Search results

Well yes, a lot of these discussions tend to get mired in semantics.. but our mental models are an attempt to describe the ordering principles, inadequate as they may be.

Yes, that would be my point; we didn't create them , we tried to describe them, and we still haven't figured them out.

I take your point; how can we demonstrate Darwinian evolution, or Old Earth geology? We can't, we'd have to take that on faith. But we can observe natural laws like gravity that have to be obeyed, even by my dog, whether he can name it or not, as much as he tries to defy it!

We merely named them, or do you believe there was no gravity before Newton?

? We discovered laws of nature which existed long before we pondered them, we attempted to describe them as best we could, and we got a lot wrong in the process, but we are most certainly not their creators!

Nature is the executor of God's laws (Galileo), and we are unique in having the capacity to appreciate them. We are the only means we know of by which the universe itself can ponder it's own existence.. I don't think that's coincidence, it's intentional, it's a gift.

Point being; we should not limit ourselves to a Victorian age understanding of the natural world if we want to understand it.

"they stripped the coding part of the DNA of a virus that codes for the protein that grants access to a E. coli batcteria and replaced it with a random stretch of DNA" Right, so introducing a random sequence of DNA broke a specific function... That's exactly my point. Once again breaking...

It's more from my own experience of how digital information works. You can create copies of it, and you can introduce random errors in those copies. But neither of these mechanisms are adequate to explain the origin of the information that is merely being copied and corrupted.

If I were to retreat to a Victorian age understanding of the natural world, I'd agree Darwinism looks a lot more plausible, so does phlebotomy, phrenology and steady state. But the problems for each theory grew after their conception. Which has more specified information in it's DNA; a human...

Long live freedom.

After the discovery of the double helix model of DNA, Crick's interests quickly turned to the biological implications of the structure. In 1953, Watson and Crick published another article in Nature which stated: "it therefore seems likely that the precise sequence of the bases is the code that...

Agreed, they determined the physical structure where DNA information is contained, and that this structure represented specific sequences relating to biological form. Of course they didn't discover all the mechanisms involved in translation/duplication etc- that came later and there are still...

Then you are aware that these adaptations come from breaking an original function- even if it is a regulatory one, If a bear loses the ability to produce pigment in it's fur, sure, you can semantically call its improved camouflage in an arctic environment a 'gain of genetic function' But the...

Its been known since Watson and Crick that the DNA molecule quite literally specifies biological form, it's hardly a controversial observation these days. It wasn't a 'feeling' on their part, it's been established beyond reasonable doubt. Yes, and I provided some of them. e.g. Genetic...

Exactly, degeneration of genes through random corruption would never evolve a flatworm into a human, the opposite phenomenon is required. Hence the Royal Society's member's recent characterization of Darwinism, that it still lacks a theory of the generative.

Me neither. Likewise there is no objective measurement to determine whether a person is bald or not. It's simply a semantic argument that runs 'if I refuse to accept your definition of something, it doesn't exist' Yet we all know what a bald man is, and we all know that genetic information...

Then there's your trouble, how can a person question their own beliefs, if they do not even acknowledge them as such? "pseudoscience" (Wiki on Fred Hoyle's rejection of the big Bang) [Hoyle] found the idea that the universe had a beginning to be pseudoscience resembling arguments for a...

You forgot bad grammar, I said 'You're' instead of Your- I hate when people do that! Anyway I appreciate the (mostly) civil debate, must get back to doing something more productive and less fun. I will respond if you have any other counter-arguments.

It was Darwin's opinion that the gaps were potentially fatal, he was very open about the weaknesses of his own theory which is admirable. It's interesting, when I was a devout believer in Darwinism (for most of my life) I remember arguing that 200 million years is a long explosion. I was...