I may give evolution a shot.

[lucaspa]

Nonsense, because a cell by definition must have enormous metabolic complexity or it will not survive.

And these have that complexity. Want a list of some of the metabolic activity seen in the protocells? And they reproduce. See references at end of post.

This is not self organization of a cell.

Sure is. Not only that, but it has the same membrane potential and action potential of a nerve cell! Cool huh?

Okay, and you read Not by Chance by Lee Spetner and then come back and tell us what fundamental ways that evolution isn't lacking

I have. Spetner makes several mistakes. The most egregious is that he ignores natural selection. He forgets that neither chemistry nor natural selection are chance. We did a thread several months back of the flaws in Spetner's analysis. If you want, start a separate thread and we'll go thru it all again. Just hit "New Topic" on the Forum Screen.

Most of it, I have read about 75% of it online.

Good. Now work on Futuyma's Evolutionary Biology.

Fine. Natural selection is survival of the fittest.

No, it's not. "Survival of the fittest" is the sound-bite version of NS. Like all sound bites, it is incomplete.

Organisms which are not fit for the environment are eliminated.

Nope. Back to reading your Darwin. Summary of Chapter IV of the 1st edition. Darwin explicitly calls natural selection a means of preservation not elimination.

An organism may acquire some inheritable trait or character which, in a given environment, gives that organism a greater chance of passing on all of its genes to the next generation (compared with those of its fellows which don't have it). Over succeeding generations that trait or character has a good chance of becoming more widespread in that population.

There you go. Preservation of good designs.

The only "mistake" is that the DNA was not copied exactly. But that is not a "mistake" for the organism. For the organism it gives a new variation that, as you pointed out, is a better design than the previous one, and thus gives a better chance of surviving the Struggle for Existence. IOW, the environment runs a continuous contest for the best designs. New designs arise from not copying the DNA exactly. Some of those designs are very good and better than any existing one

You are too hung up on the semantics of "mistake". Look at what is really happening and not focus on one word that you emotionally don't like.

When you were learning to talk as a baby, you threw out all kinds of sounds. Most were "mistakes" in that they didn't mean anything in English. But some got positive responses from your parents and others, so you kept them and used them. You then made variations on those sounds and again selected those you got positive responses from. You learned to talk by making mistakes.

I remember two mistakes of one of my daughters -- elphedent and hippopomadus. They were mistakes but were close enough and funny enough that we encouraged her to use them. After a couple of weeks she found a new variation that was identical to the standard pronunciation. Darn!

But changing pre-existant information which already codes every feature of an organism is not a creative force. It can only change an organism's pre-existant information. I thought you were a biologist?

Biochemist, actually, and I recognize this particular shell game. Creation of more information is a two-step process:
1. Making more DNA. This is making more text in a book. It is done by making duplicate genes, chromosomes, transposon insertions, etc. That gives you more raw material to work on.
2. Selection. Now, the equations of information are such that selection always creates information. Check out William Dembski (a creationist) in No Free Lunch. He gives the equation -- The amount of information introduced through selection is then -log2(M/N). WHere N is thenumber of possibles and M is the number selected. log2 is logarithm to the base 2. Now, since there are always more individuals born than survive to reproduce, in any generation N is greater than M, thus M/N is a fraction, which means a negative logarithm. With the - sign in front of the logarithm, that converts the negative log to a positive number. Thus, selection must increase information.

Still, moving around DNA is not a creative force, nor does it explain how you can get rainforests and human beings from the same microscopic cell.

It's not the DNA, but the organism that has the design. And natural selection is a creative "force". Doubt it? Then how is it that products designed by natural selection is getting patents?
r Koza, MA Keane, MJ Streeter, Evolving inventions. Scientific American, 52-59, Feb 2003 check out www.genetic-programming.com

Face it, you live on blind faith, with little to no evidence. It really is admirable to see so much faith in you. It's sort of like a child-like faith, many Christians could learn from you.

Nice try, but it is me posting the evidence. Not you. All you post is that there is a lack of evidence. Sound just like a militant atheist, you do.

 

[lucaspa]

Oh yeah, evolutionists know nothing about assumptions.

But creationists aren't supposed to use them, are they? That was the point. Too bad you missed it.

As I said, the data from other stars indicates that the assumption is wrong.

 

[lucaspa]

Oh come on. If a mutation causes the DNA to code for a different protein that has a novel and beneficial effect on the organism (there are many verified examples of this) how can that not be "creative" or "new information?"

Creationists have gone down the pathetic line of argumentation that whatever happens no matter what cannot be an increase in information even if it has an effect that cause a novel structure of metabolic pathway to occur. They're ridiculous goal post shifting will be the death of them.

Nice catch. It's not the death of them I am worried about. It's that they will cause the death of Christianity because people will think Christianity is this ridiculous.

 

[lucaspa]

Can you provide any actual data, or answer any questions, or will you just keep trying to bait?

Oh, let him bait, Arikay. It's not like he's going to catch anything. Just stick the hook into himself.

 

[dctalkexp]

Nice catch. It's not the death of them I am worried about. It's that they will cause the death of Christianity because people will think Christianity is this ridiculous.

What is ridiculous is telling people that God created them by violent death and suffering, and then called it "Very good." It's ridiculous to tell people you can be a Christian but not believe the Bible -- that the OT is merely parabolic story-telling to illustrate spiritual points, when indeed Jesus and his apostles took Genesis and all of the OT as literal, historical truth.

The irony is clear here, someone saying that rain forests and human beings sprouted from the same protocell in a primitive earth is saying that God creating seperate types of animals with premade information is ridiculous.

 

[napajohn]

Lucaspa,
what Gish is saying is in natural states not sterile solutions...besides try that with your amino acids and let it float in whatever solution you want..and see if given any circumstance these form into proteins that could eventually give rise to life that perpetuates itself...also make this paper reviewable for peer review with both creationists and noncreationists..if you do a nobel award is waiting...i believe since evolution is science and is a fact it should have experiments that can be repeated, replicated and show similar results...absent that evolution goes by the wayside as a theory and not scientific fact as many here claim..
With regards to the sun and solar fusion..wow thats another one..problem with what we know today about the sun and its life cycles..evolutionists believe in a faint sun to explain this problem..heres the catch wouldn't then the increasing luminosity of the sun later cause such chaos that eventually with time as the sun start cranking out its output good ole earth goes from a cool planet to one that could melt lead and kill all life?not only that its often suggested that emerging life made possible the limitations of nitrogen and introduced free oxygen to help earth get an eventual ozone layer..what mechanism came first the self-regulating system that emerging life
produced or the environment which life needed to develop and protect the earth from the sun? ah ..the plasticity of evolution..ignore the problems. protect the theory and hope they don't teach the facts at school that may falsify it...

 

[Svt4Him]

Again, not here. "On the day he is to be pronounced clean, he shall be brought to the priest and the priest shall examine him." That doesn't mean he's brought to the priest over 8 days, but in just one day to do the procedure. The priest doesn't take 8 days to examine him or complete the procedure. "If the disease is healed, the priest shall order that two ritually clean birds be brought ... " The sacrifice takes one day, because in verse 8 we have "He may enter the camp, but must live outside the tent for seven days."

Tsk tsk. Not nice to misquote the Bible.

Well, let's see who's misquoting the Bible:

The Holy Bible, New King James Version



1Then the LORD spoke to Moses, saying, 2"This shall be the law of the leper
for the day of his cleansing: He shall be brought to the priest.

So this all happens in a day:

3And the priest shall go out of the camp, and the priest shall examine him; and indeed, if the leprosy is healed in the leper, 4then the priest shall command to take for him who is to be cleansed two living and clean birds, cedar wood, scarlet, and hyssop. 5And the priest shall command that one of the birds be killed in an earthen vessel over running water. 6As for the living bird, he shall take it, the cedar wood and the scarlet and the hyssop, and dip them and the living bird in the blood of the bird that was killed over the running water. 7And he shall sprinkle it seven times on him who is to be cleansed from the leprosy, and shall pronounce him clean, and shall let the living bird loose in the open field.

Fair enough, this could happen in a day...but wait...

8He who is to be cleansed shall wash his clothes, shave off all his hair, and wash himself in water, that he may be clean.

may be clean, again describing the day of his cleaning...oh, still could be a day...

After that he shall come into the camp, and shall stay outside his
tent seven days. 9But on the seventh day he shall shave all the hair off his head and his beard and his eyebrows—all his hair he shall shave off. He shall wash his clothes and wash his body in water, and he shall be clean.

Now here you have a problem. Clearly, for the day of his cleaning, he has to come into the camp, stay outside his tent for seven days, then do the rest. There is no way the day of cleaning is one day long. Sorry, but it's not nice to misquote the Bible.

 

[Arikay]

So, you disagree with evolution because it created "by violent death and suffering" yet you fully believe your god caused a flood that created "violent death and suffering" for almost all animals and almost all men, women and children.

Hmm, something isn't right here. I guess death and suffering is ok, when it fits your beliefs, but not ok if it doesn't. Besides the fact that a lot of evolution is not about death and suffering, its about procreation. Take a pack of wolves for example. The non alpha dogs dont all of a sudden die at the hand of natural selection, they just aren't allowed to breed, keeping their mutations from being passed along, yet they live perfectly fine, but as far as evolution is concerned, they were not "the fittest"
So, we have a strawman of evolution here.


As far as Jesus taking genesis literal, makes perfect sense. Ok, you have a bunch of people who believe in a literal genesis, now you come along and they think you are their messiah, what do you think will happen if you start telling them that what they think is their very foundation of their beliefs are wrong? I think jesus would have been burned on the stake much sooner than his cross death.

Edit: Also realized that attacking evolution because of its violence and death, also attacks creationism. As the parts of evolution that have violence and death in them, are accepted by most creationists. Natural selection, is accepted by creationists as being the way animals adapt, and animals that dont adapt die. Their seperation from evolution comes from a claim that mutations produce "no new information." But they have accepted natural selection and even speciation.

What is ridiculous is telling people that God created them by violent death and suffering, and then called it "Very good." It's ridiculous to tell people you can be a Christian but not believe the Bible -- that the OT is merely parabolic story-telling to illustrate spiritual points, when indeed Jesus and his apostles took Genesis and all of the OT as literal, historical truth.

The irony is clear here, someone saying that rain forests and human beings sprouted from the same protocell in a primitive earth is saying that God creating seperate types of animals with premade information is ridiculous.

 

[Pete Harcoff]

What is ridiculous is telling people that God created them by violent death and suffering, and then called it "Very good."

This is, of course, the same God who saw global genocide (of practically all life on Earth, not just humans) as the solution to the problem of humans not obeying Him... Right.

edit: I see Jaci... er, Arikay beat me to it. Darn you Arikay!

 

[Arikay]

LoL Pete, soon im going to have to beat back roomers about be a multiple personality. Besides, last I heard people said I was Mechanical Bliss.

 

[lucaspa]

Of course I accept evolution, what I don't accept is evolutionary "theory." There is a big difference.
What I have said is that God may have well laid out all of the fundamental genetic information for each "kind" of organism, and then allowed it to adapt to certain environments to an extent, so that may be able to live in harsher conditions.

This doesn't work. If the genetic information is not expressed, it accumulates errors from generation to generation that are not removed by selection. The end result is the inability to have normal embryonic development.

The experiments that show this are:
2. E Pennisi, Heat shock protein mutes genetic changes. Science282: 1796, Dec. 4, 1998. Describes Nature article on accelerated evolution. HSP 90 suppresses some developmental pathways, allowing them to accumulate mutations. When HSP 90 is tied up protecting from heat stress, then these pathways become active, giving large morphological changes since the small mutations are in HOX genes.
3. SL Rutherford and S Lindquist, HSP90 as a capacitor for morphological evolution. Nature 396: 336-342, Nov.26, 1998. Primary paper for above. Look at pictures of large changes in the flies.

BTW, what suppresses the genetic information that God put in the organism but doesn't need until the environment changes?

 

[lucaspa]

What is ridiculous is telling people that God created them by violent death and suffering, and then called it "Very good."

Hmmm. Judging God a bit here, aren't you? Don't you tell us in other areas that God is above our understanding and we can't judge Him? Well, here you are judging Him and how He created.

Death is part of life. No organism can live forever. There is simply not enough energy availble to do work to make cell replication flawless. Eventually errors accumulate and aging or cancer results.

Besides, I'm a little puzzled that you have this negative attitude toward physical death. Isn't this life supposed to be prelude to the next when you will be with God? So what is this complete aversion to death? You can't be in Heaven until you die, can you?

As to suffering, aren't you supposed to be able to suffer for your faith? Jaci Fan told us that Christians were prepared for persecution for their faith. And isn't persecution suffering?

Didn't God create the risen Jesus and salvation from the suffering on the Cross? Yes, He did. So right there you have God creating from suffering. Seems your own Bible tells you this idea is wrong.

As I think about this some more, God created Israel out of suffering in the Exodus. First out of the suffering of the Hebrews in slavery, and then the suffering (and death) of the Egyptians in the Plagues. So yes, having God create out of suffering and death is exactly what the Bible tells us God does.

It's ridiculous to tell people you can be a Christian but not believe the Bible

I never said this. I have maintained that your literal translation is not the Bible. What is ridiculous is passing yourself off as God or the Bible.

You can believe the Bible, just not your man-made literal interpretation. It is a tragedy that you consider your literal translation as your god.

-- that the OT is merely parabolic story-telling to illustrate spiritual points,

We are not talking about the whole OT. Only about Genesis 1-8. And Jesus himself says that Moses sometimes got the Pentateuch wrong. Mark 10 adn Matthew 19. And since when are spiritual points "merely"? The spiritual points are the point of the Bible!

when indeed Jesus and his apostles took Genesis and all of the OT as literal, historical truth.

We can do this again. Mike Flynn, Vance, and I have looked carefully at those verses. Jesus isn't using Genesis as historical truth, but for those "merely" spritual points.

The irony is clear here, someone saying that rain forests and human beings sprouted from the same protocell in a primitive earth is saying that God creating seperate types of animals with premade information is ridiculous.

I'm not saying it's ridiculous. I'm just saying that God in His Creation says He didn't do it that way. What's the problem of listening to God?

 

[Mike Flynn]

What is ridiculous is telling people that God created them by violent death and suffering, and then called it "Very good."

I have seen cancer patients come to God through suffering. Was that suffering good or bad for them? Through death of loved ones, many have come to know the truth. Was death a bad thing in those cases? How is it that all of God's good and humble servants died as well as the others throughout history?

IOW, are we to believe that things are good and bad because you have defined them as such? Are we to believe that when the Bible speaks of life and death, it only refers to the physical body? Or when you read Genesis, do you ignore all the other scriptures about what real life and death are all about?

You can adhere to a pre-school reading of Genesis if you like and imagine that every word is meant to be taken literally. But don't blame the rest of us for seeing more than that.

It's ridiculous to tell people you can be a Christian but not believe the Bible --

I believe the Bible, just not your interpretation of it. Its rediculous to assume that your interpretation of it is infallible...not to mention against Christian theology to do the same.

the OT is merely parabolic story-telling to illustrate spiritual points, when indeed Jesus and his apostles took Genesis and all of the OT as literal, historical truth.

I suppose you can read Jesus mind, then? Strange that Jesus saved his most harsh criticisms for the literalists in that day, isn't it? What makes you think He would have anything different to say to you when you see fit to pass judgements and assume God's intentions?

The irony is clear here, someone saying that rain forests and human beings sprouted from the same protocell in a primitive earth is saying that God creating seperate types of animals with premade information is ridiculous.

The irony here is that you are as presumptuous about your interpretation of scriptures as you are accusing others about their interpretations of science. I suppose this is what the scriptures tell us when they say 'by the standard you use to judge others, so you will be judged'. Yes...very ironic indeed.

 

[lucaspa]

Lucaspa,
what Gish is saying is in natural states not sterile solutions.

LOL! But before the first life the conditions certainly are! What is "sterile"? Absence of life. So before the first protocells form the earth is indeed sterile. ..

besides try that with your amino acids and let it float in whatever solution you want.

Do that all the time. Remember I culture cells. What do you think the culture media is? A solution of amino acids. The only amino acid that degrades in water solution is glutamine. And it breaks down to another amino acid -- glutamic acid -- and ammonia. And this is a reversible reaction, so you can make glutamine again!

.and see if given any circumstance these form into proteins that could eventually give rise to life that perpetuates itself.

Yes. they do. If they are dry heated the amino acids form proteins. Upon addition of water the proteins form cells, and the cells reproduce. That is what we have been talking about, napajohn! DUH! Pay attention!

also make this paper reviewable for peer review with both creationists and noncreationists.

Fox already did that! What do you think his peer-reviewed papers are!!

if you do a nobel award is waiting.

Since Fox and colleagues already did this, I don't think so. Haven't you been paying attention? It's been done.

i believe since evolution is science and is a fact it should have experiments that can be repeated, replicated and show similar results...absent that evolution goes by the wayside as a theory and not scientific fact as many here claim..

First, the abiogenesis experiments have been repeated. Shoot, during the 1970s and 1980s making protocells was a popular science fair project.

However, you have a misrepresentation of science. One fostered by creationists not because they want an accurate description of science, but because they want to get rid of evidence. But I've told you this before napajohn. Do you hope I won't bring up the refutations in different threads?

Napa, don't creationists scientifically study a one time event? The Flood! Can they repeat it? What experiments do they conduct? So, are you saying that Flood Geology is not science? Sauce for the goose.

The fact is that, as long as the event leaves evidence we can study today, science can study it. Do scientists study Meteor Crator? How did it get its name? Because scientific study showed that it was formed by a meteor strike. Do they repeat that meteor strike? Of course not. It was a one-time event.

Or look at archeology. What repeatable experiments do they do. Yet I'm sure you will claim that archeology supports the Bible. But unless they do repeated and replicable experiments, by your criteria we can't say it is science or fact. There goes your support for the accuracy of the Bible! Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!

With regards to the sun and solar fusion..wow thats another one..problem with what we know today about the sun and its life cycles..evolutionists believe in a faint sun to explain this problem..heres the catch wouldn't then the increasing luminosity of the sun later cause such chaos that eventually with time as the sun start cranking out its output good ole earth goes from a cool planet to one that could melt lead and kill all life?

Why? Did it? Is the planet melted? Nope. THen the sun did not heat up that much, did it? Use your head, napa.

not only that its often suggested that emerging life made possible the limitations of nitrogen and introduced free oxygen to help earth get an eventual ozone layer..what mechanism came first the self-regulating system that emerging life produced or the environment which life needed to develop and protect the earth from the sun?

Life doesn't need an ozone layer. Water protects from UV very well. So, as long as the life is in the oceans, it's safe. Now, what photosynthesis did do was produce enough oxygen to allow a higher metabolism. Enough to support mineralization. Which is one explanation of the apparent Cambrian explosion -- enough oxygen to give higher energy levels to give shells and bones that fossilize easily.

ah ..the plasticity of evolution..ignore the problems. protect the theory and hope they don't teach the facts at school that may falsify it...

So far you haven't given us any facts. Just fanciful criticisms that evaporate when we look at the facts.

And please quite projecting the faults of creationism onto science. Who is the one that says "there are no transitional fossils" "evolution can't produce information" "you can't get life from non-living chemicals" "Miller-Urey doesn't work in an atmosphere of nitrogen, carbon dioxide ,and water"? And then hide the facts that falsify these statements? And if the facts are found then have to put out more untruth to try to get rid of the evidence? Creationism.

No. You have described creationism to a T. Not evolution. We aren't going to wear your guilt. You're stuck with it.

 

[Lonnie]

"So far you haven't given us any facts. Just fanciful criticisms that evaporate when we look at the facts."

Lucaspa, you getting up set? Looks like it. Are you getting up set cause he is right? Perhaps...
People get upset normaly if they start to feel over whelmed, or wrong.

 

[armed2010]

"So far you haven't given us any facts. Just fanciful criticisms that evaporate when we look at the facts."

Lucaspa, you getting up set? Looks like it. Are you getting up set cause he is right? Perhaps... But mabey not...

You wish lonnie, you really really wish

 

[Arikay]

I would think that if he was getting up set, it would be because he provides tons of information to the forums, and there are some that seem to ignore it and dont back up their statements with any facts.

"So far you haven't given us any facts. Just fanciful criticisms that evaporate when we look at the facts."

Lucaspa, you getting up set? Looks like it. Are you getting up set cause he is right? Perhaps... But mabey not...

 

[Lonnie]

You could say, that is your view.

Well, you dont believe in creationism do you? So anything supporting it would seem false to you right? Thats what you are doing. And us creationists have felt like this before, when people ignore facts, or believe facts that have been falsified.

Sorry Lucaspa, about the 6th grade thing...

Its true. But I do feel sorry, that I might have hurt you(I hate hurting people, hopefuly, it did not effect you)

Also it would not matter if you dont remember that Dr. Fox theory was flasified when you where in high school. Or any other grade. Cause things change.

Later

 

[Lonnie]

"You wish lonnie, you really really wish "

I wish, but not as much you wish in stuff to support evolution

 

[armed2010]

"You wish lonnie, you really really wish "

I wish, but not as much you wish in stuff to support evolution

I dont need to wish for that, its already here.