Definition of "design"?

[AV1611VET]

Because life can't necessarily exist everywhere.

Then I would say evolution is pretty weak.

For some reason, non-biological evolution was "strong" enough to "create" the sun, but its [much] weaker twin --- biological evolution --- can't seem to do a thing outside of this planet.

That's a little more than coincidental, if you ask me.

 

[Meshach]

The Earth's orbit is elliptical, in other words the distance varies. There's nothing perfect about it.

Meshach said
So its not true if we were closer to the sun we would burn , or farther away we would freeze?


plindboe said
If the environment in which we exist couldn't support our existence, we wouldn't be here in the first place. So the fact that we are here means that there's a 100% chance that we're in an environment that can support our existance. How creationists can be astonished by a 100% probability I find a constant source of amusement.

Meshach said
Just take it by faith plindboe, everything we need is conveniently here

plinboe said
Oh, stop with the perfect chance nonsense. Just about any distances and any number of moons would result in tides. Even without moons, the Sun alone would have a significant tidal influence.

Meshach said
Whats the matter? You dont think chance is involved. Oh yah, natural selection is your god.

plindboe said
Water is generally agreed upon to be a requirement for life. It's a very abundant molecule, which again, has nothing to do with perfect chance, being an extremely simple molecule. Btw, those smallest blood vessels and tallest trees evolved, so there's no perfect chance or design involved. Also, "water is chemically neutral"? Have you never heard of hydrolysis before? Water participates in reactions all the times.

Meshach said
So agian, its not chance water is here? Natural selection did it?

plindboe laughed
lol

Meshach laughed also
ROFLOL

plindboe said
Again, if the environment in which we exist couldn't support our existence, we wouldn't be here in the first place. So the fact that we are here means that there's a 100% chance that we're in an environment that can support our existance.

Meshach said
Very good Sherlock, good thing we have natural selection to thank for our brain so we can come to these conclusions.

plinboe siad
Wow, you have alotta reading to do. You can start here: Welcome to Evolution 101!

Meshach said
So I can see things from your pont of veiw?

plindboe said
Ahh, yes, the ad-hominem verse: "I'm not breaking the forum rules, as it's God calling you a fool, not me!".

Meshach siad
One day soon we both will know who the fool is.


Peter

Meshach said
Good-bye, more important things to do.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

To get a grasp on the amount of mutations we are dealing with here...
A recent experiment on bacteria went through 40,000 generations to produce a single change that enabled it to digest something it had not previously been able to handle.

Citation please.

Between humans and a putative human-ape ancestor ten million years ago there are a maximum of perhaps one million generations, depending on the reproductive age at different stages. On the basis of the experimental evidence, that gives time for about 25 minor changes in an asexual species. At a minimum some 30 million changes are required, all of which have to be fixed in the genes despite the hurdles of sexual reproduction.
That's a many-many-many-sided dice
... it's a sphere!

Mutation rates aren't a problem. I think you're confusing isolating a specific change versus actual rates of mutation over time.

If we assume ~100 mutations per individual (based on estimates of mutations in humans this is very reasonable, even low), 250k generations and a mean population size of 100k, that's a total of 2.5 trillion mutations that could be introduced into the population during its evolution. Obviously most of them won't be fixed. There's only ~60-70 million or so total mutations seperating humans and chimps; that's 30-35 million for each lineage and even some of those aren't fixed.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

Then I would say evolution is pretty weak.

For some reason, non-biological evolution was "strong" enough to "create" the sun, but its [much] weaker twin --- biological evolution --- can't seem to do a thing outside of this planet.

That's a little more than coincidental, if you ask me.

You're anthromorphizing the process of evolution now? That's just downright goofy.

 

[DrkSdBls]

It sure is!

Evolution is like a cheap fps (frames per second) movie, with most of the frames missing.

There's just not enough seconds in the universe for evolution to have gone from abiogenesis to us.

How can you state that with certainy? Have you counted them? How many Seconds would be required? How many Cells would be required to take of complete measurement? How about an Ocean of single Celled Organisms over a billion years instead of one Petridish over a single week.

 

[Meshach]

You obviously know nothing about games of Chance......

You see, if you agree that it's a Game of Chance then you are also conceeding that it's a Probable Metaphor.. You're not doing much for your arguement by giving up your only point of contest.

We can Prove that a pair of Dice has a chance to come of 7. This isn't Faith. This has nothing to do with Faith. OK. Betting your whole Life-Savings that a pair of dice WILL Land of 7 if you roll; that's Faith. It's also not playing the game based on it's odds either.

Even something has no more then a 1% chance of something occuring still has a chance to occur. It doesn't matter how low of a chance of something occuring. This doesn't change the fact that, if it did occur, it still occured!

The only way to argue against chance is to prove that those dice will never land on 7; which you can not do.

But you can prove without a doubt that they did land on 7?

 

[catzrfluffy]

i think the study referred to might have been this A New Step In Evolution | The Loom | Discover Magazine

 

[Pete Harcoff]

How can you state that with certainy? Have you counted them? How many Seconds would be required? How many Cells would be required to take of complete measurement? How about an Ocean of single Celled Organisms over a billion years instead of one Petridish over a single week.

Dont' get him started. He doesn't have anything besides his silly and completely irrelevant analogies.

 

[AV1611VET]

How can you state that with certainy? Have you counted them? How many Seconds would be required? How many Cells would be required to take of complete measurement? How about an Ocean of single Celled Organisms over a billion years instead of one Petridish over a single week.

In order to go from abiogenesis to us in one analog wave, you're going to need one doosey of a lot of mutants.

I can't remember who just recently said it, but if my memory serves me correctly, someone on here just recently said that a new species occurs something like every 174 mutants.

You're telling me that life went from a cyanovirus (or whatever it's called) to humankind in "only" 14 billion years?

I disagree.

As Sheriff Brodie said, 'We're going to need a bigger boat.'

 

[Meshach]

Not surprisingly Meshach's post #9 didn't contain one original thought.

Peter

If you read my post you would see it wasn't my thoughts.

There are many more "by perfect chance" items I found,

 

[DrkSdBls]

Then I would say evolution is pretty weak.

For some reason, non-biological evolution was "strong" enough to "create" the sun, but its [much] weaker twin --- biological evolution --- can't seem to do a thing outside of this planet.

That's a little more than coincidental, if you ask me.

The irony of that statement is that, yes, Evolution is kind of weak. It's an unavoidable trait resulting from it's inharent fragility. There are countless forces acting on it at all times which makes it all the more amazing that we've gotten this far!

But we're made it INSPITE of those forces.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

i think the study referred to might have been this A New Step In Evolution | The Loom | Discover Magazine

That's pretty interesting. At any rate, they're only focusing on a specific instance of mutation in the experiment. They're not saying that are the only changes that appeared.

 

[laconicstudent]

If you read my post you would see it wasn't my thoughts.

There are many more "by perfect chance" items I found,

Except you've shown that clearly you don't understand that when there are trillions of planets just in the OBSERVABLE portion of the universe, life happening by pure chance isn't that far fetched.

And you don't seem to realize that evolution isn't random.


It really is apparent you have no idea what you are talking about.

 

[AV1611VET]

But we're made it INSPITE of those forces.

Well, I'm not a Theistic Evolutionist, but if I was, I would answer this way:

We made it BECAUSE of those forces --- not IN SPITE of those forces.

And since I'm not a Theistic Evolutionist, I'll answer this way:

Not hardly.

 

[Meshach]

Except you've shown that clearly you don't understand that when there are trillions of planets just in the OBSERVABLE portion of the universe, life happening by pure chance isn't that far fetched.

And you don't seem to realize that evolution isn't random.


It really is apparent you have no idea what you are talking about.

The usual response to those who dont agree with what you believe.

 

[AV1611VET]

It really is apparent you have no idea what you are talking about.

I have a thread on this that I can dig up --- but won't.

But I have two good questions for you, laconicstudent:

1. If you think there's such a thing as abiogenesis, which came first in the universe, life or non-life?
2. If you think God's method of choice is evolution, what did the angels evolve from?

 

[DrkSdBls]

But you can prove without a doubt that they did land on 7?

Well, If I were playing Craps and suddenly I now have more Money then a Started with, that's a good indecation that I won......

But, in all seriousness, this is a metaphor for chance and we're verging on crossing from Metaphor to debate on Gambling.

Needless to say, all we need to do is agree that Chance is based on Probablity and Probablity is a key factor in how the universe fuctions. We don't have to prove that the Dice landed on 7, we only need to agree that the Die were rolled! It's outcome is inconsiquintial.

It is your stipulation that just because there is such a low probablity of events occuring through Chance that it's impossible for them to Occur by Chance alone, am I correct?

 

[Pete Harcoff]

The irony of that statement is that, yes, Evolution is kind of weak. It's an unavoidable trait resulting from it's inharent fragility. There are countless forces acting on it at all times which makes it all the more amazing that we've gotten this far!

But we're made it INSPITE of those forces.

I don't agree with this line of thought. First of all, evolution is neither weak nor strong. It just is.

Second of all, we're not here in spite of anything. We're here because of the way things are. Suggesting we are here in spite of things, suggests that we are meant to be here no matter what. This obviously is not the case.

 

[AV1611VET]

But we're made it INSPITE of those forces.

I don't agree with this line of thought.

Looks like evolution hasn't passed peer review.

 

[DrkSdBls]

Well, I'm not a Theistic Evolutionist, but if I was, I would answer this way:

We made it BECAUSE of those forces --- not IN SPITE of those forces.

And since I'm not a Theistic Evolutionist, I'll answer this way:

Not hardly.

I never said "we were Made," AV. I said "We Made it."

There's a big difference. Yes, we are the result of all the Forces but I was refering to the forces acting against us; the forces that cause Dinosaurs to die out, that caused Neanderthal Man to die out, that caused countless billions of would-be proto-life to never have emerged in the first place.

Those Forces.