another forgery from EVOS

kenneth558 said:

. I should be studying for tomorrow's Histology test, but allow me to post a very simple statement. Hopefully it's not too simplistic -

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You are taking Histology and cannot see any evolution?? Come on Ken, either you are fibbing or you have put your creationist blinders on.

Aggie, dude, when you ADD energy into a system, perhaps YOU can make it orderly and non-random, but the sun CAN'T. Energy from ANY star will increase the entropy (randomness) of whatever system it enters. So quit using the "closed system - open system" argument. It is irrelevant, even counterproductive to your position.

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This is the sort of generalization based on the second law of thermodynamics that I was talking about creationists making. I have already explained how this law does not apply to the earth as it recieves energy from the sun, so your claim about this situation is not based on the second law of thermodynamics, or any other physical law. It is based on your assumptions from a limited set of observations, and the other people here have provided counter-examples showing that your generalization is not true.

kenneth558 said:

Aggie, dude, when you ADD energy into a system, perhaps YOU can make it orderly and non-random, but the sun CAN'T. Energy from ANY star will increase the entropy (randomness) of whatever system it enters. So quit using the "closed system - open system" argument. It is irrelevant, even counterproductive to your position.

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You don't seem to understand the "closed system - open system" argument. You're focussing on only one part of it. Not only does the Sun add energy to the system, but the Earth vents heat to space. That's low-entropy, useful energy coming in, and high-entropy, useless heat going out.

And if you don't believe that's sufficient to produce complex behaviour, just look at weather patterns on other planets.

kenneth558 said:

That's why I used the example of the pennies all forming a stack after they hit the ground. Think of it also as the probability within a container of all the air molecules finding themselves liquifying or solidifying together somewhere in the container due purely to random chance (no assistance from pressure or temperature changes). Agreed, the probabilities of this occurrance are calculatable. But it violates thermodynamic law regardless. It's not that the molecules would never wander into a single location - it's that entropy energy prevents them from doing so simultaneously. And it will prevent them from doing this forever. Time and chance CANNOT overcome that energy. Only ordered convergent forces upon those molecules can overcome entropy. Regardless of any calculated odds that would mislead a non-statistician. A properly educated statistician knows that just because a number can be assigned to the odds of an occurrance does make that occurrance possible.

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as I pointed out, this is an abysmal example as there is no replicator.

It is easiest to apply this understanding to biogenesis: Regardless of evolutionists who would suggest (without a shred of scientific support) that life could have started in some form more simple and more chemically and thermodynamically favorable than life as we now know it, and yet be stable enough to exist, hyper-stable enough to reproduce, and yet unstable enough to evolve into the different life form as we now define as life, the fact that a cell CANNOT spontaneously form precludes a Godless explanation for biogenesis.

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that is another terrible argument. It is like saying that because the wright brothers couldn't design a boeing 747, that precludes a human explanation for boeing 747s. Again, all you need in abiogenesis is a replicator, and then inevitably the descendents of that replicator will get better and better at replicating (barring cataclysmic events which kill them all)

LorentzHA said:

You are taking Histology and cannot see any evolution?? Come on Ken, either you are fibbing or you have put your creationist blinders on.

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Morton's Demon strikes again.

napajohn said:

Whoa..another forgery from the EVOS..I thought they were the scientists and the creationists were liars and quote-mongers:

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They are:
]“It’s all metaphysics, and my metaphysic is the best one!”
So the argument goes in this ‘debate’ – the evolution accepter, beholden as they are to the ‘metaphysic’ of Naturalistic materialism, cannot see how the creationist metaphysic – supernaturalistic antimaterialism, is far superior. It is, after all, premised on Scripture, and Scripture is Inspired.
And so, if one views evidence, in the words of Henry Morris, “the right way” – that is, through the eyes of the creationist metaphysic – one will see the Truth of the creationist claims.
Well, let’s take a look at this creationist metaphysic in action. I will let the objective, rational reader determine if this metaphysic is the superior one when dealing with issues scientific…
When I was a graduate student working on molecular phylogenetics, I discovered a series of articles in the Creationist peer-reviewed literature * dealing with the same subject.
The authors of these articles were applying computer algorithms to molecular data to determine the relationships between creatures that descended form the ‘kinds’ that were Created and were later allowed to live on the ark.
These and other papers lay out the creationist version of systematics, called Baraminology (or Discontinuity Systematics), which utilize standard computer programs and reproducible analyses using molecular data. These ‘baraminologists’ have set up an entire field of study, complete with its own bible-based terminology and concepts.
The first paper, “A Mitochondrial DNA Analysis of the Testudine Apobaramin,” 1997, DA Robinson, CRSQ 33:4 p. 262-272, examines the relationships between turtles, and establishes or at least lays out some important criteria for establishing affinity of species (baramina) – patterns of mutation bias, gaps between ingroup and outgroups, topological congruence of cladograms using differing parameters and analyses, and strong bootstrap support for the arrangements. The author was able to determine using these methods – which are essentially the same as those used by systematists – that all turtles are related via descent form a created kind, but could not resolve lower-level relationships.
The third paper dealt with cat phylogeny, and just expande don earlier ‘proof of concept’ papers.
But the second paper was of great interest to me.
“A Quantitative Approach to Baraminology With Examples from the Catarrhine Primates,” 1998, D. Ashley Robinson and David P. Cavanaugh, CRSQ 34:4 p. 196-208, was the very subject I was working on.

Much of the paper consists of quoting/referring to Scripture, which is odd for a scientific paper but not, I assume, for a scientific paper premised on the supernaturalistic metaphysic, and outlining their justification for their “baraminic distance” criterion. This takes up about the first 4 pages. The baraminic distance is essentially equivalent to the materialistic genetic distance measure, it is just called something else.
Those pages are, save for the references to Scripture, well written and exhibit a great deal of thought. The paper gets interesting, however, when we get to the Materials and Methods section on p. 201. The title of the paper and several sentences in the introductory portion indicate that the interest here is in the Old World monkeys, not the human-ape question. Indeed, they discount that question altogether:
“Since Scriptures clearly imply that humans were specially created (Genesis 1:26-272:7, 22), and thus phylogenetically distinct from other organisms, we utilize the human-nonhuman primate relationship as a control.”
This will be of interest later.
Their data consisted of 12s rRNA gene sequences, chromosomal characters, morphological characters, and ecological characters. The data were analyzed individually and as a total evidence dataset using standard phylogenetic analysis software.
It is the results and discussion in which the metaphysic of supernaturalism comes into play.
For those of you that do not know, when you set up a data matrix for analysis you utilize what is called an outgroup – a taxon that is not closely related to the group under study – for use as a ‘yardstick’ of sorts. For example, when analyzing primates you might use rabbit as an outgroup. Interestingly, as quoted above, the baraminologists use human as the outgroup in their analyses.
Outgroups must be designated prior to running the analysis, or the results will appear strange. If you designate the wrong taxon as the outgroup, your results will be strange indeed (you can, of course, run analyses without an outgroup, but these analyses were not utilized by the baraminologists).
So, when the baraminologists ran neighbor joining analyses on the data, they used human as the outgroup. NJ methods assume a constant rate of evolution, which is not indicated by either fossil or molecular evidence and so has fallen out of favor. Though they do not specifically state that they designated human as outgroup, this is what must have happened. This is because the order of the taxa in the dataset can influence the arrangement produced in NJ analyses. For example, I analyzed one of my datasets and I got an arrangement similar to the one seen in the CRSQ paper. Human is first in that dataset, so I cut and pasted it last, re-ran the analysis, and Human got stuck somewhere in the middle of the cluster (however, when I ran a bootstrap analysis, human grouped with chimp). However, when I designated a new world monkey as outgroup, I got the ‘accepted’ arrangement – human + chimp. Making human the outgroup produces an arrangement similar to the one in the CRSQ paper – NJ analyses by default use the first taxon as the outgroup unless designated otherwise.
And what follows from that is the production of weakly supported topologies, since they tried to force the data to conform to a ‘non-natural’ topology. The node linking chimps and gorillas was supported with only 53% bootstrap support. That is fairly low. In a paper not constrained by the antimaterialism metaphysic, in which human is not the outgroup, chimps join gorilla with 96-100% support, depending on the data used. Forcing the data to fit a preconceived notion based on a metaphysic produces statistically significant error.
They mention in the abstract “We have found that baraminic distances based on hemoglobin amino acid sequences, 12S-rRNA sequences, and chromosomal data were largely ineffective for identifying the Human holobaramin. Baraminic distances based on ecological and morphological characters, however, were quite reliable for distinguishing humans from nonhuman primates.”
The description of the morphological analysis sounds impressive – 43 characters. The morphological characters, however, I believe, were specifically selected to produce the desired results. Why do I say this? Because this paper:
Mol Phylogenet Evol. 1996 Feb; 5(1): 102-54. Primate phylogeny: morphological vs. molecular results. Shoshani J, Groves CP, Simons EL, Gunnell GF.
Was known to the authors**. It contained an analysis of not 43 characters, but 264, and this analysis grouped human with chimp.
The other data, ecological data, is the nmost subjective and should produce no surprise when it was this data that provided the baraminologists their ‘strongest evidence. For a separate human baramin. And what were some of these data? Things like percent foliage in diet, monogamy, population group size and density, home range size, etc. It looks to me like these data too were chosen to produce a desired outcome, for what exactly does “monogamy” have to do with descent?
Indeed, the authors state in their Discussion section:
“Character selection, not the method of analysis, is expected to be the primary factor affecting baraminic hypotheses. False conclusions can be reached unless baraminically informative data has been sampled. Since we have no a priori knowledge regarding which characters are more reliable for identifying holobaramins, it is important to evaluate the reliability of a wide variety of biological data for inferring baraminic relationships.”
And later:
“it is interesting to note that the ecological and morphological criteria were the most adept at distinguishing humans and the most highly correlated, indicating that the datasets in the strongest agreement were the most reliable.”
Yes, that is interesting – the most subjective and limited criteria are the most reliable for giving the creationist the arrangement they want…

That is, they have to pick data that give them the results they want – those that conform to Scripture.
Creationism’s metaphysic in action…

What I did not mention is this, from the section on selecting characters:
“With the exception of the Scriptural criterion no single data set is sufficient to define the holobaramin.”
Translation: Scripture gives us the answers, we need to find the data that will conform to these answers.
The ‘superior’ metaphysic in action.
* I had contacted the authors of this paper in 1999 asking for reprints and neither replied to my requests. I had to buy the issues form CRSQ. Later, after reading in the paper that the data sets were available from the authors on request, I sent an IM to DA Robinson while online one day. First he pretended not to know what I was talking about. After he acknowledged co-authoring the paper, he said something that astounded me – he said that he didn’t think the data sets even existed anymore!

Creationist metaphysic in action.
So, objective reader – is this metaphysic superior? Is this the best way to engage in scientific pursuits – to seek the TRUE answers in Scripture then try to shoe-horn data to fit those ‘answers’?
Sadly, many seem to insist that the answer is yes. No wonder these folks do not wish to discuss science…

** During my IM chat with one of the baraminologists, I was asked if I knew the lead author of that paper. Indeed I did - we had tossed around the idea of doing a project together and I had helped him with some of the analyses. This was before I had even mentioned the paper in question - the baraminologist was fishing to see if I would be able to know the jiug was up. that is my interpretation, anyway...

Some of you are asking me some fine questions, but I think I may have missed a couple questions on today's Histology test due to insufficient studying. I'll consider it smelling salts for me, so I'm losing interest in this diversion. Wish I could give you the thoughtful answers you all ought to get, but as you can already see, I'm not leading you by the hand as deep as you need to be thinking on the things I brought up. I'll accept the blame.

Let me leave you with a statement by Sir Francis Crick from What Mad Pursuit (1988) pp.138-139:

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved.

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No thanks, Crick. I'll just go where the evidence leads....

Cantuar said:

Morton's Demon strikes again.

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Thanks! Wow that is good! When I was reading it I could not stop thinking about napajohn, for some reason

kenneth558 said:

Some of you are asking me some fine questions, but I think I may have missed a couple questions on today's Histology test due to insufficient studying. I'll consider it smelling salts for me, so I'm losing interest in this diversion. Wish I could give you the thoughtful answers you all ought to get, but as you can already see, I'm not leading you by the hand as deep as you need to be thinking on the things I brought up. I'll accept the blame.

Let me leave you with a statement by Sir Francis Crick from What Mad Pursuit (1988) pp.138-139: No thanks, Crick. I'll just go where the evidence leads....

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And the evidence leads to a young Earth where every species was created in an instant without any evolution??

Um, what we see is designed, it was designed by evolution.

Take it up with Crick, Arikay.

Ok. Considering the evidence leads to evolution, I dont think its crick that has any problems.

kenneth558 said:

Take it up with Crick, Arikay.

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I don't think there is anything to "take up" with him since Francis Crick was one of the 72 Nobel Laureates who signed the Friend of the Court brief supporting evolution and opposing creationism in Edwards v Aguillard

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/edwards-v-aguillard/amicus1.html

COMPLETE LIST OF REPRESENTED AMICI

Nobel Laureates: Luis W. Alvarez, Carl D. Anderson, Christian B. Anfinsen, Julius Axelrod, David Baltimore, John Bardeen, Paul Berg, Hans A. Bethe, Konrad Bloch, Nicolaas Bloembergen, Michael S. Brown, Herbert C. Brown, Melvin Calvin, S. Chandrasekhar, Leon N. Cooper, Allan Cormack, Andre Cournand, Francis Crick, Renato Dulbecco, Leo Esaki, Val L. Fitch, William A. Fowler, Murray Gell-Mann, Ivar Giaever, Walter Gilbert, Donald A. Glaser, Sheldon Lee Glashow, Joseph L. Goldstein, Roger Guillemin, Roald Hoffmann, Robert Hofstadter, Robert W. Holley, David H. Hubel, Charles B. Huggins, H. Gobind Khorana, Arthur Kornberg, Polykarp Kusch, Willis E. Lamb, Jr., William Lipscomb, Salvador E. Luria, Barbara McClintock, Bruce Merrifield, Robert S. Mulliken, Daniel Nathans, Marshall Nirenberg, John H. Northrop, Severo Ochoa, George E. Palade, Linus Pauling, Arno A. Penzias, Edward M. Purcell, Isidor I. Rabi, Burton Richter, Frederick Robbins, J. Robert Schrieffer, Glenn T. Seaborg, Emilio Segre, Hamilton O. Smith, George D. Snell, Roger Sperry, Henry Taube, Howard M. Temin, Samuel C. C. Ting, Charles H. Townes, James D. Watson, Steven Weinberg, Thomas H. Weller, Eugene P. Wigner, Kenneth G. Wilson, Robert W. Wilson, Rosalyn Yalow, Chen Ning Yang.

State Academies of Science: The California Academy of Sciences, The Florida Academy of Sciences, The Idaho Academy of Science, The Indiana Academy of Science, The Iowa Academy of Science, The Kentucky Academy of Science, The Mississippi Academy of Sciences, The Nebraska Academy of Sciences, The New Mexico Academy of Science, The New York Academy of Sciences, The North Dakota Academy of Science, The Ohio Academy of Science, The South Carolina Academy of Science, The Tennessee Academy of Science, the Vermont Academy of Arts and Sciences, The West Virginia Academy of Sciences, The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters.

Other Scientific Organizations: The American Anthropological Association, The American Institute of Biological Sciences, The Association of American Medical Colleges, The Astronomical Society of the Pacific, The Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, The Southern California Skeptics, The Southern California Academy of Sciences.

The Frumious Bandersnatch

kenneth558 said:

Take it up with Crick, Arikay.

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Crick is not a creationist, Kenneth.

Were we designed or not? Crick says "NO". The evidence says "YES". Ya'll don't seem to know who to agree with. Neither do my professors. That is one of many elements of total confusion amongst evolutionists that make the evolution topic non-resolvable in discussions like this.

We were designed, but by Natural Selection. Some mysterious designer is not necessary and is sliced out by Occam's Razor - unless you can find positive, empirical evidence fo this "Designer."

kenneth558 said:

Were we designed or not? Crick says "NO". The evidence says "YES". Ya'll don't seem to know who to agree with. Neither do my professors. That is one of many elements of total confusion amongst evolutionists that make the evolution topic non-resolvable in discussions like this.

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I thought you were implying the Crick said "yes". Were you trying to mislead us?

The Frumious Bandersnatch

*NOTE: My response was based on an earlier question, when someone asked to explain what evolution is. I didn't notice that there have been many posts since that post. Whoops.*

Well, evolution was first proposed by Charles Darwin as "descent with modification". This is a scientific theory that tries to explain how species are adapted to their environoments. This theory helps explain how bacteria become resistant to antiboitics over time. All current species are descended from previous species, which have changed over time. One unintended consequence of this theory is that homo sapiens (us) are descended from extinct ape-like ancestors. Unfortunately, the theory has come under constant attack by mostly Young Earth Creationists who dismiss it because it conflicts with their belief that God created the Earth, the universe, and mankind approximately 6,000 years ago.

Frumious Bandersnatch, I'm wondering how long it will take you to see that what you "thought" that I implied about Crick was in error, rather than me trying to mislead anyone. That goes to prove that I am just not able to lead you by the hand every step like it looks like you need in an intelligent discussion. When I quoted Crick I expected the better of you - that you would think for two moments instead of only a half, so as to realize that Crick said we are not designed. Instead of going back to reread the post, your over-confidence got the better of you....

Please show us the evidence that says we were Inteligently designed.

kenneth558 said:

Were we designed or not? Crick says "NO". The evidence says "YES". Ya'll don't seem to know who to agree with. Neither do my professors. That is one of many elements of total confusion amongst evolutionists that make the evolution topic non-resolvable in discussions like this.

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