If you cant observe it directly, it can't be true...

KerrMetric · Mar 9, 2006

LogicChristian said:
Does this answer your question Sam?

Well the citation doesn't - but the paper itself should.

canehdianhotstuff · Mar 9, 2006

Beastt said:
"A fairy tale without any observation" sounds like an appropriate definition of God, not of evolution. Evolution is demonstrable, testable and observable. God is a product of faith, not of observation.

wrong, God is obervation, His fingerprints are all over this world weather you like it or not.

canehdianhotstuff · Mar 9, 2006

D McCloud said:
By all means swat away, there is nothing you can present scientifically that would prove the universe had to of had a creator.

the proof is in your heart my friend

cwolf20 · Mar 9, 2006

Tomk80 said:
True, looks like it is correct. But 'looks like' and 'are similar' is very different. The difference is in the skeletal structure.

If the platypus had a duckbill similar to that of a duck, it would falsify common ancestry, since then it would be a chimera consisting of bird, reptile and mammal characteristics. As it is, it has only reptilian and mammalian characteristics, which does fit the patterns expected if common ancestry would be correct.

I think we got off the point of my reply slightly... I was referring to intelligent creation of a gag gift complete with the ability to protect itself from harm to a certain extent.

rmwilliamsll · Mar 9, 2006

shawn101 said:
wrong, God is obervation, His fingerprints are all over this world weather you like it or not.

this is a curious misuse of words.
you mean to write:
"over this world whether"

however the error is interesting because the usual example of God's general providence is the weather. God causes it to rain on the righteous and the unrighteous as well. This is part of the explanation of "why the wicked prosper?".

what is interesting from a scientific viewpoint is that "if God causes the rain to fall on the good and the bad together" then you can not distinguish among them based on the weather. It is not like the wicked have brown lawns and the righteous have nice green ones.

the problem is:
propose a "God fingerprint" that we all can see and agree that it is a fingerprint.

possible ones are:
existence of the church.
love within the church.
the mind of human beings.

i'm not sure any of these are accessible to scientific methodology. that doesn't prove that they aren't fingerprints, only that CSI would not be able to lift them from the world or identify them as God's.

canehdianhotstuff · Mar 9, 2006

hehe oopsy...heat of the moment thing...i commonly misuse/mispell lots of words.

Caphi · Mar 9, 2006

shawn101 said:
the proof is in your heart my friend

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

I'm sorry. I don't know about your heart, but the only thing mine has in it is a lot of blood and muscular tissue. I don't need a god for that.

Loudmouth · Mar 9, 2006

SamCJ said:
I did not ask you to supply the quote, because you did not claim: "we have directly observed them." It is that claim that I believe is untrue. Your points suppor my belief. In absence of a quote and a modification of the dictionary meaning of "directly observe", I will continue to believe it is untrue.

Could you please define "directly observe" as it applies to mutations. Are you saying that we need to actually see the transfer of electrons in the chemical reaction catalyzed by polymerases? What are you trying to "directly observe"?

SamCJ · Mar 9, 2006

LogicChristian said:
Does this answer your question Sam?

Why would you think so?

SamCJ · Mar 9, 2006

Loudmouth said:
Could you please define "directly observe" as it applies to mutations. Are you saying that we need to actually see the transfer of electrons in the chemical reaction catalyzed by polymerases? What are you trying to "directly observe"?

If you have claimed to have done it or know someone who has, provide me with the short quote and the link. I agree with swilliamsII that it cannot be done in accordance with the common understanding to the terms. If you need further definition, try the dictionary.

Loudmouth · Mar 9, 2006

SamCJ said:
If you have claimed to have done it or know someone who has, provide me with the short quote and the link. I agree with swilliamsII that it cannot be done in accordance with the common understanding to the terms. If you need further definition, try the dictionary.

I'll ask again. Could you please define what you mean by "directly observe". Does this definition require us to actually see atoms interacting? If so, could you please show me the equipment that one would use to do this.

rmwilliamsll · Mar 9, 2006

SamCJ said:
If you have claimed to have done it or know someone who has, provide me with the short quote and the link. I agree with swilliamsII that it cannot be done in accordance with the common understanding to the terms. If you need further definition, try the dictionary.

look carefully at what you are asking for.

let's take a reasonable example of a mutation. say the point mutation that causes Tay-Sachs, which we know is caused by a mutated form of beta-hexosaminidase A.

look at: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/...ve&db=PubMed&list_uids=12689698&dopt=Abstract

say you are the investigator for this particular mutation.
when did it happen?
not in the children you are looking at.
but in their parents or ancestors.

now you just discovered this mutation because of the phenotypic effects of it. The kids are sick, very sick and will probably die.

but the mutation is at least one generation back in the chain. you can probably test the parents. one of them is most likely a carrier of the trait.

but how do you look at the genes of long dead ancestors? you know the mutation occurred, you can see and quanitize it in the DNA of the patients.

see what you are asking for?
now you can take a fruit fly, harvest some cells, do a PCR and then separate the watson and crick chains of the DNA. then subject that fruit fly to radiation and take some of these new cells, do the same thing and see if the irradiated DNA anneals exactly right with the old. you can catch a mutation happening this way.
but it is not a "natural mutation"

see what i mean, do you really realize what you are asking?

....

Loudmouth · Mar 9, 2006

Another example is dwarfism. This disease is caused by a mutation, and the allele is dominant. If neither parent suffers from the disease and their child does it is due to a mutational event in either the sperm or egg that produced the child.

Physiol Genomics. 2000 Jan 24;2(1):9-12.Related Articles, Links

[SIZE=+1]A novel mutation in FGFR-3 disrupts a putative N-glycosylation site and results in hypochondroplasia.[/SIZE]

Winterpacht A, Hilbert K, Stelzer C, Schweikardt T, Decker H, Segerer H, Spranger J, Zabel B.

Children's Hospital, University of Mainz, D-55101 Mainz, Germany. winterpacht@uke.uni-hamburg.de

Fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR3) is a glycoprotein that belongs to the family of tyrosine kinase receptors. Specific mutations in the FGFR3 gene are associated with autosomal dominant human skeletal disorders such as hypochondroplasia, achondroplasia, and thanatophoric dysplasia. Hypochondroplasia (HCH), the mildest form of this group of short-limbed dwarfism disorders, results in approximately 60% of cases from a mutation in the intracellular FGFR3-tyrosine kinase domain. The remaining cases may either be caused by defects in other FGFR gene regions or other yet unidentified genes. We describe a novel HCH mutation, the first found outside the common mutation hot spot of this condition. This point mutation, an N328I exchange in the extracellular Ig domain III of the receptor, seems to be unique as it affects a putative N-glycosylation site that is conserved between different FGFRs and species. The amino acid exchange itself most probably has no impact on the three-dimensional structure of the receptor domain, suggesting that the phenotype is the result of altered receptor glycosylation and its pathophysiological consequences.

D McCloud · Mar 9, 2006

shawn101 said:
the proof is in your heart my friend

There is nothing in my heart but four chambers filled with blood. Perhaps a more appropriate saying would be that the truth is in your head.

D McCloud · Mar 9, 2006

shawn101 said:
"Darwinism is a creed not only with scientists committed to document the all-purpose role of natural selection. It is a creed with masses of people who have at best a vague notion of the mechanism of evolution as proposed by Darwin, let alone as further complicated by his successors. Clearly, the appeal cannot be that of a scientific truth but of a philosophical belief which is not difficult to identify. Darwinism is a belief in the meaninglessness of existence."—*R. Kirk, "The Rediscovery of Creation," in National Review, (May 27, 1983), p. 641.

"Creationists make it sound as though a 'theory' is something you dreamt up after being drunk all night.”

Isaac Asimov quotes

When you feel like actually responding to something I said with an argument, I'll be waiting.

rmwilliamsll · Mar 9, 2006

please delete, i wrote him privately, off list, thanks, i dont see a delete function or button

Tomk80 · Mar 9, 2006

Loudmouth said:
I'll ask again. Could you please define what you mean by "directly observe". Does this definition require us to actually see atoms interacting? If so, could you please show me the equipment that one would use to do this.

I'll make it easy.

Yes. Sam's definition requires us to actually see atoms interacting. But that won't be enough, because even in that case, we might not have spotted the mutation happening. It might, for example, have been caused by radiation. So for Sam's definition of directly observing a mutation, we'll have to see a the photon of a radiation wave hit the DNA molecule while it is replicating, causing the mutation. Althoug I'm not sure whether that would be direct enough for Sam.

edit: forgot to add: in real time of course. If we made videotapes of it and slowed them down, we're not directly observing the event.

Edx · Mar 9, 2006

Tomk80 said:
So for Sam's definition of directly observing a mutation, we'll have to see a the photon of a radiation wave hit the DNA molecule while it is replicating, causing the mutation..

Even that wont be enough, the entire reason Sam asked for it to begin with was so you can rule out intelligence as a cause, but he already knows you couldnt do that even hypothetically.

SamCJ · Mar 9, 2006

Tomk80 said:
I'll make it easy.

Yes. Sam's definition requires us to actually see atoms interacting. But that won't be enough, because even in that case, we might not have spotted the mutation happening. It might, for example, have been caused by radiation. So for Sam's definition of directly observing a mutation, we'll have to see a the photon of a radiation wave hit the DNA molecule while it is replicating, causing the mutation. Althoug I'm not sure whether that would be direct enough for Sam.

edit: forgot to add: in real time of course. If we made videotapes of it and slowed them down, we're not directly observing the event.

Thanks, Tomk80, I think you have got it. If a single photon of radiation was the cause of an error in replication, then you cannot say it has been directly observed unless you saw the photon hit during the process of replication, and knock something askew.

But if that's all you saw, don't call the mutation "random" For that you need to know where it came from. Maybe it was directed by humans following Hiroshima. If so, it might still be random as to which gene the photon hit, kind of like the roulette wheel ball. But if a human directed the photon at a particular gene for the purpose of creating the mutation, then the mutation clearly was not random. I do not know whether we have that ability yet.

Now, the final part is, has the mutation improved the survivability of the species so that we can say it was beneficial. It will take some time, but natural selection will have to be taken into account to determine whether the mutation was beneficial or not.

Now if your observation of whatever does not meet these requirements, you should not say that a "beneficial random mutation has been directly observed."

Some of the requirements can be deleted by deleting the adjectives.

I am not well versed on what causes mutations. I assume that things other than errant radiation photons can do it. But whatever does it, you've got to directly sense it to directly observe it. Don't say you have, if you haven't.

Tomk80 · Mar 9, 2006

SamCJ said:
Thanks, Tomk80, I think you have got it. If a single photon of radiation was the cause of an error in replication, then you cannot say it has been directly observed unless you saw the photon hit during the process of replication, and knock something askew.

But if that's all you saw, don't call the mutation "random" For that you need to know where it came from. Maybe it was directed by humans following Hiroshima. If so, it might still be random as to which gene the photon hit, kind of like the roulette wheel ball. But if a human directed the photon at a particular gene for the purpose of creating the mutation, then the mutation clearly was not random. I do not know whether we have that ability yet.

Now, the final part is, has the mutation improved the survivability of the species so that we can say it was beneficial. It will take some time, but natural selection will have to be taken into account to determine whether the mutation was beneficial or not.

Now if your observation of whatever does not meet these requirements, you should not say that a "beneficial random mutation has been directly observed."

Some of the requirements can be deleted by deleting the adjectives.

I am not well versed on what causes mutations. I assume that things other than errant radiation photons can do it. But whatever does it, you've got to directly sense it to directly observe it. Don't say you have, if you haven't.

So, what's your point? Determining whether something is random or not, is not done through determining there cause. It's done through counting the effect. We can directly count the effect. See Luria Delbruck.

If you cant observe it directly, it can't be true...

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