Missing link found by Norwegian scientist

Baggins · May 21, 2009

jake4130 said:
...

Bottom line kids, The Bible is the complete Word of God and it's all true, every bit of it. Either you believe that or you don't.

Thankfully most people, including most Christians, don't.

Especially on a science discussion board

There is no in between. You can't pick and choose from it what you choose to believe "ala cart" style. Either you believe it to be the Word of God in its entirety or you don't.

And most people, including most Christians, don't, because to do so would be to believe many impossible, contradictory and plain evil things.

And you cant do the typical "The New Testament is true but the Old is mostly fables" either. I mean we have already found the base of the Tower of Babel, what more do you want?

No you haven't stop making things up.

Any Christian that doubts for a second that evolution is a myth needs to read "The Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel or at least put the DVD in your Netflix queue. Anybody that believes that evolution might be true at that point is just in denial.

Why would anyone read a book by a journalist to learn anything about evolution?

For that matter, pick up your Bible and read it and then decide who might be lying to you. The world? The enemy with his plots to steal, kill and destroy?

Better still why not learn to read the evidence of nature by studying science, it will be far more useful to you in the job market.

Science is important for sure, but you also have to accept that we are not God, we are very fallible beings that are living in a fallen world and simply don't have the capacity to fully understand how it all works even given our best efforts.

Well you might not but the rest of us are getting there slowly but surely by using scientific investigation.

An improbability of accidental design is exactly what points us to God in the first place.

There is nothing accidental about the design of life it is honed by natural selection.

AV1611VET · May 21, 2009

Ectezus said:
Psst! The Flintstones is not a documantary on how dinosaurs lived together with humans...

Pssst --- and Planet of the Apes is not a documentary on evolution, either.

Hespera · May 21, 2009

jake4130 said:
...especially here in a Christian Forum.

Bottom line kids, The Bible is the complete Word of God and it's all true, every bit of it. Either you believe that or you don't. There is no in between. You can't pick and choose from it what you choose to believe "ala cart" style. Either you believe it to be the Word of God in its entirety or you don't.

Bottom line: Either you think that out of all the religions and sects thru time and geography are false, except for the one true church that you had the weird luck to be born into, or you think hmmmm...

And you cant do the typical "The New Testament is true but the Old is mostly fables" either. I mean we have already found the base of the Tower of Babel, what more do you want?

I want real evidence, not just another discovery of noahs ark or atlantis discovery story. Ever wonder btw why god would worry that people could beuild a tower to heaven, but in unconcerned about like, the space shuttle?

Any Christian that doubts for a second that evolution is a myth needs to read "The Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel or at least put the DVD in your Netflix queue. Anybody that believes that evolution might be true at that point is just in denial.

Anyone who has been on a jury knows that if a person shows he is already convinced of guilt or innocence, they are excluded. So why did you even bother watching your DVD? Anyone who has been on a jury also when the prosecution is done, you will be utterly convinced of guilt. Then the defense proves the oopposite. You want people to go in iwth their minds already made up, and listen to one side tell a bunch of lies distortions and half truths, with the belief they will go to hell if they dont agree with all of it.

For that matter, pick up your Bible and read it and then decide who might be lying to you. The world? The enemy with his plots to steal, kill and destroy?

Sally forth and slay the mighty strawman, and his what was that, plots to steal, kill and destroy.

Science is important for sure, but you also have to accept that we are not God, we are very fallible beings that are living in a fallen world and simply don't have the capacity to fully understand how it all works even given our best efforts.

So who said we are God? And who said we are not fallible? AND. who are YOU to say that human being don not have the capacity to understand how "it all works"? Human culture is in its infancy! Give us a break here. Was like day before yesterday we even knew there were microbes. Check back in 10,000,000 years and see if we have not got a better grip on things than we do now.

An improbability of accidental design is exactly what points us to God in the first place.

This moldy canard should be dropped by anyone who wants to be taken seriously. "accidental" and "random" is a totally inadequate and prejudicial way to describe how things work. But try this. Behold the elaborate and beautiful paattern of a frost crystal on the window. it wasnt designed! It just grew. Now behold the structure of a water molecule, and its properties. Just turn them loose, and they will manage just fine on their own. No need to design anything. They will make frost crystals, and they will carve out canyons of the most amazing complexity, just let them have gravity, time, and some rock to work with. That is how things work, if you made an effort to understand some basic science yuu could drop arguing against reality.

Believe all of it, actually walk in your faith and get on with it. "So, because you are lukewarmneither hot nor coldI am about to spit you out of my mouth." Revelation 3:16

Nope, I cant just DECIDE to believe, and then pretend that I believe the unbelievable. Like that could fool an omnipotent god. Whats to believe?
There are a lot of old books, and a lot of religoins that say they are the one true one.

Lookdfor evidence that maybe the bible could all be true, and where is the evidence. You say there is a "tower of babel"? There isnt even one trace of physical evidence that there was a "great flood". There is no way on (god's green)_earth I could believe a story like that....so out goes the whole thing I guess...when the facts totally contradict the story.

Honkytnkmn · May 21, 2009

Here's why I differentiate between adaptation and common descent. Adaptation says if you dump 500,000 worms in a tough environment some will die while the tougher worms will not. After a given period of time the tougher worms will adapt nicely to the environment. This is what I call adaptation.

What doesn't happen is a worm, no matter how much time is given, will not change or morph into something else. The information in the DNA is not there. Information does not get added over time, information is lost over time. For even the slightest addition to happen in DNA it would be a major leap.

A worm does not have any bones, a worms DNA does not have the information to produce bones. If for some reason, some worm was born with a minute microscopic piece of bone in its body, how did it produce this without adequate information to produce it. Also if it did produce it, what possible advantage would this give the worm in it environment and how would natural selection figure this out? Seems to me in order for this to work, thousands of worms would need to produce the same addition of information at the same time.

Mutation is the loss of information not the addition of information. We should be De-evolving if anything.

TheReasoner · May 21, 2009

jake4130 said:
...especially here in a Christian Forum.

Bottom line kids,

I am quite adult, "son".

jake4130 said:
The Bible is the complete Word of God and it's all true, every bit of it. Either you believe that or you don't. There is no in between. You can't pick and choose from it what you choose to believe "ala cart" style. Either you believe it to be the Word of God in its entirety or you don't.

But it isn't always true as one would read it literally. The sky above us is not solid as a forged mirror as Job would describe it. Nor is the world a flat circle as Isiah described it (Yes, read the Hebrew. It is clearly a flat disc, not a sphere). And if you read it literally, how on earth do you approach the revelations, or Jesus' parables?

You believe parables are parables, right? You do not believe the world is a flat circle, right? And seeing as how you're an American you probably favor capitalism even though that is based on love for money - and the bible clearly says you cannot serve both God and money.

jake4130 said:
And you cant do the typical "The New Testament is true but the Old is mostly fables" either. I mean we have already found the base of the Tower of Babel, what more do you want?

As a historic account the bible is likely quite accurate. As a moral and spiritual guide it is clearly accurate. But as a scientific work it is not. The world is not covered by a hard dome. The world is not placed on pillars. And stars do not and cannot fall upon the earth. They are after all not something hung above us, but vast fusing balls of gases (mostly hydrogen).

jake4130 said:
Any Christian that doubts for a second that evolution is a myth needs to read "The Case for a Creator" by Lee Strobel or at least put the DVD in your Netflix queue. Anybody that believes that evolution might be true at that point is just in denial.

I think I might. But if this is as transparent and rotten through as Kent Hovind's arguments (sorry, but he's more like a slick snake-oil merchant than a credible and honest debater) it's only going to drive me away from your position. You see, for a layman it may seem credible that it's all so simple, that the second law of thermodynamics simply makes evolution impossible. That the law of conservation of angular momentum makes it impossible for our solar system to form. Well, as a student of physics I can tell you with no uncertainty that these arguments are based solely on a gross misunderstanding of these physical laws of nature. Evolution does not contradict them, or a single snowflake would (there's a reduction of entropy (chaos) right there! From gas to fluid to crystal) As are most arguments I have heard from creationists. It's not about the whole world getting it all wrong. The arguments presented by creationists are simply laughable much of the time. And I find it sad that so many people - like yourself - fall in the exact same trap that the catholics fell in before. They believed the world had to be the centre of the universe, and did so from their own interpretation of the bible. They were wrong. And yet here you sit making the exact same arguments, but on even shakier grounds.

jake4130 said:
For that matter, pick up your Bible and read it and then decide who might be lying to you. The world? The enemy with his plots to steal, kill and destroy?

And why should this thief not be creationism? The devil is fond of using the bible to harm Christianity and Christians. He tried to get Jesus on his side using the bible. And some of the more prominent "Christian" approaches to several things today have probably been tainted quite severely. Like this whole "prosperity" nonsense.
Jesus told us to test/try (not to do it ourselves, but to check it... Ah. Blasted language barrier!) everything. And to recognize things by their fruit. Well, what are the fruits of creationism if not harm to Christianity, just as was the case with geocentrism?

jake4130 said:
Science is important for sure, but you also have to accept that we are not God, we are very fallible beings that are living in a fallen world and simply don't have the capacity to fully understand how it all works even given our best efforts.

Yes, we are. But we can and should try. God gave us a miraculously wonderful brain so it could be used. And He created us in this wonderful universe of His so that we could study it and marvel at it. I feel that your approach is not so much in defense of the bible as it is in your own subjective interpretation of a few bible verses that might as well be a parable. And frankly, studies of God's own creation tells us that it is.

Science is not an OPPOSITE of Christianity. It is not even OPPOSED. As a believer I believe that no matter what we find out about this world it can only serve to ultimately point towards our creator. BUT - if we choose to deny what science uncovers about this world (and I am not talking about ethics, but the natural sciences) in favor of our own understanding of the bible, then we are placing our own interpretations, subjective opinions and wishful thinking above the very echo of God's voice. And this cannot lead to anything good.

jake4130 said:
An improbability of accidental design is exactly what points us to God in the first place.

You know, we now use evolution to create all kinds of wondrous things we never have been able to before. It's random, but with a purpose. Are you saying that we can use a tool to create machines God Himself is unable to use? Hmmmm....
Why do some - like yourself - seem to think that evolution automatically means we cannot have had a designer?
Do we as individuals not evolve? Can we not evolve in our relationship with Christ? And can we not as a society evolve? Don't we constantly do so? Until our dying day as individuals, society and species? Has not God's relationship with us evolved? I mean, as mankind fell into sin the first time God did not immediately send Jesus to die for us. That took quite some time. And after Jesus came here we've waited for some time for Him to come back - which He has not yet done. It is all dynamic and wonderful in it's complexity. Why would God who created such a complex world done it in such a mundane and uncreative fashion? It does not sound like God at all.

jake4130 said:
Believe all of it, actually walk in your faith and get on with it. "So, because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth." Revelation 3:16

Oh but luke warm does not necessarily mean that one believes in science? The Catholic church considered it heresy to speak of anything but a geocentric world view. And they did so with far better cover in the bible than creationists do today. So are YOU luke warm for knowing that the earth is not the center of the universe? Could it be that these catholics only underestimated the sheer scope and wonder of creation instead?

CACTUSJACKmankin · May 21, 2009

Honkytnkmn said:
Here's why I differentiate between adaptation and common descent. Adaptation says if you dump 500,000 worms in a tough environment some will die while the tougher worms will not. After a given period of time the tougher worms will adapt nicely to the environment. This is what I call adaptation.

What doesn't happen is a worm, no matter how much time is given, will not change or morph into something else. The information in the DNA is not there. Information does not get added over time, information is lost over time. For even the slightest addition to happen in DNA it would be a major leap.

A worm does not have any bones, a worms DNA does not have the information to produce bones. If for some reason, some worm was born with a minute microscopic piece of bone in its body, how did it produce this without adequate information to produce it. Also if it did produce it, what possible advantage would this give the worm in it environment and how would natural selection figure this out? Seems to me in order for this to work, thousands of worms would need to produce the same addition of information at the same time.

Mutation is the loss of information not the addition of information. We should be De-evolving if anything.

But we share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. in fact, everything that is sequencible and inheritable shows the same figure.

Here's something else we have in common: viral insertions. viruses inserted themeselves into our genomes. humans and chimpanzees share the same insertions in the same region of our DNA. how does that happen without inheritence?

Ectezus · May 21, 2009

Honkytnkmn said:
Here's why I differentiate between adaptation and common descent. Adaptation says if you dump 500,000 worms in a tough environment some will die while the tougher worms will not. After a given period of time the tougher worms will adapt nicely to the environment. This is what I call adaptation.

I'm afraid you have it a little backwards.

It's not the tough worms that adapt. It's random mutations that make certain worms better suitable for a particular environment (what you call 'tough') and those get naturally selected because they reproduce at a faster rate and thus pass on those 'tougher' genes.

Mutation is the loss of information not the addition of information. We should be De-evolving if anything.

It's not about losing or adding information. It's different information.
Mutations are nothing more than imperfect cell copies. This is a fact, you can not deny this and most creationists acknoledge this as micro-evolution.
And yes, this can be observed in real life and in labs.

- Ectezus

Honkytnkmn · May 21, 2009

CACTUSJACKmankin said:
But we share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. in fact, everything that is sequencible and inheritable shows the same figure.

Here's something else we have in common: viral insertions. viruses inserted themeselves into our genomes. humans and chimpanzees share the same insertions in the same region of our DNA. how does that happen without inheritence?

Yes, but that 2% is huge when you're talking about how much information our DNA can hold.

Honkytnkmn · May 21, 2009

Ectezus said:
most creationists acknoledge this as micro-evolution.
And yes, this can be observed in real life and in labs.

- Ectezus

Yes, that is what I refer to as Adaptation.

tanzanos · May 21, 2009

AV1611VET said:
Ya --- good point.

As long as we have about 10 or so, who cares about the other several quadrillion?

OK AV; We have:
1.
2.
3.
7.
9.
10.
300.
1,000
345,654,000,000,000
Obviously there are quadrillion numbers missing from the above but with the given numbers we can clearly ascertain the missing numbers as belonging to the logical sequence! With your argument number 8 and others not mentioned; do NOT exist!

Really now AV; Behave yourself or you wont have any pudding tonight :wave:

!

Honkytnkmn · May 21, 2009

tanzanos said:
OK AV; We have:
1.
2.
3.
7.
9.
10.
300.
1,000
345,654,000,000,000
Obviously there are quadrillion numbers missing from the above but with the given numbers we can clearly ascertain the missing numbers as belonging to the logical sequence! With your argument number 8 and others not mentioned; do NOT exist!

Really now AV; Behave yourself or you wont have any pudding tonight!

Poor Example. A better example would be.

. .

I say the above is the letter A.

CACTUSJACKmankin · May 21, 2009

Honkytnkmn said:
Yes, but that 2% is huge when you're talking about how much information our DNA can hold.

The amino acid code is redundant so most of your base pairs could be different and you would still come out the same. The only known way to get precision in the code of a gene and its position in the genome is through inheritence.

Humans, chimpanzees, and gunea pigs have something in common. none of them can make their own vitamin c, they have to get it from their food. The cause in all cases is damage to the gene that makes the protein for vitamin c synthesis. in humans and chimpanzees the damage is to the same base pair so we know they both inherited it from the same animal. gunea pigs' gene is damaged in a different base pair which makes sense since animals that are much more closely related to us than gunea pigs retain their ability to synthesize vitamin c.

When you are talking about 3 billion base pairs the only way to get the same genes in the same regions is via inheritence.

Pesto · May 21, 2009

Honkytnkmn said:
Here's why I differentiate between adaptation and common descent. Adaptation says if you dump 500,000 worms in a tough environment some will die while the tougher worms will not. After a given period of time the tougher worms will adapt nicely to the environment. This is what I call adaptation.

Okay, now you're combining multiple concepts into a single term. Let's try to clarify this.

What you're describing above is referred to as natural selection. Those individuals poorly suited to their environment are less likely to survive and reproduce. I'm going to take this as your acknowledgment that natural selection exists and works.

You also referred to my example of blood types as "adaptation". A better term for that is micro-evolution, or evolution within a species, i.e. evolution where no speciation event has occurred.

A worm does not have any bones, a worms DNA does not have the information to produce bones. If for some reason, some worm was born with a minute microscopic piece of bone in its body, how did it produce this without adequate information to produce it.

Mutation. We'll get to this in a bit.

Also if it did produce it, what possible advantage would this give the worm in it environment...

That depends on the environment. Any given trait could be beneficial in one environment and detrimental in another. A thick fur coat and layer of blubber is great in cold climates, but very, very bad in the desert.

...and how would natural selection figure this out?

Natural selection isn't a sentient process. It doesn't exactly "figure things out".

A good analogy is a free market economy. You've got lots of businesses out there with different business models (animals with different traits). Some businesses will be better at attracting customers (animals better at getting food). A business that is inefficient (an animal that can't use its energy efficiently, due to traits not suited to its environment) will be more likely to go out of business (the inefficient animal will be more likely to die). What you're left with are the efficient businesses that server their customers well (animals with traits suited to their environment).

Seems to me in order for this to work, thousands of worms would need to produce the same addition of information at the same time.

No. There is no need for multiple individuals to develop the same novel trait at the same time. Let's say a baby is born with a mutation that gives him naturally blue hair. He's the only person on the planet with blue hair. Simply because he has a novel trait, it won't stop him from having children of his own one day. If he does have kids, he will pass on the genes to his children. They in turn will pass those genes on. As generations go by, the "blue hair gene" can spread through the population to more and more people.

Information does not get added over time, information is lost over time. For even the slightest addition to happen in DNA it would be a major leap.

...

Mutation is the loss of information not the addition of information. We should be De-evolving if anything.

This is a very common talking point among creationists, but the problem is "addition of information" is never defined. What would you consider "addition of information"?

Pesto · May 21, 2009

Honkytnkmn said:
Yes, that is what I refer to as Adaptation.

The problem is that so far in this thread you've used the term Adaptation to refer to two different concepts, micro-evolution and natural selection.

Natural selection is a mechanism by which micro-evolution can occur, but the two need not go together. There are other mechanisms by which micro-evolution can occur. Would you be willing to use the terms micro-evolution and natural selection instead of Adaption in order to cut down on possible misunderstandings?

Honkytnkmn · May 21, 2009

Pesto said:
This is a very common talking point among creationists, but the problem is "addition of information" is never defined. What would you consider "addition of information"?

A good example is this.

If you have a data base of names, house numbers, streets, towns, zip codes and phone numbers and filled it with 1000 of your closest friends, you could write countless reports to pull this this information.

for example you could pull a report showing all your friends that have names beginning with R and what street they live on, ignoring the rest of the data. You could also run a report listing all your friends that live in Saybrook Oh.

you can't run a report pulling information of your friends birth dates, because that information is not in the database. you can ignore information that that is there and that information is still there, but you cannot pull information out of the data base that just isn't there. No matter how many reports you run it will never be there.

Honkytnkmn · May 21, 2009

Pesto said:
The problem is that so far in this thread you've used the term Adaptation to refer to two different concepts, micro-evolution and natural selection.

Natural selection is a mechanism by which micro-evolution can occur, but the two need not go together. There are other mechanisms by which micro-evolution can occur. Would you be willing to use the terms micro-evolution and natural selection instead of Adaption in order to cut down on possible misunderstandings?

Well, I've used micro-evolution before (in other threads) and got flamed for that because in some peoples eye's there is no such thing as micro-evolution.

Gawron · May 21, 2009

Stay here long enough and you will get flamed for it again, even though evolutionary scientist themselves use the term.

CACTUSJACKmankin · May 21, 2009

Honkytnkmn said:
Well, I've used micro-evolution before (in other threads) and got flamed for that because in some peoples eye's there is no such thing as micro-evolution.

There is no distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution except scale. anything can be studied from a micro and macro perspective. humans can be studied socially, biologically, or molecularly.

Honkytnkmn · May 21, 2009

CACTUSJACKmankin said:
There is no distinction between micro-evolution and macro-evolution except scale. anything can be studied from a micro and macro perspective. humans can be studied socially, biologically, or molecularly.

See thats why I hate that term. Adaptation explains it much better. A species can adapt to its environment but cannot evolve or morph or change into another species.

Why is it, that because I believe a species can adapt to its environment, I automatically have to believe that it can evolve to a new species? I see a distinct difference between the two.

apwood · May 21, 2009

I actually feel sorry for this little creature to be honest with you. If she had any idea what she was being used for right now she wouldn't appreciate or be pleased with it at all. Though, in the end, she's showing desperity of humanity, so maybe she wouldn't be sad afterall. Cases like this truly do prove we've came from monkeys (or a common ancestor of), because many people that grasp at straws to prove any relation between something like this and a human truly is a monkey in their own sense.

Leave the little creature alone. She'd be in tears by now if she had any idea what you people are trying to relate her to.

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