and argue until their faces are blue, and yet they are just at a loss. There is not even a theory. Decades have been spent just trying to assemble a protein from scratch in a sophisticated, controlled lab.
People simply just have to face the fact that a maker is responsible for life.

Now I see why you think evolution = atheism. It's because you think that nature excludes God. Therefore, if a process can be described using natural mechanisms, God must not be involved because you believe God only works miraculously. That's functional deism and it's un-Christian.

 

[Greg1234]

Just plain wrong. There was no "precursor". It was a reading frame shift mutation. That meant that whatever the DNA sequence previously coded

A previous enzyme.

was simply gone.

Of course it was. Your own people attempted to use it against ID when they thought an advantage could be wrought. Miller is quoted from that link saying,

First, hauling around a nylonase gene before the invention of nylon is at best useless to the bacteria; at worst, it could be harmful or lethal. Secondly, the nylonase enzyme is less efficient than the precursor protein it’s believed to have developed from. Thus, if nylonase really was designed by a Supreme Being, it wasn’t done very intelligently.​

Regarding frameshift and precursor, X-ray Crystallographic Analysis of 6-Aminohexanoate-Dimer Hydrolase

6-Aminohexanoate-dimer hydrolase (EII), responsible for the degradation of nylon-6 industry by-products, and its analogous enzyme (EII&#8242 that has only ∼0.5% of the specific activity toward the 6-aminohexanoate-linear dimer, are encoded on plasmid pOAD2 of Arthrobacter sp. (formerly Flavobacterium sp.) KI72. Here, we report the three-dimensional structure of Hyb-24 (a hybrid between the EII and EII′ proteins; EII′-level activity) by x-ray crystallography at 1.8 Å resolution and refined to an R-factor and R-free of 18.5 and 20.3%, respectively. The fold adopted by the 392-amino acid polypeptide generated a two-domain structure that is similar to the folds of the penicillin-recognizing family of serine-reactive hydrolases, especially to those of D-alanyl-D-alanine-carboxypeptidase from Streptomyces and carboxylesterase from Burkholderia. Enzyme assay using purified enzymes revealed that EII and Hyb-24 possess hydrolytic activity for carboxyl esters with short acyl chains but no detectable activity for D-alanyl-D-alanine. In addition, on the basis of the spatial location and role of amino acid residues constituting the active sites of the nylon oligomer hydrolase, carboxylesterase, D-alanyl-D-alanine-peptidase, and β-lactamases, we conclude that the nylon oligomer hydrolase utilizes nucleophilic Ser112 as a common active site both for nylon oligomer-hydrolytic and esterolytic activities. However, it requires at least two additional amino acid residues (Asp181 and Asn266) specific for nylon oligomer-hydrolytic activity. Here, we propose that amino acid replacements in the catalytic cleft of a preexisting esterase with the β-lactamase fold resulted in the evolution of the nylon oligomer hydrolase.​

And the generation was indeed "random" in this case. Not a tweaking of an enzyme with a weak activity, but the creation of a new enzyme.

The difference between random and nonrandom is not tweaking vs novel creation.

Nor is it clear that in the evolution of nylonase that anything

​

[/INDENT]It appears you took this out of context, because it is contradicted from the following quote from the paper:

"The results of the mating-preference tests between starch-adapted and maltose-adapted populations are given in Table 1. Contingency chi-square tests reveal that 11 out of the 16 combinations show significant deviation from expectations based on random mating. The isolation indexes of these crosses all indicate positive assortative mating, ranging from 0.30 i0.13 to 0.49 + 0.10. The crosses that do not show significant departure from random mating also have positive isolation indexes, ranging from 0.18 + 0.14 to 0.24 i0.13. A one-tailed sign test (Champion, 198 1 pp. 276-280) on the indexes shows that the probability of obtaining 16 positive indexes for 16 crosses is less than 0.00 1."​

I was the one who gave this quote. There is nothing contradictory about it. It says that assortative mating is taking place. A link was provided explaining this phenomenon to you but was deleted by you and your compatriot.

there was difference in mate selection.

So that's what speciation is- preferential mating. Define it as such so you get into less conflict.

"The results of this study also demonstrate that reinforcement of premating isolating mechanisms through selection is not necessary for the development of significant levels of behavioral isolation. The isolation observed here developed in complete allopatry. The populations were maintained separately at all times, and thus there was no opportunity for reinforcement through selection against hybrids. The isolation is due solely to the process of adaptation to the novel regimes. This process led to consistent changes in all four populations under each regime. Each of the four populations subjected to the same regime acquired the same (or similar) changes in mating behavior, such that flies from different populations under the same regime are not isolated."

Apparently you don't understand what this is saying. It says the speciation

As previously given above.

When different populations were placed on the same diet, they also became separate species from the original population, but they became the same species. Here, adaption to the new diets produced the same species in populations that were isolated from one another.

As previously given.

Yes, it does. And it says that evolution by natural selection produced new species! Thank you for providing the quotes that conclusively demonstrate it.

Where does it say that a new species was observed coming into being?

1. They have new traits not in the original species.
2. They don't interbreed with the original species; they are new species.

So they demonstrate by observation the 2 things evolution does: new traits and new species.

Where does it say that a new species was observed coming into being?​

 

[lucaspa]

Perhaps it is today - It certainly wasn't the case in the 18th century.

Yes, it was. Deist has always referred to God acting in the past -- setting up "natural" processes -- and then not doing anything. Deism then also meant that God could be discovered by reason and denies revealed religion.

Theistic evolutionists don't fit either belief. Theistic evolutionist have God intimately connected with "natural" processes, in fact using them to create. Theistic evolution views evolution as creatio continuuo where God is continuing to create, rather than creation being something that happened only in the distant past.

What you describe is the belief I always see claimed by people labeling themselves 'theistic evolutionists', the belief which regular evolutionists tolerate on account of their own low numbers - for now.

Who do you think are "regular evolutionists"?

I don't agree with any scripture-denying gobble-de-[bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse][bless and do not curse] or any compromise. I shall laugh at the suggestion likely for some time.

Well, you just denied scripture! CTD, scripture is very plain that you should answer this question of Mallon's "Do you believe that natural processes work to the exclusion of God's constant providence?" with a very loud "NO".

 

[Mallon]

We've really had our share of Christian deists here lately. It's quite astonishing. Nicely illustrates the dangers of neocreationism, whereby God is excluded from nature.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

Now I see why you think evolution = atheism. It's because you think that nature excludes God. Therefore, if a process can be described using natural mechanisms, God must not be involved because you believe God only works miraculously. That's functional deism and it's un-Christian.

No, it equates to atheism because the Bible clearly states how the world was created. You are twisting the Bible to have it fit your bias and alas, it is just theory.
You may be un-Christian if you you feel you have to integrate both, but certainly not me. That is the audacious twist that ToE has put on you, and yet that makes you more wrong then either/or, because you are trying to find a middle ground between two completely different realities.
I think that pro-evolutionist theists simply just have not taken the time to build a theology. They're still in that world where everything has to have cause and effect, that assuming the initial condition of anything is that of God.

 

[Mallon]

No, it equates to atheism because the Bible clearly states how the world was created.

How does that make science atheistic, though? Atheism is the belief that God does not exist, not the belief that the world is older than 6,000 years. You're conflating terms.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

How does that make science atheistic, though? Atheism is the belief that God does not exist, not the belief that the world is older than 6,000 years. You're conflating terms.

It attempts to explain how the universe works, excluding any god.
you can sit here and play semantics all day. It sort of frustrating, to be blunt.

So not all science is atheistic, except of course, what you believe. ToE is a disgrace to the name of God. Yes I said it. Because it is bogus. You are really going to argue with a theist who is bringing criticism to a theory that goes directly against God's word, then you have to be prepared to be criticized directly, because I never see pro-evolutionists bring anything to the table other then 'well this scientist said so'. It's old, and circular. Creationists should not be getting the shaft over a paranoid system of life. It's dead bush being beaten, creationists won a long time ago and evolutionists just play semantics.

 

[Mallon]

It attempts to explain how the universe works, excluding any god.

In what way does evolution exclude God, though, unless you are deist who believes that natural processes exclude God? Do you believe that God only works through miracles? The Bible certainly doesn't say that. The Bible says that God works via natural means, too. It says that He is involved with such natural processes as weather and conception. It's inconsistent to accept that one natural process (like evolution) somehow excludes God, but others (like weather and conception) include Him.

It's odd how you claim that your position is based on the Bible when you promote a deism that is most anti-biblical.

 

[Sum1sGruj]

In what way does evolution exclude God, though, unless you are deist who believes that natural processes exclude God? Do you believe that God only works through miracles? The Bible certainly doesn't say that. The Bible says that God works via natural means, too. It says that He is involved with such natural processes as weather and conception. It's inconsistent to accept that one natural process (like evolution) somehow excludes God, but others (like weather and conception) include Him.

It's odd how you claim that your position is based on the Bible when you promote a deism that is most anti-biblical.

Really? Because I would love you to squeeze one little verse out the Bible that states anything about evolution, why it should or could exist, and how it is not just that of theists suffering from paranoia by a theory.
All it is,, is semantics. Because there is rain and shadow, there must be evolution. It's ridiculous.
And it makes me wonder who pro-evolutionists are really trying to convince.

 

[lucaspa]

A previous enzyme.

But the previous enzyme didn't degrade nylon. So we can't compare efficiencies, because the previous protein and the nylonase are doing different jobs. Yes, the nylonase has a low activity as an enzyme, but it does have the activity.

The difference between random and nonrandom is not tweaking vs novel creation.

The formation of the nylonase was "random" because it was a random scrambling of the previous DNA sequence.

Now, if you are going to claim that nylonase was "non-random" in the sense of "planned by a Creator", then Miller's comment comes into play:
"First, hauling around a nylonase gene before the invention of nylon is at best useless to the bacteria; at worst, it could be harmful or lethal. Secondly, the nylonase enzyme is less efficient than the precursor protein it’s believed to have developed from. Thus, if nylonase really was designed by a Supreme Being, it wasn’t done very intelligently."

Actually, it is the low activity of the nylonase that dooms it to being "designed" non-randomly. That low activity says that God isn't very bright if He can't design an efficient nylonase. Basically, here, like a lot of places, ID fails as theology.

I was the one who gave this quote. There is nothing contradictory about it. It says that assortative mating is taking place.

I know what the phenomenon is. It's part of speciation. Mate selection within one population vs another population is called an "isolating mechanism". It is a way for one population to become isolated from another population: speciation.

So that's what speciation is- preferential mating. Define it as such so you get into less conflict.

It's part of the mechanism of speciation.
"Species are groups of actually or potentially interbreeding populations that are reproductively isolated from other such groups. "(Mahr 1942)

So, how do we get "reproductively isolated"? There are a variety of mechanisms that produce reproductive isolation:
"Classification of Isolating Mechanisms
1. Premating or prezygotic mechanisms: Mechanisms that prevent interspecific matings.
(a) Potential mates are prevented from meeting (seasonal and habitat isolation)
(b) Behavioral incompatibilities prevent mating (ethological isolation)
(c) Copulation attempted but no transfer of sperm takes place (mechanical isolation)

2. Postmating or postzygotic mechanisms:
Mechanisms that reduce full success of interspecific crosses
(a) Sperm transfer takes place but egg not fertilized (gametic incompatibility)
(b) Egg fertilized but zygote dies (zygotic mortality)
(c) Zygote develops into an F1 hybrid of reduced viability (hybrid viability)
(d) F1 hybrid is fully viable but partially or completely sterile, or produces deficient F2 (hybrid sterility)
Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is pg 171

The Dodd paper is talking about 1(b). Behavioral differences so that females from population A do not mate with males from population B and vice versa, and males from population A do not mate with females of population B and vice versa. Now, the Kilias paper also showed that, when such matings did occur, then the F1 and F2 hybrids were sterile. That is 2 (c) and 2(d). The result of all these isolating mechanisms is reproductive isolation or a new species.

As previously given above.

Not a valid answer because it doesn't address the paper or my comments.

As previously given.

Not a valid answer because it doesn't address my comment or the paper. Dodd put 4 populations on a starch diet. All 4 of those populations freely interbred and produced fertile offspring. That defines them as the same species. However, all 4 of the populations on the starch diet would not interbreed with the original population on the media diet. In each case, evolution by natural selection produced physiological changes that also changed the mating behavior and resulted in reproductive isolation from the original species.

Where does it say that a new species was observed coming into being?

When you have reproductive isolation you have a new species coming into being.

Where does it say that a new species was observed coming into being?

There was reproductive isolation from the species that were not on the tailings. In this case the isolating mechanism was 2(c) and 2(d). When wind borne pollen went from the prairie (non-heavy metal tolerant species) and fertilized tolerant species on the mine tailings, the offspring on the mine tailings were less viable and died. Pollen from the tolerant individuals on the mine tailings to the tolerant species on the prairie produced sterile or less fertile hybrids.

 

[Mallon]

Really? Because I would love you to squeeze one little verse out the Bible that states anything about evolution, why it should or could exist, and how it is not just that of theists suffering from paranoia by a theory.

The Bible doesn't teach evolution. Then again, the Bible isn't a science textbook, so we shouldn't expect it to teach evolution. The Bible was written to address theological concerns; therefore, to read it as science textbook is to miss the whole point of why the Scriptures were given to us. Christians made the same mistake hundreds of years ago when they used the Bible to argue against such things as the existence of the antipodes, heliocentrism, and the density of earth being greater than that of water.

Why do you profess deism, Sum1sGruj? Is that in your Bible?

 

[lucaspa]

Really? Because I would love you to squeeze one little verse out the Bible that states anything about evolution, why it should or could exist, and how it is not just that of theists suffering from paranoia by a theory.
All it is,, is semantics. Because there is rain and shadow, there must be evolution. It's ridiculous.

LOL! Talk about ducking the issue! Since when does something have to be in the Bible to exist? Can you squeeze one little verse out of the Bible that states anything about electrons? Why do you think they exist and why do you think you can use them to type and transmit these messages by computer and Internet? Can you squeeze one little verse out of the Bible on the existence of Pluto? Why do you think it exists?

We can go on and on about things not in the Bible but that exist.

Evolution is far more than semantics. It's observations. Greg and I are going over the data on observations of evolution of new species. Is that "rain and shadow"?

This is what Mallon asked: "In what way does evolution exclude God, though, unless you are deist who believes that natural processes exclude God? Do you believe that God only works through miracles? "

Can you please tell us how evolution excludes God. Also please answer the question about whether God only works thru miracles.

And it makes me wonder who pro-evolutionists are really trying to convince.

We here are trying to convince creationists. Because creationism is the biggest danger Christianity has faced since Gnosticism. As bad as creationism is as science, it is so much worse as Christian theology. As your statement about requiring evolution to be in the Bible in order to exist demonstrates, creationism denies that God created.

 

[lucaspa]

Why do you profess deism, Sum1sGruj? Is that in your Bible?

Better to ask why Sum1sGruj insists things need to be in the Bible. Is the Bible your god, Sum1sGruj?

 

[Sum1sGruj]

The Bible doesn't teach evolution. Then again, the Bible isn't a science textbook, so we shouldn't expect it to teach evolution. The Bible was written to address theological concerns; therefore, to read it as science textbook is to miss the whole point of why the Scriptures were given to us. Christians made the same mistake hundreds of years ago when they used the Bible to argue against such things as the existence of the antipodes, heliocentrism, and the density of earth being greater than that of water.

Why do you subscribe to deism, Sum1sGruj? Is that in your Bible?

Your right, the bible is not a science textbook, is something much more: It is the Pentateuch, the history, the morality, and the prophetic text of what is and what's to come handed down from God to prophet and Messiah to disciple.

Deism has nothing to do with a creationist. In fact, that is just the audacity of pro-evolutionists speaking. The truth is, God is in control of everything, not needing 3 billion years of life to carry us through. I was never one for Spinoza''s god, and that is what pro-evolution theists seem to point at through their ideas. As if God only works through nature. That would have to be the case for you.

Science at it's classical observation is okay. There is nothing wrong with that. But there is nothing conventional about theory masquerading as having truth over God's Word. ToE is theory, as in theoretical, as in being a completely different aspect of science.
Like I said- semantics. It is the bread and butter of denial. I would suggest you take a closer look at who the deist is here.