An open debate to Atheists on a creator.

[FormerAtheist]

I don't think I ever said anything about it being random.

Non-random functional complexity, is not an indicator of artificial design either.

Really because you have some key words in there. Can you give an example.

 

[FormerAtheist]

We are all still waiting for your website. Shouldn't it be online by now?

I am need something good to laugh at so please don't disappoint us!

Yeah actually the website is ready for the most part but I have decided not to give it out to atheists at the moment because then it will be me vs. 50 of you and I won't have time for other things. Let me get some people on there that know there is a God. Then we can invite you. But honestly the site wasn't even made for atheists. That was not its purpose so I made a mistake ever referencing it in the first place.

 

[FormerAtheist]

Oh dear. If the only things that had happened were those we have full explanations for, the world would be a very strange place indeed!

"I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting you really believe what you just said" - William F Buckley Jr

Hey I'm just going on what I originally told you and your response. You can not get natural selection unless you have something to select from.

 

[FormerAtheist]

Looking around, I think it's safe to say that life exists and that we can study it.
Evolution theory is about understanding the processes that existing life is subject to.

I thought it was about figuring out how life got here?

 

[FormerAtheist]

Oh. Wow. No. I think you may have some really major, major revisions to your arguments coming in the near future. The Cambrian was around 500 million years ago. Earth has had billions of years to develop life before the Cambrian.

Not really. There are no predecessors to the Cambrian explosion and the explosion was 6 million years. As one scientist put it "its as if we don't have survival of the fittest but rather the arrival of the fittest".
The earth did not have billions of years it had 3.5 and evolution by the standard theory takes a lot longer then you think based on population genetic mathematics.

 

[Speedwell]

I thought it was about figuring out how life got here?

No, it's about how life diversified after it got here. How life originally began is a separate field of study called abiogenesis.

 

[Speedwell]

Yeah actually the website is ready for the most part but I have decided not to give it out to atheists at the moment because then it will be me vs. 50 of you and I won't have time for other things. Let me get some people on there that know there is a God. Then we can invite you. But honestly the site wasn't even made for atheists. That was not its purpose so I made a mistake ever referencing it in the first place.

If you're so worried about atheism, why don't you go after it directly, instead of attacking the theory of evolution? The theory of evolution says nothing about whether there is a God or not, and many Christians and other theists have no problem with it.

 

[bhsmte]

Yeah actually the website is ready for the most part but I have decided not to give it out to atheists at the moment because then it will be me vs. 50 of you and I won't have time for other things. Let me get some people on there that know there is a God. Then we can invite you. But honestly the site wasn't even made for atheists. That was not its purpose so I made a mistake ever referencing it in the first place.

All arguments should be able to stand on their own merits. We are waiting for you to demonstrate.

 

[FormerAtheist]

Variation within populations is what is selected from.



The abiogenesis hypothesis has been getting more evidence supporting it, slowly but surely. Heck, protocells developed during an experiment in 2013. However, how life originated is entirely irrelevant to the theory of evolution. Doesn't matter if it arose via abiogenesis, a deity making organisms out of dirt, etc. In case you haven't noticed, plenty of theists are also evolution supporters, so you might want to consider that fact when making your arguments.

Ok this quote of mine is taken out of context. You have to go back and find it and bring it back. I tried but I can't find it and don't have the time. But if your going to quote me just please do it in context. I was referring to what someone else was saying where they were tying abiogenesis to evolution. And I was pointing out that ... well that wouldn't work.

By the way after having looked back at my previous posts I have to apologize to everyone. There was some posts that were bad lol ... arrogant. Not cool

 

[FormerAtheist]

You might want to check the research from the past ~20 years about the Cambrian explosion, instead of just parroting creationist/ID-iot talking points.

The best evidence available is that there was a period of several hundred million years of comparatively rapid body plan diversification, and then an 'explosion' of diversification lasting at a minimum 20 million years and more realistically about 40-45 million years.

There are plenty of unresolved whys and hows about the Cambrian explosion, but the more it is studied, the less mysterious it becomes.

For all your protestations about the 'math' and the 'science', you're apparently unwilling to do the work and the reading yourself. Otherwise, you'd know this.

Actually I have looked more intently at the research done in the last ten years in particular the russion volcanic dating that put the explosion pretty precisely at 6 million years. And there are no good qualifying predecessors to the Cambrian phyla. Mostly sponges. There is the long fuse hypothesis but nothing to back it.

 

[FormerAtheist]

Was the highlighted meant to add a touch of comedy or just a further example of what @tas8831 was driving at?

Not sure I try to be quick with my responses because of time. And once again I will apopligize if I get out of hand. Its something I need to work on ... certainly not perfect and I don't know everything.

But then no one does. And those that believe in God do not have to be afraid of science because it is on their side.

 

[FormerAtheist]

I will await your response.

I responded. And I read it.

 

[FormerAtheist]

You are right - there are definitely more than 100 pages of paraphrased already-refuted YEC propaganda.

Actually there are probably hundreds of books. Its the history whether we like it or not.

 

[FormerAtheist]

I forget now who originally posted these on this forum, but I keep it in my archives because it offers a nice 'linear' progression of testing a methodology and then applying it:

The tested methodology:

Science 25 October 1991:
Vol. 254. no. 5031, pp. 554 - 558

Gene trees and the origins of inbred strains of mice

WR Atchley and WM Fitch

Extensive data on genetic divergence among 24 inbred strains of mice provide an opportunity to examine the concordance of gene trees and species trees, especially whether structured subsamples of loci give congruent estimates of phylogenetic relationships. Phylogenetic analyses of 144 separate loci reproduce almost exactly the known genealogical relationships among these 24 strains. Partitioning these loci into structured subsets representing loci coding for proteins, the immune system and endogenous viruses give incongruent phylogenetic results. The gene tree based on protein loci provides an accurate picture of the genealogical relationships among strains; however, gene trees based upon immune and viral data show significant deviations from known genealogical affinities.

======================

Science, Vol 255, Issue 5044, 589-592

Experimental phylogenetics: generation of a known phylogeny

DM Hillis, JJ Bull, ME White, MR Badgett, and IJ Molineux
Department of Zoology, University of Texas, Austin 78712.

Although methods of phylogenetic estimation are used routinely in comparative biology, direct tests of these methods are hampered by the lack of known phylogenies. Here a system based on serial propagation of bacteriophage T7 in the presence of a mutagen was used to create the first completely known phylogeny. Restriction-site maps of the terminal lineages were used to infer the evolutionary history of the experimental lines for comparison to the known history and actual ancestors. The five methods used to reconstruct branching pattern all predicted the correct topology but varied in their predictions of branch lengths; one method also predicts ancestral restriction maps and was found to be greater than 98 percent accurate.

==================================

Science, Vol 264, Issue 5159, 671-677

Application and accuracy of molecular phylogenies

DM Hillis, JP Huelsenbeck, and CW Cunningham
Department of Zoology, University of Texas, Austin 78712.

Molecular investigations of evolutionary history are being used to study subjects as diverse as the epidemiology of acquired immune deficiency syndrome and the origin of life. These studies depend on accurate estimates of phylogeny. The performance of methods of phylogenetic analysis can be assessed by numerical simulation studies and by the experimental evolution of organisms in controlled laboratory situations. Both kinds of assessment indicate that existing methods are effective at estimating phylogenies over a wide range of evolutionary conditions, especially if information about substitution bias is used to provide differential weightings for character transformations.



We can ASSUME that the results of an application of those methods have merit.


Application of the tested methodology:

Implications of natural selection in shaping 99.4% nonsynonymous DNA identity between humans and chimpanzees: Enlarging genus Homo

"Here we compare ≈90 kb of coding DNA nucleotide sequence from 97 human genes to their sequenced chimpanzee counterparts and to available sequenced gorilla, orangutan, and Old World monkey counterparts, and, on a more limited basis, to mouse. The nonsynonymous changes (functionally important), like synonymous changes (functionally much less important), show chimpanzees and humans to be most closely related, sharing 99.4% identity at nonsynonymous sites and 98.4% at synonymous sites. "



Mitochondrial Insertions into Primate Nuclear Genomes Suggest the Use of numts as a Tool for Phylogeny

"Moreover, numts identified in gorilla Supercontigs were used to test the human–chimp–gorilla trichotomy, yielding a high level of support for the sister relationship of human and chimpanzee."



A Molecular Phylogeny of Living Primates

"Once contentiously debated, the closest human relative of chimpanzee (Pan) within subfamily Homininae (Gorilla, Pan, Homo) is now generally undisputed. The branch forming the Homo andPanlineage apart from Gorilla is relatively short (node 73, 27 steps MP, 0 indels) compared with that of thePan genus (node 72, 91 steps MP, 2 indels) and suggests rapid speciation into the 3 genera occurred early in Homininae evolution. Based on 54 gene regions, Homo-Pan genetic distance range from 6.92 to 7.90×10−3 substitutions/site (P. paniscus and P. troglodytes, respectively), which is less than previous estimates based on large scale sequencing of specific regions such as chromosome 7[50]. "




Catarrhine phylogeny: noncoding DNA evidence for a diphyletic origin of the mangabeys and for a human-chimpanzee clade.

"The Superfamily Hominoidea for apes and humans is reduced to family Hominidae within Superfamily Cercopithecoidea, with all living hominids placed in subfamily Homininae; and (4) chimpanzees and humans are members of a single genus, Homo, with common and bonobo chimpanzees placed in subgenus H. (Pan) and humans placed in subgenus H. (Homo). It may be noted that humans and chimpanzees are more than 98.3% identical in their typical nuclear noncoding DNA and probably more than 99.5% identical in the active coding nucleotide sequences of their functional nuclear genes (Goodman et al., 1989, 1990). In mammals such high genetic correspondence is commonly found between sibling species below the generic level but not between species in different genera."




'All over the place', you say?

Not really. Stop getting all of your information from creationists. They lie. They distort. They embellish. They NEVER test their own claims.

This sort of data led biochemist W. Ford Doolittle to explain that “Molecular phylogenists will have failed to find the ‘true tree,’ not because their methods are inadequate or because they have chosen the wrong genes, but because the history of life cannot properly be represented as a tree.”[103] New Scientist put it this way: “For a long time the holy grail was to build a tree of life … But today the project lies in tatters, torn to pieces by an onslaught of negative evidence.”[104]

Many evolutionists sometimes reply that these problems arise only when studying microorganisms like bacteria—organisms which can swap genes through a process called “horizontal gene transfer,” thereby muddying the signal of evolutionary relationships. But this objection isn’t quite true, since the tree of life is challenged even among higher organisms where such gene-swapping is not prevalent. Carl Woese, a pioneer of evolutionary molecular systematics, explains:

Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.[105]

Likewise, the New Scientist article notes that “research suggests that the evolution of animals and plants isn't exactly tree-like either.”[106] The article explains what happened when microbiologist Michael Syvanen tried to create a tree showing evolutionary relationships using 2000 genes from a diverse group of animals:

He failed. The problem was that different genes told contradictory evolutionary stories. … the genes were sending mixed signals. … Roughly 50 per cent of its genes have one evolutionary history and 50 per cent another.[107]

The data were so difficult to resolve into a tree that Syvanen lamented, “We’ve just annihilated the tree of life.”[108] Many other papers in the technical literature recognize similar problems.

 

[FormerAtheist]

No, spelling errors do not mean we won. But the repetitious conceptual errors that creationists - including you - make, which are often accompanied by 'spelling errors' (which is more indicative of a lack of knowledge of the concepts than merely poor spelling or making typos - one of your intellectual brethren referred to "alleles" as "allies" for more than a year despite being corrected dozens of times) show that your arguments are generally at least poorly thought out.

And frankly, I do not believe that you were ever an atheist.

I see these sorts of 'witnessing' tales all the time, and I have never seen such a tale survive much scrutiny. Even 'professional' creationists sometimes tell such tales - take Steve Austin, creationist geologist. He claims that he was an old-earth evolutionist until he studied at Mt. St. Helen's. But it later came out that he had been writing creationist essays under the name "Stuart Nevins" as early as 1976 - i.e, he lied about his 'conversion.'

So please forgive me if I dismiss your conversion tales.

I would believe a "believer" over an atheist though any day. And so do most people. Most people including atheists do not trust atheists. Odd isn't it?

 

[FormerAtheist]

I said something other than personal opinion.

Well we are going over the science. It takes time. No one finds deep truth in a single post.

 

[FormerAtheist]

If you're so worried about atheism, why don't you go after it directly, instead of attacking the theory of evolution? The theory of evolution says nothing about whether there is a God or not, and many Christians and other theists have no problem with it.

Believe me I am working on the problem. But it is a multi-faceted problem. And many Christians don't know the science. Many atheists don't know the science. There are many conflicts.

 

[FormerAtheist]

No, it's about how life diversified after it got here. How life originally began is a separate field of study called abiogenesis.

Ok you got me on that quote. I meant how life formed along the way.

 

[Speedwell]

Believe me I am working on the problem. But it is a multi-faceted problem. And many Christians don't know the science. Many atheists don't know the science. There are many conflicts.

And many Christians do understand the science and realize that there is no conflict between the theory of evolution and belief in God. Many atheists know it as well, and by equating the ToE with atheism you just make faith in God sound stupid to them anc eliminate any hope of conversion.

 

[bhsmte]

Well we are going over the science. It takes time. No one finds deep truth in a single post.

I have not seen you use science.