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Does science actually admit "design"?

tas8831

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As to the other point about pre-coded instructions in the genome here is one link:

The "God" Part of the Brain

Functional codes (which the genome is) do not invent themselves OR appear out of random coincidence


Love the usual post hoc rationalization of the desperate creationist.


Of course, let us not forget that pshun has a DOCUMENTED history of less than honest behavior in defense of his certain beliefs... To include plagiarism, doctoring quotes, blatant misrepresentation, etc.
 
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Speedwell

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What makes you assume that IF there is such a being that they would not use or create the process of evolution as one the means by which to bring about change?
If you believe it is a possibility, why are you arguing so vehemently against it?
 
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tas8831

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Purposeful design is obvious and is the default observation.

The only purposeful design that is obvious is seen in human contrivances.

Are you equating your mythical deity's inventive powers with humanity's?

It's up to science to disprove it, not for the creationist to prove it.
That is not how this works.

But it IS obvious that if you had anything other than incredulity (who cares what you simply can't believe?), a priori beliefs that need to be protected, etc., you might actually have presented something other than trite ego-puffing and empty, baseless assertions bolstered only by your own admission of ignorance in biology.
 
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OldWiseGuy

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19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

This is a recapitulation statement (lot's of those in there). Just consider "formed" past tense, had formed; problem solved.
 
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OldWiseGuy

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The only purposeful design that is obvious is seen in human contrivances.

Are you equating your mythical deity's inventive powers with humanity's?


That is not how this works.

But it IS obvious that if you had anything other than incredulity (who cares what you simply can't believe?), a priori beliefs that need to be protected, etc., you might actually have presented something other than trite ego-puffing and empty, baseless assertions bolstered only by your own admission of ignorance in biology.

So, you don't believe that 'the body has a mind of it's own'?
 
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tas8831

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If you believe it is a possibility, why are you arguing so vehemently against it?
Because despite his rather feeble attempts to portray himself as a sort of 'moderate' who 'accepts evolution' at some level, he is in reality a run of the mill anti-science creationist. He does not pretend otherwise in some of his forays onto other forums.
 
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AnotherAtheist

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So there's really no comparison with the giraffe's laryngeal nerve?

Except that they are both the fourth branch of the vagus nerve. I.e. the same nerve.
 
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pshun2404

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Not true. What about Samotherium major?

Oh please...there is so much wrong with this theoretical assumption. First I can see that is very possible that other varieties of Giraffes (perhaps some with shorter necks) did exist and we just do not have definite evidence for them (except by homological conjecture). The longer necked varieties more able to get to the available food sources thrived more readily and thus survived as a variety.

Secondly because some outside intelligence (the taxonomists) INVENTED categories and placed other creatures with similar anatomical designs into them does not make them actually "related" in any sense as to lineage.

Thirdly, have you ever explored the actual fossils for Samotherium (not the contrived reconstructions or artistically imagined images) minus (as Mayr calls it) the "construction of a historical narrative" (which is made up, i.e., sci fi)?

The extremely sparse collection (mostly skull pieces) says absolutely nothing about internal anatomy nor the way they looked outwardly when they existed 7 mya (all conjectured/interpreted through the hypothesis based pre-supposition). Most Samotherium demonstrate true horns (some curve back to a point) but being well worn and somewhat disintegrated are being classed as ocicones which literally are "horn-like" (similar to some antlers).

The heads and neck are barely different than many varieties of cervidae (and could be more likely part of their group). "Giraffidae" is a totally man-made category to support the hypothesis not based on actual evidence.

Now we do have Decennatherium rex from 9 mya (2 my before Samotherium) which as the more honest objective Archaeologists and Paleontologists say MAY BE (not IS as some others claim) an early relative, or a variety of short necked Giraffe but we really do not KNOW t this time (but I assure you the propagandists will make it definitely Girraffidae).
 
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tas8831

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Now where was I...
Genetics. Try looking up how the junk DNA or non-functional DNA originated sometime.

OK - done.

The Case for Junk DNA

PLoS Genet. 2014 May; 10(5): e1004351.
Published online 2014 May 8. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004351

The Case for Junk DNA

"...there is an unfortunate tendency for researchers and science writers to proclaim the demise of junk DNA on a regular basis without properly addressing some of the fundamental issues that first led to the rise of the concept."

"By far the dominant type of nongenic DNA are transposable elements (TEs), including various well-described retroelements such as Short and Long Interspersed Nuclear Elements (SINEs and LINEs), endogenous retroviruses, and cut-and-paste DNA transposons. Because of their capacity to increase in copy number, transposable elements have long been described as “parasitic” or “selfish” [22], [23]. However, the vast majority of these elements are inactive in humans, due to a very large fraction being highly degraded by mutation. Due to this degeneracy, estimates of the proportion of the human genome occupied by TEs has varied widely, between one-half and two-thirds."

"Another large fraction of the genome consists of highly repetitive DNA. These regions are extremely variable even amongst individuals of the same population (hence their use as “DNA fingerprints”) and can expand or contract through processes such as unequal crossing over or replication slippage. Many repeats are thought to be derived from truncated TEs, but others consist of tandem arrays of di- and trinucleotides [30]. As with TEs, some highly repetitive sequences play a role in gene regulation (for example, [31]). Others, such as telomeric- and centromeric-associated repeats [32], [33], play critical roles in chromosomal maintenance. Despite this, there is currently no evidence that the majority of highly repetitive elements are functional."

And so on.



We can identify pseudogenes and mutated TEs because enough of their sequence remains intact to see sequence identity with more intact versions.

Thus, it should be a piece of cake for you to find many examples of original Wolf-kind alleles that have been degraded via mutation (which you claim does not exist... or something) in dog genomes.

Can't wait!

Maybe you can ask Jeff Tomkins to look into it - maybe he can take a break from nitpicking real science (and getting exposed as being deceptive) and actually try to find support for YECism.

Its junk and non-functional, because that is what mutations cause to happen to functioning genomes. And it is 100% compatible, which is again why you provide no sources in contradiction.

See above.

Waiting for your supporting evidence that counters what we know.
I thought you were aware of what the Bible said? Are you not aware that part of Adam was used to create Eve?

I am aware that this is what ancient superstitious numerologists wrote, yes.
And in light of todays knowledge, we understand it is the genome which is taken half from the male, and half from the female, and united again to become one flesh or life.

How do we "understand" that given what the bible actually says?

Through centuries of selective breeding premised on the acquisition of new alleles (not "allies') via mutation. Since that is where new alleles come from - not from hybridization.
That's Funny, the Grants through over 25 years of actual observation and testing found just the opposite of what you claim to be true in the real world, under natural conditions.

I already debunked this ignorance - more than once - but I thought I would pull up some refutations from the previous times he's made these silly claims - I should also point out that others have also explained his errors to him.
"Hybridization increased additive genetic and environmental variances, increased heritabilities to a moderate extent, and generally strengthened phenotypic and genetic correlations. New additive genetic variance introduced by hybridization is estimated to be two to three orders of magnitude greater than that introduced by mutation."

Please understand that the above quote is what justa interprets to mean that the Grants declared that hybridization CREATES new alleles, as opposed to what anyone that understands basic genetics will see - that hybridization merely INTRODUCES new alleles into a different population. Hybridization does NOT 'create' new alleles. Why creationists cannot understand this is a most interesting phenomenon.

I should also point out that when I had debunked this claim before, I also pointed out that the paper he chose to cite to prop up his unfounded claims also contained a devastating rebuke for his claim that all extant diversity arises from hybriodization:


" Despite the low production of hybrids, by 2007, over 30% of the population of G. scandens possessed alleles whose origin could be traced back to G. fortis. The two populations had become more similar to each other morphologically and genetically..."

Sort of blows the whole Asians arose via hybridization (between which populations? He never says) thing out of the water - hybridization, according to justa's own citation, DECREASES variation, it does not create it.
Your claims fall woefully short of reality.

Love that unwitting projection.
How easily the non-biologist question-begging creationist forgets that most dog breeds are produced via the selective breeding of different breeds.

Where did those different breeds come from in the first place, if we started out with wolves?

How easily the evolutionists like to forget the DNA data.
Hilarious, for many reasons.
Origin of the domestic dog - Wikipedia

"DNA evidence indicates that the dog, the modern gray wolf (above) and the now-extinct Taimyr wolf diverged from a now extinct wolf that once lived in Europe."

But you wont even accept the evolutionists own field proven evidence about hybridization being two to three orders of magnitude greater than that introduced by mutation. So I wouldnt expect you to understand, since all you can hold in your head are thoughts of useless mutations.

Thank you so much for the lesson in genetics! But, please tell me what does "DIVERGED" mean in your quote?

Are you claiming that DIVERGENCE is produced by hybridization?

If so, who hybridized with who to get the 'modern gray wolf' FROM the extinct european wolf?

You don't understand the material well enough to see how you keep contradicting yourself, that is true.

The mixing of alleles sure is important - but you continue to simply ignore a simple fact - those alleles don't just pop out of nowhere, and they are NOT produced via hybridization (though I do detect the groundwork for a "I knew it all along" escape/defense at some point - pity that your old posts will be there to embarrass you for some time).
Not as astonishing as the fact that you main argument - Asian+ African yields Afro-Asian despite not being able to explain where an African or Asian came from in the first place.

Told you 100 times, the same way we got dogs from wolves, interbreeding. But from above it seems you have not yet accepted the genetic facts about dogs, so I can understand your confusion.

Wow... OK...


Interbreeding gave us Asians and Africans.

But in the post I am responding to (and all of your previous posts on this subject), all you can seem to 'document' is a homogenization of forms via hybridization (from the Grant paper). Your ignorance of genetics and populations and such informed you that because they found hybridization was more important locally in the short term that new alleles produced via mutation were, that ALL variation must be produced that way - but once you got your money quote, you stopped reading (or couldn't understand any other parts), like where they explained that the hybrids exhibited LESS diversity.

So, in the Grant paper, what you fail to grasp, is that the individual species that interbred had to come from somewhere - they came from a long-term acquisition of NEW alleles, and the more recent rounds of hybridization were due to rapid changes in habitat.

Another quote from the paper that I pointed out to you before that fell on deaf ears:


“Introgressive hybridization is effective in increasing genetic variation because it simultaneously affects numerous genetic loci. The total effect on continuously varying traits can be up to two or three orders of magnitude greater than mutation (Grant & Grant 1994).”


Do you know what a continuous trait is?

A continuous trait is one that exists along a continuum - like height. They do not create 'new' traits.

Enough of the Grant misinterpretations - this page from another thread:

Asking for interpretations of this cladogram

contains some of my previous rebuttals to justa's silly misinterpretations and such, no need to reinvent the wheel.

Tell you what genius - if you think you are correct, and that dog breeding is analogous to getting all of the human 'races' we have today from a single breeding pair of middle easterners in just a few thousand years, how about you look at the wolf genome:

The wolf reference genome sequence ( Canis lupus lupus ) and its implications for Canis spp. population genomics

and compare it to a handful of dog breeds. Surely you should be able to find that the wolf genome possesses ALL of the alleles that these other breeds do.



Its already been compared, didnt you read anything?

Dog family tree reveals how modern breeds came to be | CBC News

dog-genetic-family-tree.jpg

Ok, wow... UM...


A phylogenetic analysis does NOT seek to find the mutated alleles of the original kind...

My gosh...

I mean, did you even look at the picture on that webpage? No wolves were even in the analysis!

Did you bother to click the link to see the actual scientific paper? Of course not! More in a moment...
By golly, look how they all lead backwards to just two.................... Oh my, imagine that, but you shouldn't have to imagine, you were already told that.

LOL!!

Um.. No - 1. that cladogram only referred to modern domestic dog breeds, not ALL canids.
2. The root of the tree is unlabeled, so you cannot even claim that it 'goes back to 2'.

Also - I do enjoy demonstrating that you do not even read, much less understand, the things you reference.

If you had actually read the paper, you would have seen:


"Our analyses were designed to detect recent admixture; therefore, we were able to identify hybridization events that are described in written breed histories and stud-book records. Using the most reliably dated crosses that produced modern breeds, we established a linear relationship between the total length of haplotype sharing and the age of an admixture event, occurring between 35 and 160 years before present (ybp) "

So unless you think all dogs 'hybridized' away from a single species (impossible!) of wolf in 160 years... Well, never mind. Suffice it to say this is a huge fail on your part.

But I digress.

Ok - I need to copy paste this line from justa here again:

"By golly, look how they all lead backwards to just two.................... Oh my, imagine that, but you shouldn't have to imagine, you were already told that."

Keep that in mind for a second - he says it traces back to just 2 -
"According to the study’s authors, the results of this analysis suggest that all modern-day dogs originated from a single group of wolves domesticated around 40,000 years ago in Europe.

So is it "just two" or "a group"?

And 40,000 years ago? Oh, right - this is where you accept the part that you misinterpret to support your claim but reject the parts that don't.
“Given the high degree of sharing of sweeps [genetic signatures] between these ancient samples and modern samples, it seems clear that these dogs descend from a single domestication origin,” Adam Boyko, a geneticist at Cornell University who was not involved in the work, told The Washington Post in an email.

Great.

And?

From the actual research paper that press release was based on:

"By calibrating the mutation rate using our oldest dog, we narrow the timing of dog domestication to 20,000–40,000 years ago. "

Mutation rate? What?

UH-OH:

"Furthermore, we detect an additional ancestry component in the End Neolithic sample, consistent with admixture from a population of dogs located further east that may have migrated concomitant with steppe people associated with Late Neolithic and Early Bronze age cultures, such as the Yamnaya and Corded Ware culture."

So much for that "single wolf kind" magically diversifying via hybridization with... itself.. to magically create diversity by somehow mixing up its already present alleles...

Unless you want to posit at least 2 creation events of the original dog-kind?

And it gets worse for you, pally:


"Our results are consistent with continuity of a European-like genetic ancestry from modern dogs through the entire Neolithic period. However, the slightly displaced position of the ancient samples from the European cluster in the PCAs (particularly for CTC) suggests a complex history. We therefore performed unsupervised clustering analyses with ADMIXTURE (SNP array data; Supplementary Fig. 15) and NGSadmix (whole-genome data; Fig. 4 and Supplementary Fig. 16) (Supplementary Note 9) and found that, unlike contemporary European village dogs, all three ancient genomes possess a significant ancestry component that is present in modern Southeast Asian dogs. This component appears only at very low levels in a minority of modern European village dogs. Furthermore, CTC harbours an additional component that is found predominantly in modern Indian village as well as in Central Asian (Afghan, Mongolian and Nepalese), and Middle Eastern (Saudi Arabian and Qatari) dogs (concordant with its position in the PCA), as well as some wolf admixture."

So, sure, MODERN European dog breeds can be traced back to a GROUP of dogs, but ALL MODERN dogs show a MIXTURE of genetic inputs from multiple earlier dog populations.


Looks like it is back to the drawing board for your "hybridization all the way down" farce.

I also suggest you stop relying on press releases, and even more strongly suggest you stop pretending to make scientific arguments until after you take a few years-worth of college classes on the relevant science.


MASSIVE FAIL.





I mean please, they can trace their lineage genetically all the way back to those wolves. Your arguments are false and inconsistent with DNA data. Accept the facts and get over it already....


Pity that your 'references' completely contradict your layman's conclusion.

The saddest part is that the Dunning-Kruger effect is so powerful in you that you will actually think you somehow proved your point and DIDN'T, yet again, make a fool of yourself.
 
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AnotherAtheist

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Oh please...there is so much wrong with this theoretical assumption. First I can see that is very possible that other varieties of Giraffes (perhaps some with shorter necks) did exist and we just do not have definite evidence for them (except by homological conjecture). The longer necked varieties more able to get to the available food sources thrived more readily and thus survived as a variety.
ae).

Except that I did give you an example of a shorter necked giraffe, and then so did you.

So, my statement was correct. And despite your posturing ('Oh please, there is so much wrong with this theoretical assumption.') your own post shows me to be correct.

You point out that it's not guaranteed that either of the species found was a direct ancestor of modern giraffes, which is normal as the tree of life is an extremely bushy one and the genetic material that could prove direct ancestry is not preserved. But, that doesn't conflict with pointing out that giraffes did not just appear fully formed with long necks.

Going to wikipedia, I find these genera of giraffadae.

Going through a sample of these, all of the ones I looked at had shorter necks (or for the very large ones, proportionally shorter necks) than modern giraffes. So, there's no shortage of fossils disproving the claim that giraffes appeared suddenly already with long necks.

You claim that the categories are just 'invented' by scientists. Well, this is true, but it's based on painstaking research. And, as correlation with modern genetic and biochemical analysis has shown, the pre-genetic classification of animals is very accurate. So, just attempting to dismiss them as propagandists is nonsensical. It's been shown that taxonomy is an accurate science.
 
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OldWiseGuy

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Except that they are both the fourth branch of the vagus nerve. I.e. the same nerve.

I meant in terms of function. When I wire a 3-three pole switch the common neutral alternates between being 'hot' and being 'not'. Same circuit, different function.
 
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AnotherAtheist

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I meant in terms of function. When I wire a 3-three pole switch the common neutral alternates between being 'hot' and being 'not'. Same circuit, different function.

How is your analogy in any way relevant? As far as I can see, it's a complete non-sequitur. You aren't going to get all self-replicating watch on me, are you? You're talking about electrical switching circuits. I'm talking about nerves that can be matching in different organisms such that it is reasonable to assume that they are the same nerve evolved to perform different functions.
 
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OldWiseGuy

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More dodging.

You're boring.

The comment goes directly to the RLN of the giraffe (why am I the only one that knows this stuff?). How do you think unconscious vocal signals get to the brain so fast when a person, or a giraffe, is suddenly surprised or frightened? Or that the throat tightens and the voice becomes weak under certain stressful situations. This is a visceral reaction (the 'mind' of the body) influencing the function of the throat and voice box without the direction of the brain. The signal gets there via the RLN in the case of the giraffe.
 
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OldWiseGuy

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How is your analogy in any way relevant? As far as I can see, it's a complete non-sequitur. You aren't going to get all self-replicating watch on me, are you? You're talking about electrical switching circuits. I'm talking about nerves that can be matching in different organisms such that it is reasonable to assume that they are the same nerve evolved to perform different functions.

That's my point. If the same nerve pathway can serve different functions in different organisms, that's just good design.
 
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Shemjaza

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That's my point. If the same nerve pathway can serve different functions in different organisms, that's just good design.
Except it's badly put together on one and sensible on another... being the whole point.
 
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Justatruthseeker

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Now we do have Decennatherium rex from 9 mya (2 my before Samotherium) which as the more honest objective Archaeologists and Paleontologists say MAY BE (not IS as some others claim) an early relative, or a variety of short necked Giraffe but we really do not KNOW t this time (but I assure you the propagandists will make it definitely Girraffidae).
Par for course, whatever is needed to keep their dead theory alive.
 
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Justatruthseeker

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Except it's badly put together on one and sensible on another... being the whole point.

Yep, mutations tend to damage good design. The purpose of that self repair mechanism.
 
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Except it's badly put together on one and sensible on another... being the whole point.

There's one way to find out; cut the many nerve fibers emanating from entire length the giraffe's RLN that connect to various organs along the path, and see what happens. ;)
 
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AnotherAtheist

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That's my point. If the same nerve pathway can serve different functions in different organisms, that's just good design.

We're talking about the nerve in giraffe's taking an unnecessary diversion of several metres. That's not good design. At all. And no competent intelligent designer would do that. Evolution would.

There's one way to find out; cut the many nerve fibers emanating from entire length the giraffe's RLN that connect to various organs along the path, and see what happens. ;)

The question is not whether it is better for the nerve to be functional or not, but whether re-routing the nerve would be a better design.
 
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