Intelligent Design / Evolution

[Zaius137]

So you think that I am not impressed by the human brain? How did you arrive at that conclusion? Did you consult a hat rack?

Here's what I see when I look at a brain: I see an item that did not just "appear" on the scene. In fact I see about 3 billion years of life on earth with no brain whatsoever (bacteria, algae, plants, protists...), I see about 600 million years ago a few life forms show up in the rock record with simple neural networks followed a few million years later by simple "ganglion" (nerve bundles) and the later simple "brains". Fish have a rudiimentary brain nothing like ours but ours contains something similar to theirs. Bigger brains show up later in the rock record over the course of millions of years until finally only very recently has the higher primate brain showed up.

So if the human brain is a "designed" feature, why did the designer take about 3 billion years to "design" it?

Again, I come back to trying to understand this intelligent designer. Obviously it is a being that can either live several billion years but can't think particularly quickly or it is a race of beings who, despite 3 billion years of experimentation couldn't get around to a primate brain for that long.

BUT, I can very easily see that life changes over the millenia. And I can see structures that carry over into more advanced creatures.

This really looks a lot like "evolution".

Not so much "designed" (unless the designer was among the slowest witted beings to ever stumble through the cosmos...and that would kind of gut the whole idea of an "intelligent" designer).



I'm rather aware of the opposing views and I am also aware that many of the claims of irreducible complexity fail. Take the bacterial flagellum. It isn't irreducibly complex. In fact it shares many features of a simpler structure used by bacteria to penetrate cell walls.

They eye? Try staring with simple "photoreceptor cells" which harness light as a stimulus. They seem to be a great place to start on the route to the eye.

You may wish to assume I am "willfully ignorant" of the opposing view, but in reality it could be that I simply reject that opposing view based on what I do see around me.

Who confirmed life and humans appeared over long time spans? Sorry but there is no reason to believe life did not occur as stated in the literal six days of creation. The evidence is on the side of the creationist for a young creation.

However, that does not stop me from joining the cause to aid you evolutionists in a theory to explain the sudden enlargement of the human brain. Here it is…

Millions of years ago, the human skull suddenly started to enlarge because of selective pressure to increase hat sizes. Large hat (or leafs) were particularly attractive to breeding females so that the larger the hat (or leaf) that a male hominid could support the greater his chances of breeding. Small-headed males were just out of luck because gas cans were not available yet to toss around to intimidate other males. So over millions of years selective pressure drove evolution (Genetic drift) to select for larger head and thus larger brain sizes.

Therefore, the human head is just an evolved hat rack…

Peer review is just a few months away… but you are privileged to real evolutionist science in action…


By the way evolution of the eye is probably the greatest failure of explanation power for evolution… Too many needed support systems are not present in the brain or nervous system to support such nonsense.

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

Who confirmed life and humans appeared over long time spans? Sorry but there is no reason to believe life did not occur as stated in the literal six days of creation. The evidence is on the side of the creationist for a young creation.

However, that does not stop me from joining the cause to aid you evolutionists in a theory to explain the sudden enlargement of the human brain. Here it is…

Millions of years ago, the human skull suddenly started to enlarge because of selective pressure to increase hat sizes. Large hat (or leafs) were particularly attractive to breeding females so that the larger the hat (or leaf) that a male hominid could support the greater his chances of breeding. Small-headed males were just out of luck because gas cans were not available yet to toss around to intimidate other males. So over millions of years selective pressure drove evolution (Genetic drift) to select for larger head and thus larger brain sizes.

Therefore, the human head is just an evolved hat rack…

Peer review is just a few months away… but you are privileged to real evolutionist science in action…


By the way evolution of the eye is probably the greatest failure of explanation power for evolution… Too many needed support systems are not present in the brain or nervous system to support such nonsense.

You clearly know nothing about the brain, the nervous system, or the eye. What is your degree in, by the way?

 

[idscience]

 

[Zaius137]

To Lion Hearted Man... Once upon a time, I had the illusion that I would become a prominent Paleontologist researching the fossil record for evolutionary speciation. At the time, I was struggling with my grades so I sought the advice of a respected professor in the field. I was a bit astonished when after I told him my grades were lacking he announced I was overqualified to study in the field.

Just kidding… Love you guys with the degrees in the field. Hope to make all of you into creationists so you can use all of your brains.

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

To Lion Hearted Man... Once upon a time, I had the illusion that I would become a prominent Paleontologist researching the fossil record for evolutionary speciation. At the time, I was struggling with my grades so I sought the advice of a respected professor in the field. I was a bit astonished when after I told him my grades were lacking he announced I was overqualified to study in the field.

Just kidding… Love you guys with the degrees in the field. Hope to make all of you into creationists so you can use all of your brains.

You're taking a leak on neurology right now, and it would make people who actually study brains and the nervous system roll their eyes.

The nervous system is covered in evolutionary footprints.

 

[Elendur]

idscience, please check out this thread:
http://www.christianforums.com/t7653213/

 

[idscience]

Don't believe those things? then why do you assume DNA was designed intelligently? You know it's not a language, right? Languages require an intelligent translator in order to work... DNA is happy to do it's thing without any interpretation because it's not a code... It's just an arrangement of chemical reactions.

"The Science article reports on a paper suggesting that the non-coding 97% of the DNA, commonly referred to as junk DNA, might have a function. The authors of the paper employed linguistic tests to analyze junk DNA and discovered striking similarities to ordinary language. The scientists interpret those similarities as suggestions that there might be messages in the junk sequences, although its anyone s guess as to how the language might work."
F. Flam, Hints of a language in junk DNA"Science 266:1320, 1994.

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

"The Science article reports on a paper suggesting that the non-coding 97% of the DNA, commonly referred to as junk DNA, might have a function. The authors of the paper employed linguistic tests to analyze junk DNA and discovered striking similarities to ordinary language. The scientists interpret those similarities as suggestions that there might be messages in the junk sequences, although its anyone s guess as to how the language might work."
F. Flam, Hints of a language in junk DNA"Science 266:1320, 1994.

"Junk DNA" having a function is not that new of an idea and does not argue against evolution.

DNA evolves in a way that's similar to the evolution of language. An unguided process. Language was not intelligently designed.

 

[DaneaFL]

"Junk DNA" having a function is not that new of an idea and does not argue against evolution.

DNA evolves in a way that's similar to the evolution of language. An unguided process. Language was not intelligently designed.

DNA isn't even really a language to begin with. Kudos to dad for twisting that article he posted into saying something it didn't... creationists are very good at doing that.

An important part of any language is that any word can refer to any object... this isn't how genetics works. If you changed the DNA that codes for proteins you would change the meaning of ALL sequences and it wouldn't just create new arbitrary meanings. In a language, you can do this whenever you want.

Language is symbolic. For a word to have meaning, someone has to decide what the word symbolizes. DNA is not symbolic. It's simply controlled by it's chemical properties... not by it's defined meaning.

"DNA sequences usually involve local construction rules that affect different scales. As such their “dictionary” may not follow Zipf's law (a power law) which is followed in every natural language. Indeed, analysis of many DNA sequences suggests that no linguistics connections to DNA exist and that even though it has structure DNA in not a language. Computer simulations and a biological approach to this problem further support these results."
(Tsonis et al. 1997)

A newer study than the one dad posted by the way.... creationists love to use ancient, outdated research.

 

[idscience]

DNA isn't even really a language to begin with. Kudos to dad for twisting that article he posted into saying something it didn't... creationists are very good at doing that.

An important part of any language is that any word can refer to any object... this isn't how genetics works. If you changed the DNA that codes for proteins you would change the meaning of ALL sequences and it wouldn't just create new arbitrary meanings. In a language, you can do this whenever you want.

Language is symbolic. For a word to have meaning, someone has to decide what the word symbolizes. DNA is not symbolic. It's simply controlled by it's chemical properties... not by it's defined meaning.

"DNA sequences usually involve local construction rules that affect different scales. As such their “dictionary” may not follow Zipf's law (a power law) which is followed in every natural language. Indeed, analysis of many DNA sequences suggests that no linguistics connections to DNA exist and that even though it has structure DNA in not a language. Computer simulations and a biological approach to this problem further support these results."
(Tsonis et al. 1997)

A newer study than the one dad posted by the way.... creationists love to use ancient, outdated research.

Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. I am not offended by your use of creationist. Even though is is misused. You are letting your anger cloud your thinking.

 

[DaneaFL]

Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better. I am not offended by your use of creationist. Even though is is misused. You are letting your anger cloud your thinking.

I'm sorry. Do you have a more recent peer-reviewed article that contests this?

 

[Lion Hearted Man]

DNA isn't even really a language to begin with. Kudos to dad for twisting that article he posted into saying something it didn't... creationists are very good at doing that.

An important part of any language is that any word can refer to any object... this isn't how genetics works. If you changed the DNA that codes for proteins you would change the meaning of ALL sequences and it wouldn't just create new arbitrary meanings. In a language, you can do this whenever you want.

Language is symbolic. For a word to have meaning, someone has to decide what the word symbolizes. DNA is not symbolic. It's simply controlled by it's chemical properties... not by it's defined meaning.

"DNA sequences usually involve local construction rules that affect different scales. As such their “dictionary” may not follow Zipf's law (a power law) which is followed in every natural language. Indeed, analysis of many DNA sequences suggests that no linguistics connections to DNA exist and that even though it has structure DNA in not a language. Computer simulations and a biological approach to this problem further support these results."
(Tsonis et al. 1997)

A newer study than the one dad posted by the way.... creationists love to use ancient, outdated research.

Yes, I agree that DNA isn't a "language". Coding sequences are essentially the storage form of protein sequences in the form of nucleic acids as opposed to amino acids, and non-coding sequences are regulatory or insulating. Calling nucleotides "letters" and strings of bases "words" or something along those lines is very inaccurate.

But when you discuss how language evolves in human societies, it does make for a pretty beautiful analogy to how evolution via natural selection can work.

 

[Zaius137]

Yes, I agree that DNA isn't a "language". Coding sequences are essentially the storage form of protein sequences in the form of nucleic acids as opposed to amino acids, and non-coding sequences are regulatory or insulating. Calling nucleotides "letters" and strings of bases "words" or something along those lines is very inaccurate.

But when you discuss how language evolves in human societies, it does make for a pretty beautiful analogy to how evolution via natural selection can work.

It is clear that DNA is orders of magnitude above a “language”. A single change in a deoxynucleobase can vastly change the encoding and expression of proteins or regulatory functions. Try to get a computer language to do the following….
“Note that to scan a DNA sequence for ORFs, you need to do it six times. This is because each DNA sequence has six reading frames: three in one direction, and three in the reverse direction of the complementary strand.”

It is clear that DNA is the most complicated and versatile information encoding system man has ever attempted to understand. I am not a novice at programming and have yet to conceive of shifting reading frames to condense program length.

 

[Jazer]

Language is symbolic. For a word to have meaning, someone has to decide what the word symbolizes. DNA is not symbolic. It's simply controlled by it's chemical properties... not by it's defined meaning.

So God says what HE means and HE means what He says. God is clearly a man and not a women. People sometimes mean what they say and sometimes say what they mean, but not always. That is why we are people and He is God.

So you just proved that man could not have created God, clearly God was the one that had to create us. A camel is a horse designed by a committee.

 

[Jazer]

I am not a novice at programming and have yet to conceive of shifting reading frames to condense program length.

Do we understand how frame shift works or do they just see that something is going on there that does not look to be an accident, mutation or error.

 

[Zaius137]

Do we understand how frame shift works or do they just see that something is going on there that does not look to be an accident, mutation or error.

I though maybe we could pass the point in time where evolutionists claimed DNA was 95% junk.

 

[Jazer]

I though maybe we could pass the point in time where evolutionists claimed DNA was 95% junk.

They do not know what 95% of the DNA does?

 

[Zaius137]

So then just call it Junk...

 

[Elendur]

I don't understand why anyone would call DNA a language, if one would call that language why not call the pebbles in a stream a language as well? They will also have effect due to their placement, weight, size etc.

That huge rock that smashed your kayak clearly told you to not travel this river.

 

[idscience]

I don't understand why anyone would call DNA a language, if one would call that language why not call the pebbles in a stream a language as well? They will also have effect due to their placement, weight, size etc.

That huge rock that smashed your kayak clearly told you to not travel this river.

Really? you don't see any difference between rocks and information an information bearing system?

What would you call computer code which is also called computer language?