I agree insofar as the general population is concerned - scientifically that is. I am also more interested in good science. The issue I have is that there is less good science or even logical science "supplied" or understood correctly by the general population. This is specifically perpetrated by scientists working in those sciences that in the first instance filter the information through their worldview then provide the information.
An undeviating fallacy
The evolutionist uses a false form of circular reasoning to prove that he is correct. First, he starts with the assumption that he is correct, by faith. Second, he goes to the other side of the circle, digs up fossils from different places around the world and arranges them in the order he wants them to be in. Last, he goes back around the circle and says, You see, the fossils prove that I am right. This logic is patently illogical.
When the Greeks developed the science of logic 2,500 years ago, they called this kind of reasoning a tautology; that it was circular reasoning that falls under its own weight, that it was patently illogical. If you allow me to rearrange the evidence I can prove anything I want to, cant I? You cannot rearrange the evidence and then claim proof for anything!
If you remember little else from this reply remember this! One of the single greatest differences between a creation-believing scientist and an evolution-believing scientist is that the creationist does not rearrange his evidence and the evolutionist does!
Except science did not simply rearrange evidence. It uses evidence to test the theory, not just evidence we already had, but evidence that wasn't found yet. It said if evolution is true then this evidence should exist and we may be able to find it. There is absolutely no reason if mankind was specially created that there should be forms of human with characteristics intermediate between mankind and apes. Yet this is what Darwin predicted from his theory. Not only that but he suggested that because of all the great apes, human most closely resembles chimps, that the earliest forms of man would be found in Africa. Again there is absolutely no reason for this to be true if man was specially created. Palaeontologist looked for these fossils that there was no reason to exist if man was specially created, and found them, and the earliest one were found in Africa as Darwin predicted. Palaeontologists don't arrange the fossils to fit the theory either, they are arranged by radiometric dating, the older the fossil the smaller the cranial capacity and the more apelike the features.
This is not tautology this is the evidence fitting the theory. It is a scientific theory showing a predictive power that it should only have it if were true.
Hmmm
I agree it also falls under its own weight. Is this a better example? If you remove Turkey, the EU has about 410 Million people. If you add Turkey to the USA and Canada (which has a 60% creationist worldview) you have about 410 Million people.
Canada seems an odd situation where a Gallup poll showed that 66% thought creationism was either "definitely true" or "probably true", while 53% considered considered evolution to be either "definitely true" or "probably true". Canada is presumably pretty influenced by US creationism, but my point was more how the USA and Turkey make such odd bedfellows.
Whats your point exactly
My point is you are flying the Irish flag but quoting American statistics as if it were the norm. Just seem incongruous.
Ireland is mostly secular humanists and pagans but you dont say that. There is no such thing as a spiritual vacuum.
Secular
catholic humanists.
The evidence for evolution and the age of the earth the educated people we were talking about base their acceptance of evolution on.
I never said chimp and ape DNA was similar where did you get that from? We as yet DO NOT have a completed genome for either species which has a lot to do with why human and ape DNA cannot be compared.
Then how did they manage to compare the DNA of humans and chimps and find they are so similar?
Are you seriously arguing that you have no evidence for the evidence? Thats like saying I dont know what I dont know.
My argument is sound because you are stuck with irreducible complexity and are back to the chicken or egg conundrum invented by evolution. Once again we are back to tautology or circular reasoning flaunted as science we do know because one COULD NOT form without the other.
Evolution is supported by the evidence we have, to disprove it, you need to use evidence we have, not evidence we don't have that you simply think would disprove evolution.
Yes, if you were to use the whole DNA - and the outcome of its production, you would find that the gap in information is colossal.
You are still not being clear.
Try this from Darwin then
"To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree."
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London, 1971, p. 167.
That is more like Darwin all right. Unfortunately it is a quote creationist like to take out of context, or simply repeat from other creationists without reading the original text themselves. Darwin is simply outlining the question here. If you read the rest of the paragraph he goes on to give the answer which he expand on over the next couple of pages.
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree. Yet reason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real. How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light, hardly concerns us more than how life itself first originated; but I may remark that several facts make me suspect that any sensitive nerve may be rendered sensitive to light, and likewise to those coarser vibrations of the air which produce sound.
Charles Darwin On the origin of species by means of natural selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. First Edition 1859, London, John Murray, pp. 186&187.
Did you read the quotation in its original context yourself, or did you just copy it from some other creationists? The problem is, as this popular creationist quotation shows, you can't trust them.
For Petes Sake!! I let it go the first time you posted it because I actually thought you were joking! The more than verifiable answer is that water has a structure and furthermore a pliable memory. It takes on the properties of its container and remembers these properties. However, upon evaporation it loses those properties and returns to its energised state. It also reacts directly to ALL outside influence and as such, upon freezing forms those marvellous shapes because of this influence. If I played rock music to the water it would have an extremely erratic and disturbing shape on freezing. If I play it Bach it has a pleasing shape not unlike the snowflake. This does not discount crystallization which is also a common considerate. An interesting documentary that may help you understand is called appropriately H2O.
Furthermore, we have never seen a complex system built or assembled by random chance. (Particularly from a snowflake!) Mutations are harmful and produce negative outcomes. Mutations are the result of the bondage to decay. The evolutionists beliefs are illogical, irrational, unreasonable and not based on observable or verifiable evidence.
It doesn't matter how you explain molecules of water vapour forming snowflakes whether they remember what a snowflake looks like or listen to Bach, the fact is the water molecules go from a highly disordered state as water vapour to highly ordered snowflakes. According to the creationist understanding of the second law of thermodynamics, this disobeys the law which means snowflakes are impossible. Or creationists misunderstand the SLoT.
And by the way
Dont quote Mr. Rennie again If there is anyone here that does not understand the Laws of Thermodynamics, it is Mr. Rennie!
Rennie who?
Frankly, his argument is irrelevant and poorly reasoned. Whats more a snowflake has NO meaningful information in terms of letters; a snowflake is analogous to ABCABCABCABCABC
The second law of thermodynamics is about entropy and order. You already said it applies to everything in the universe, not just 'meaningful information'.
I agree only this far
1. I was too simplistic and deserved that retort.
2. Some changes do confer an advantage in some situations.
3. I am born with these mutations.
BUT as stated; Mutations are harmful and produce negative outcomes. Mutations are the result of the bondage to decay. The evolutionists beliefs are illogical, irrational, unreasonable and not based on observable or verifiable evidence.
Apart from all the advantageous mutations we have found, the ability of bacteria to digest Citrate and Nylon (which has arisen twice using different mutations, once in the lab and once in nature.) When antibiotic resistance first arose, it was only advantageous in the presence of the antibiotic, it did not reproduce as fast as the normal bacteria when the antibiotic was not present, although this is what evolution predicts, that mutations enable organisms to adapt to their environment, in this case the presence of antibiotics. However, resistant bacteria have adapted to deal with the disadvantage the resistance brought with it, and now we have resistant bacteria able to reproduce faster than the original non resistant strain. Scary, but also a very good example of evolution and beneficial mutations.
AND; ONCE AGAIN the bold truth is that we have yet to find a mutation that increases genetic information, even in those rare instances where the mutation confers an advantage. Only by ignoring the total implications of modern genetics has it been possible to maintain the fiction of evolution. You see biologists have discovered a whole range of mechanisms that can cause radical changes in the amount of DNA possessed by an organism. Gene duplication, polyploidy, insertions, etc., DO NOT HELP EXPLAIN evolution, however. They represent an increase in amount of DNA, but not an increase in the amount of functional genetic informationthese mechanisms create nothing new. Macroevolution needs new genes (for making feathers on reptiles, for example), yet evolutionists continue to completely miss this simple distinction.
I have never heard a creationist define what they mean by information, or say how you measure it. Unless you can actually measure this information you are talking about how can you say whether it is increased or not? Say you have gene duplication. You say the gene produces the same protein so it is not an increase in information, yet the brother with two copies produces more of the protein than his brother with one copy. You now have two different siblings with code for producing different amounts of a protein, if the level of protein is advantageous, it can be selected for. How is this not more 'information' in the gene pool? What if there is a mutation in one of the copies the brother is now producing two slightly different type of protein with slightly different biochemistry. If the body can use the protein why is that not an increase in information? Or take your bacteria that has evolved an ability to digest nylon. His cousin has the ordinary version of the gene producing the original enzyme, he has the new version and can digest nylon, presumably however you measure 'information' they both have the same amount of information. But there are now two different bacteria with different information, even though they both have the same amount of information, because there are two different versions, you now have more information in the gene pool. And bacteria swap DNA in plasmids. What happen if the original bacterium picks up the mutant gene in a plasmid, he now has two different versions of the original gene, each producing different enzymes to use for different purposes. How does the bacterium not have an increase in 'information'.
You also neglect to mention that The SRC gene family is among the most notorious genes known to man, since they cause cancer as a consequence of single point mutations.
Why is that a problem? Not all mutations are beneficial, more are harmful and the majority simply neutral. But the fact there are harmful mutation does not mean there aren't also beneficial ones, or that the beneficial mutations are not selected for.
So
you tell me. Is this really extra information? Is that a problem?
You tell me, information is a creationist argument.
Simply stated, he is. I am strictly exegesis and Pauls handle on the Greek language was excellent. Any good lexicon will put you right should you bother.
Which one? I have Strong's and Thayer's on my computer. I have Liddell & Scott, and Kittel's TDNT on my bookshelf, but frankly, I cannot think of any that would help me read evolution into Romans 1.
