Challenging Evolution

[Ishmael Borg]

You were created in the image of God. You are not a monkey. Although some of us would like to act like it… you are not.

You are entitled to your faith-based opinion, and I'm entitled to my evidence-based opinion. I doubt we'll be changing each others' minds, so we can leave it at that. I DO respect your opinion, by the way.

I was only extending a little courtesy. I’ll make a mental note to be more careful about it in the future.

I probably took it the wrong way. Sometimes there's a fine line between courtesy and condescension.

As far as whale evolution is concerned… where exactly are the intermediary and transitional forms to be found? If you are unable to cite or demonstrate, then your assertion here is unfounded.

This site has a lot of info:
http://darla.neoucom.edu/DEPTS/ANAT/whaleorigins.htm

If you didn’t care, why did you ask me too?

I was thinking that your arguments might be benefited by a little education on the topics you're trying to discuss.

Also, since when does majority rules when it comes to science?

It doesn't. But I'm willing to subscribe to the views held by the majority of experts in any particular scientific discipline. After all, I'm not an expert, and I haven't devoted my life to researching these topics.

Really? TOE is not taught as fact in our schools today? It is presented as only a theory? Its shortcomings are fully exposed and discussed in the classroom? Opposing theories are presented?

It is dogma… if you want to admit it or not. The choice of actually learning something is in fact yours.

It's not. In public school, I was taught scientific method before I was ever taught evolution. If you filter information through this method, you are not relying on dogma. I'm sorry if you don't know much about scientific method. With all due respect, I doubt you have much of value to teach me about biology.

You need to think harder about your claims before you make them.

You were the one who said I thought I was omniscient… If you won’t endorse the many infallible truths of God’s existence (much the same way YECs view TOE I might add), then that is your decision. Much the same way it is ours not to recognize the “dogma” when it is presented as fact. Both take faith, the only difference is one admits it, the other doesn’t.

It's not a decision. Do you know what infallible means? How can you classify the "truths" you reference as infallible? My decision concerning these truths is merely to subscribe to those pov's where evidence is available. I'm a weak atheist, so I don't think the idea of gods is an impossibility, I just haven't been convinced. When you have evidence, you don't need faith. So you are wrong in saying that both YEC and TOE require faith. For the former, there is no positive evidence, for the latter, there's loads of evidence.

 

[Jet Black]

ID has been falsified? By whom… and how?
Trinity

ID doesn't exactly qualify as a theory since it can't even unambiguously define it's own terms or make predictions. all of it's set pieces such as the blood clotting system and flagellum have been demonstrated to be evolvable and evolved features. ID is unable to account for what it means by information. IC (Irreducible Complexity) is a flawed premise and can be demonstrated to be so - it is little more than a modern day God of the gaps, and all it will do in the end is reduce God to some deity of the obscure protein that scientists haven't bothered to study yet.

 

[1Trinity3]

Karl - Liberal Backslider wrote:Indeed not. The term "monkey" is not used of those primates without tails. Cladistically, we are indeed monkeys. But our classifications are not purely cladistic; cladistically, we're fish as well.

Exactly my point!!! YOUR (our) classification. Not mine.

Time for a lesson:

Oh goody!

Theory does not mean guess.

Were when I studied it. However, the invented shortcomings of the professional creationists are not deserving of study.

Ok, if I were to use the same criterion, Evolution does not deserve a study either. The invented outcomes of said theory have not been demonstrated, have not been observed, and the known mechanisms for said theory have indeed failed to produce accent. (decent with modification… perhaps.. but only to a degree). But in no study has accent been observed. Therefore, TOE relies on assumption, supposition, and is indeed a belief system.

They were. Briefly. Along with a cogent explanation of why they do not have the evidence base or explanative power of the mainstream theories, which is why those theories are mainstream.

Again, you are able to argue from “majority rules”… but yet you condemn it? Which is it?

Do you really expect science teachers to go through pages of creationist misrepresentation and dishonesty and give it the same validity as real science?

Nope.

How many hours should be spent on the Ascent of the Navajo? How many on the creation of the earth from the body of Ymir. What about Raelian explanations?

None.

What you mean is you want your mythology taught.

Please see previous posts about creating my posts for me and then beating your pathetic straw man. It only demonstrates the lack creditabilty for your own theory.

Bull. Utter bull. It's evidence based science, open to falsification and modification. The very opposite of dogma.

Then identify the evidence demonstrating accent. If we are taught decent… then it is logical there will be an equitable amount of transitions demonstrating this! The fact is that you can’t. So, until you can, you are forced to admit that TOE is just nothing more than a dogmatic system of regurgitated observations extrapolated to imply unfounded suppositions.

If you want your tree to live… you must demonstrate that it does have roots and a trunk. Otherwise it dies and falls into the heap of frivolous attempts to deny the obvious, For in six days the Lord Created the Heavens and the Earth and all that is in them!

Exodus 20:11

Trinity

 

[Jimmy The Hand]

What the heck does "failed to produce accent (sic)" mean?


Evolution is not a ladder.

 

[Jet Black]

Ok, if I were to use the same criterion, Evolution does not deserve a study either. The invented outcomes of said theory have not been demonstrated, have not been observed, and the known mechanisms for said theory have indeed failed to produce accent. (decent with modification… perhaps.. but only to a degree). But in no study has accent been observed. Therefore, TOE relies on assumption, supposition, and is indeed a belief system.

false.

let us assume common ancestry and species branching. what sort of things do we expect to see? well one thing we expect to see is derivation of characters, with the derivation proceeding through the historical (fossil) record. we do not expect to see adoption of features across the species lines, for example, despite the fact that a flow through lung would be really useful to a bat, we don't expect the bat to have one, since it evolved first as a mammal, and the flow through lung evolved in a separate branch. we expect this for all features. Considering parsimonious arguments, we expect to find through the record that dolphins are more related to humans than they are to sharks, despite sharing a number of features with sharks. we expect to find cloer relationships between dogs and cats than we do between dogs and humans, since both are carnivorae, and we are primates. we expect to find this evidence in the fossil record (we do, for all of the above). we expect to find genetic relationships indicating the same thing, and we do, we find ALU sequences that correspond to expected phylogenies, we expect to find chromosome alterations which match expected phylogenies, we do, we expect to find ERV sequences with matching phylogenies, we do, we expect to find pseudogenes with matching phylogenies, we do. In terms of mammals, we expect to find transitionals between mammals and reptiles, since reptiles came first, we find the therapsids. we expect to find mosaics of mammals and reptiles, well the therapsids have both mammalian and reptillian jaws, in the same animal! we expect to find primates with smaller skulls than humans but larger than chimps, we do. so as zou can see, there is a massive difference between Evolution and supposed "opposing theories" since from a single assumption - common ancestry, and a few other bits of knowledge i.e. the knowledge of the mechanism of inheritance (DNA) we can make a whole stack of assumptions and test them by looking at the available evidence, and every single time we find that the evidence points towards evolution.

 

[1Trinity3]

What the heck does "failed to produce accent (sic)" mean?

TOE's heart is decent with modification. (You can disagree with that definition... no problem, but in a short nutshell.. that’s it).

In order for there to be decent... then of course there needs to be accent in order for the decent to be falsifiable. If accent is not provided, then TOE is not falsifiable, ergo... an invalid theory falling out of the definition of science, thus allowing objective un-indoctrinated individuals to call it a belief.

Trinity

 

[notto]

TOE's heart is decent with modification. (You can disagree with that definition... no problem, but in a short nutshell.. that’s it).

In order for there to be decent... then of course there needs to be accent in order for the decent to be falsifiable. If accent is not provided, then TOE is not falsifiable, ergo... an invalid theory falling out of the definition of science, thus allowing objective un-indoctrinated individuals to call it a belief.

Trinity

You cannot accent from your parents, you can only 'decent' from them.

You misunderstand the meaning of 'decent' in 'decent' with modification or you are deliberately playing games with its meaning in context.

 

[Jimmy The Hand]

Methinks you are trying to falsify via semantics.

Can you define ascent?

 

[Jet Black]

here is an excellent thread by winacee detailing the common ancestry between humans and the other great apes:

http://christianforums.com/t40560&highlight=ancestry

he includes chromosome 2, but here is the complete human karyotype next to the chimp karyotype

 

[1Trinity3]

Jet Black wrote:
false.
let us assume common ancestry and species branching. what sort of things do we expect to see?

Stop right there!!!!!!!!!!!
You ASSUME COMMON ANCESTRY!!!!!!!!! In order for TOE to be falsified, accent needs to be demonstrated as well!
Right out of the blocks you are demonstrating my agruement against the theory.
Don't assume common ancestry. Follow the scientific method!!!! and demonstrate, repeat, and show me how it is obeserved! If you can not... TOE is a beleif system.
Trintiy

 

[Jet Black]

TOE's heart is decent with modification. (You can disagree with that definition... no problem, but in a short nutshell.. that’s it).

In order for there to be decent... then of course there needs to be accent in order for the decent to be falsifiable. If accent is not provided, then TOE is not falsifiable, ergo... an invalid theory falling out of the definition of science, thus allowing objective un-indoctrinated individuals to call it a belief.

Trinity

why? it can be falsifiable in a great number of other ways. The evidences that I detailed a couple of posts up provide a great amount of potentially falsifying information. for example if we were to find shared ERVs between humans and cats, that were not present in everything inbetween, this would present somewhat of a problem for evolution. If we were to find a pecten in a rodent, this would be another problem, since the pecten is found only in birds and some reptiles. if we were to find a flow through lung in a bat, this would be a problem, since the flow through lung did not evolve in mammals. if we were to find a shark embryo that developed leg buds, this would be a problem, because none of the sharks ancestors ever had legs. of course none of these falsifying things have ever been found. your insistance on "ascent" being the onlz method of falsification of evolution is flawed... and as others have asked, what do you mean by ascent?

 

[notto]

Stop right there!!!!!!!!!!!
You ASSUME COMMON ANCESTRY!!!!!!!!! In order for TOE to be falsified, accent needs to be demonstrated as well!
Right out of the blocks you are demonstrating my agruement against the theory.
Don't assume common ancestry. Follow the scientific method!!!! and demonstrate, repeat, and show me how it is obeserved! If you can not... TOE is a beleif system.
Trintiy

Scientific method assumes the conclusion of a theory to be true and looks for evidence to falsify or confirm it.

Read a book.

 

[Jimmy The Hand]

Words game again.

Theory = Great apes and humans have a common ancestor

Observation = Humans and great apes both possess endogenous retrovirus markers that could only be passed on from ancestor to descendant

Repeat - Test others species to determine if this exist elsewhere.

Lather, rinse, repeat

 

[1Trinity3]

Methinks you are trying to falsify via semantics.

Can you define ascent?

Sure, if we can agree that decent is modification of existing information (DNA), then accent would be the demonstrable increase of the same information. This process, information theory, is again shunned by TOE as it falsifys it. So, if you ignore it. it doesn't falsify your theory. The only problem, it is necessary for the Theory to work. You can have decent with modification unless you first have an identifiable organism that has this information to decend from.
Where am I wrong?
Trinity

 

[notto]

Sure, if we can agree that decent is modification of existing information (DNA), then accent would be the demonstrable increase of the same information. This process, information theory, is again shunned by TOE as it falsifys it. So, if you ignore it. it doesn't falsify your theory. The only problem, it is necessary for the Theory to work. You can have decent with modification unless you first have an identifiable organism that has this information to decend from.
Where am I wrong?
Trinity

You are using descent out of context. Descent in descent with modification simply means that offspring are different than their parents and are not clones of their parents.

Read a book.

 

[Jimmy The Hand]

So if we can't identify Organism #1 in the 4.5 billion year chain, evolution is falsified? Am I reading this wrong? Can you explain why all primates have ERVs?

 

[Jet Black]

Stop right there!!!!!!!!!!!
You ASSUME COMMON ANCESTRY!!!!!!!!! In order for TOE to be falsified, accent needs to be demonstrated as well!
Right out of the blocks you are demonstrating my agruement against the theory.
Don't assume common ancestry. Follow the scientific method!!!! and demonstrate, repeat, and show me how it is obeserved! If you can not... TOE is a beleif system.
Trintiy

no no, you don't understand, all science works like this. you make an assumption and then you test it. this is precisely what I am doing, I make the assumption that all life has a common ancestor, and then I think what the remifications of that assumptuion would be. My assumption is a pretty reasonable one, since I have parents, my parents had parents, and so on all the way back. I have no reason to assume that any of my ancestors did not have parents. If my assumption is incorrect, then I will find evidence falsifying my assumption. For example in physics, Einstein assumed that the speed of light is constant in all frames of reference, and then formulated the rest of relativity, which then had to be tested. through looking at the curvatire of light around stars, through high energy interactions and the atomic bomb, the theory has repeatedly been verified. Of course you ignored all of the evidence that I gave you for common descent, it's right there.

 

[Jet Black]

Sure, if we can agree that decent is modification of existing information (DNA), then accent would be the demonstrable increase of the same information. This process, information theory, is again shunned by TOE as it falsifys it. So, if you ignore it. it doesn't falsify your theory. The only problem, it is necessary for the Theory to work. You can have decent with modification unless you first have an identifiable organism that has this information to decend from.
Where am I wrong?
Trinity

aah, now we get on to the other ID card, the information card. first of all please define information to us, and tell us why it cannot increase.

 

[Gracchus]

Sure, if we can agree that decent is modification of existing information (DNA),...

We don't agree.

... then accent would be the demonstrable increase of the same information.

You know less about information theory than you do of evolution.

This process, information theory, is again shunned by TOE as it falsifys it. So, if you ignore it. it doesn't falsify your theory. The only problem, it is necessary for the Theory to work. You can have decent with modification unless you first have an identifiable organism that has this information to decend from.
Where am I wrong?
Trinity

You are wrong nearly everywhere. You have obviously picked up misinformation from sources that understand neither evolution nor information theory.

Just as a matter of information:

accent =/= ascent

decent =/= descent

 

[1Trinity3]

why? it can be falsifiable in a great number of other ways. The evidences that I detailed a couple of posts up provide a great amount of potentially falsifying information. for example if we were to find shared ERVs between humans and cats, that were not present in everything inbetween, this would present somewhat of a problem for evolution. If we were to find a pecten in a rodent, this would be another problem, since the pecten is found only in birds and some reptiles. if we were to find a flow through lung in a bat, this would be a problem, since the flow through lung did not evolve in mammals. if we were to find a shark embryo that developed leg buds, this would be a problem, because none of the sharks ancestors ever had legs. of course none of these falsifying things have ever been found. your insistance on "ascent" being the onlz method of falsification of evolution is flawed... and as others have asked, what do you mean by ascent?

You seem to be ignoring my request to provide for ascent.
How did the first organisms:
1. Come from non-life
2. Exist in a non-existant biosphere
3. Increase their DNA information forming something like a... leg, to begin with. (A known mechanism is what I'm asking for here)
TOE ASSUMES ancestry. I'm asking someone to demonstrate it.
Trinity