Original Research--join In

Loudmouth said:

Like I said, there have been buffet christians since Galileo. They change their interpretation to whatever they want. They pick the interpretations they want.

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SO,,,, if I don't agree with these particular theologens, then I am the one who is a "buffet christian".

There are many theologens that dissagree with the theologins that you present.

Who gets to tell me who I should follow?

Loudmouth said:

It's right next to the verses that say that evolution did not happen.

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Book, chapter, verse? It's OK to say IDK.

WisdomSpy said:

as well as being shown completely incongruous with the gene-length research I have referred to and which continues to get lost in discussions of astronomy, theology, etc. Will someone else please engage with the questions I've posed regarding expected gene lengths under any naturalistic generation mechanisms?

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I've already engaged with your questions, as have others. I'll try again. First, your gene-length research shows nothing at all about any process relevant to gene length. All it shows is that most coding indels are deleterious and will be removed by natural selection. Second, your argument that natural selection won't remove them is incomprehensible, and has no obvious connection to real biological processes.

Third, gene lengths generated under known natural processes can come in just about any length. Brand new genes can occur from random sequence (as you were just shown this thread, although I haven't seen you concede that fact). Existing genes, in whole or in part, can be rearranged to form new genes. Chimeric genes occur quite frequently. They're seldom beneficial, but that's not surprising, since new functional genes only arise rarely. One exception is in cancer cells, where chimeric genes can give a substantial reproductive advantage to cells that have them. Good for the cells, bad for the organism.

If you've presented any kind of coherent argument against evolution, I must have missed it.


Did you ever read the article I linked to about the sources of new genes?

Loudmouth said:

God stopped the Sun, not the Earth, for Joshua. This means that it is the Sun that moves about the Earth.

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Check this portion of an explanatary paper;

Psalm 19:6 is a passage that often is cited as another example of Scripture teaching pre-Copernican astronomy. In this verse, the Sun is said to move, rather than the Earth, and therefore is said by some to imply that the Sun revolves around the Earth. There are many other verses in the Bible that talk about the Sun “going down” or “rising up.” This hardly should be surprising, however, since events in the Bible often are written in accommodative or “phenomenal” language—i.e., the language used to express phenomena as man sees them. Even today we teach our children that “the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west,” and astronomers and navigators use the Earth as a fixed point for purposes of simple observation, expressing distances and directions in relation to it. The weatherman on the evening news often will state that the Sun is going to “rise” at a certain time the following morning and “set” at a certain time the following evening. Why does no one accuse him of scientific error? Because we all are perfectly aware of, and understand, the Copernican view of the solar system, and because we likewise understand that our weatherman is using “phenomenal” language.

Loudmouth said:

Yet another example of the dishonesty that you are willing to use in these discussions.

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Who is being dishonest here?

Loudmouth said:

A car can be moving while still being under your rear. A skateboard can be moving, and be moveable, while staying under your feet.

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A football player can run down the field and another one try to tackle him. The announcer may say "he didn't even move him". Sound familiar?
The earth is on an orbit. A path. And it will not be moved from that path.
It is imovable.

Loudmouth said:

The Earth moves about the Sun. Period. Everytime you try to avoid this fact, it only makes you look more dishonest.

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You can surely find something with more weight than this argument.

Originally Posted by EternalDragon

Loudmouth said:

I don't think you realize that there was not a recent global flood, that the Earth is not 6,000 years old, and that species were not separately created.

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Best deflection, off topic, change of direction and avoiding the point of the post altogether that I have seen yet. Topped of with an honorble mention for the "I know you are but what am I" approach.

Loundmouth....I salute you for posting that remark.

Loudmouth said:

I don't think you realize that there was not a recent global flood, that the Earth is not 6,000 years old, and that species were not separately created.

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Those things were not asked for by specific prayer. It's not even
a fair comparison.

What you are doing is taking a prayer from a person who obviously
knew how to fight battles but probably did not know that the earth
rotated around the sun. They ask God for the sun and moon to stop.
(Basically a request for more time to catch their enemies) So God
answers the request.

Then you complain that the bible isn't correct because it says the
prayer was answered. Or that somehow God got it wrong. Or that
it means the sun and moon were actually stopped. (Which they were
not.)

Loudmouth said:

Why does being an "adaptor molecule" disqualify tRNA's as evidence for common ancestry?

The reason that I list tRNA's as evidence is because the anti-codon and amino acid are independent. There is no physical law that requires a tRNA molecule to have a methionine if the anticodon is UAC. None. So why do human and bacterial tRNA's have the same relationship between anticodon and amino acid?

A designer could could mix and match as the designer sees fit. A designer does not explain why all life shares the same codon usage, and why tRNA sequences fall into a nested hierarchy. Why would a designer be forced to make the sequence of tRNA more similar between whale and human than it is between human and fish? Why would a designer be forced to make fish tRNA equidistant between whale and human tRNA? Design answers none of this. Evolution does. That is why this is evidence for evolution.




Until someone shows how the peer reviewed paper falsifies evolution, there is nothing to address. I can't address an argument that has never been made. Perhaps you could tell us how the data falsifies evolution?



There is nothing to ignore. Bare links are not an argument.

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First of all, "datum" is singular whereas "data" is plural. So your question should be: "Perhaps you could tell us how the data falsify evolution?" I mention this because this grammar point is tested on the GMAT, and who knows–you might want to take the GMAT at one point.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the crux of your argument. You claim that common ancestry causes nested hierarchies. You have never, as far as I know, provided any evidence to support that claim. Then you say something like: Since x and y form part of a nested hierarchy, they must share a common ancestor.

As I have pointed out before, this is a logical fallacy. Even if we assume that you're right and that common ancestry does cause nested hierarchies, we cannot assume that this is the only cause. Designers can create nested hierarchies, too.

Your standard argument against that is something like: Why would an omnipotent designer created nested hierarchies?

First of all, no one who is not omniscient can answer that question. Furthermore, it's a bad question. The question should be: Is it possible for creators to create nested hierarchies? Before we can answer that we should ask: What's the difference between a nested and a non-nested hierarchy? Do people ever create nested hierarchies?

The answers to these questions are contained at A Summary of the Principles of Hierarchy Theory wherein we read:

...nested hierarchies involve levels which consist of, and contain, lower levels. Non-nested hierarchies are more general in that the requirement of containment of lower levels is relaxed. For example, an army consists of a collection of soldiers and is made up of them. Thus an army is a nested hierarchy. On the other hand, the general at the top of a military command does not consist of his soldiers and so the military command is a non-nested hierarchy with regard to the soldiers in the army. Pecking orders and a food chains are also non-nested hierarchies.

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So the answer to our questions are as follows: The only difference between nested and non-nested hierarchies is that nested hierarchies consist of and contain lower levels. An army, for example, consists of and contains lower levels. So yes, people do create nested hierarchies all the time.

Why, therefore, should we find it difficult to believe that a intelligent being could do the same if he or she wanted to do so?

WisdomSpy said:

Loudmouth posted:
"If design were true, then we would expect every genome to be littered with clear and obvious signs of tampering between species."

I totally agree... however, we would need to be examining the genomes right after the original creation, not thousands or more years afterwards. Evolution has added way too much confusing stuff since then. And who says that genetic recombination would not be the intent of the designer--a designer who loves diversity--a designer who knows the value of variation and adaptation? Quit making a straw man of the design/creation paradigm.

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So, have you done the math and determined if mutation rates and evolution can produce what we see today from an artificially created genome in a few thousand years?

WisdomSpy said:

SFS posted: "First, your gene-length research shows nothing at all about any process relevant to gene length. All it shows is that most coding indels are deleterious and will be removed by natural selection."

Absolutely not! That is a complete twisting of the facts, and a naked assertion. Please demonstrate by referencing observational evidence of processes in action within cells that could be described as natural selection. Did you miss Gould's rebuttal of this idea? You and Dawkins keep believing in something which has no credible evidence. I complement you on the strength of your faith.

What you should have said was; "most indels are deleterious and I sure hope that somebody someday proves how natural selection could have operated within cells to clean up the outrageous mess they normally leave."

It's time to recon with the fact that the advertised "engine of evolution" (mutation and NS)is not a magic genie to fall back on whenever confounding data arises. You have to prove its competence to operate within cells, not simply between living organisms. You have to demonstrate, using non-speculative observations, how it works at the level of DNA sequences.

What provides the selection pressure? What magical force mysteriously knows what to purge and what to hold onto--within the genome? It's all quite absurd, you know. Genomes are not like the Serengeti. Genes don't compete with introns or junk DNA for survival or for sustenance. When cells replicate their DNA, they replicate it all, with near-perfect accuracy. No magical wizard is there sorting one DNA sequence from the other.

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If a mutation reduces the fitness of an individual, then it will be selected against in a population. The process involved is that the individual either will not reproduce, or will reproduce with a reduced frequency. Genetic recombination assures that useful alleles will undergo positive selection, unless the gene in question is tightly linked to a deleterious gene. Therefore, while some individuals with useful adaptions may not reproduce and pass on their genes because of other deleterious alleles they carry, other individuals will. I don't see why you are having issues with this mechanism.

WisdomSpy said:

I reiterate: What should be the most common length of gene produced by naturalistic processes, either during abiogenesis or by subsequent gene mutation (specifically; insertions, deletions, any form of splicing, etc.--anything that risks creation of random frame reading)?

The answer has been published in at least one science article that I am aware of. And it directly addresses the conundrum regarding expected and observed gene length frequencies. It offers numerous hypotheses which are then back-tested on the data. What do you think the highest percent correlation was? I asked it before: What percentage would you consider a passing grade in anyone's classroom? Someone please venture an opinion as to what percentage correlation with the evidence would cause you to accept the hypothesis as legitimate... then we will look at the study. This could be fun.

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I found this paper with a quick Google search:
Gene length and expression level shape genomic novelties

Gene length and expression level shape genomic novelties
Vladislav Grishkevich and Itai Yanai

Technion - Israel Institute of Technology
↵* Corresponding author; email: yanai@technion.ac.il
Abstract

Gene duplication and alternative splicing are important mechanisms in the production of genomic novelties. Previous work has shown that a gene's family size and the number of splice variants it produces are inversely related, although the underlying reason is not well understood. Here, we report that gene length and expression level together explain this relationship. We found that gene lengths correlate with both gene duplication and alternative splicing: longer genes are less likely to produce duplicates and more likely to exhibit alternative splicing. We show that gene length is a dynamic property, increasing with evolutionary time - due in part to the insertions of transposable elements - and decreasing following partial gene duplications. However, gene length alone does not account for the relationship between alternative splicing and gene duplication. A gene's expression level appears both to impose a strong constraint on its length and to restrict gene duplications. Furthermore, high gene expression promotes alternative splicing, in particular for long genes, and alternatively, short genes with low expression levels have large gene families. Our analysis of the human and mouse genomes shows that gene length and expression level are primary genic properties that together account for the relationship between gene duplication and alternative splicing and bias the origin of novelties in the genome.

Received November 18, 2013.
Accepted June 23, 2014.
Published by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press

Zosimus said:

First of all, "datum" is singular whereas "data" is plural. So your question should be: "Perhaps you could tell us how the data falsify evolution?" I mention this because this grammar point is tested on the GMAT, and who knows–you might want to take the GMAT at one point.

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There is more than one comparison of tRNA's, and there are molecules other than tRNA's that are being compared. The correct usage is the plural form.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the crux of your argument. You claim that common ancestry causes nested hierarchies. You have never, as far as I know, provided any evidence to support that claim.

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We have directly observed that evolution produces a nested hierarchy. We know from direct observation that mutations are random and blind with respect to both fitness and species. All known mechanisms of evolution will cause species to diverge through lineage specific mutations. This necessarily will produce a nested hierarchy.

Then you say something like: Since x and y form part of a nested hierarchy, they must share a common ancestor.

As I have pointed out before, this is a logical fallacy. Even if we assume that you're right and that common ancestry does cause nested hierarchies, we cannot assume that this is the only cause. Designers can create nested hierarchies, too.

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Nowhere in the theory of evolution does it say that it is the only cause. All theories are tentative. All scientific theories use the same inference. If you claim that testing hypotheses through observations is a logical fallacy, as you are doing here, then you are claiming that all of science is a logical fallacy. Good luck with that.

Your standard argument against that is something like: Why would an omnipotent designer created nested hierarchies?

First of all, no one who is not omniscient can answer that question. Furthermore, it's a bad question. The question should be: Is it possible for creators to create nested hierarchies? Before we can answer that we should ask: What's the difference between a nested and a non-nested hierarchy? Do people ever create nested hierarchies?

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People DO NOT create nested hierarchies, as I have explained over and over and over and over. Human designs do not fall into nested hierarchies. Cars do not fall into nested hierarchies. Computer programs do not fall into matched nested hierarchies. For example, a web browser on an Apple and a PC will look almost identical from outward appearances, yet they differ drastically at the level of machine code. Not so for life. Even more importantly, when humans design organisms (i.e. genetically modified organisms) they regularly violate a nested hierarchy. For example, the Glofish has an exact copy of a jellyfish gene, something that should not be there if that gene evolved in vertebrate fish.

So the answer to our questions are as follows: The only difference between nested and non-nested hierarchies is that nested hierarchies consist of and contain lower levels. An army, for example, consists of and contains lower levels. So yes, people do create nested hierarchies all the time.

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Let's see how that works. Lower levels of the Air Force and Navy use exactly the same planes while other lower levels in each division do not. That is a clear violation of a nested hierarchy. You have divisions of the Air Force and Navy that share a feature while those lower divisions do not share the same features within each branch of service.

Why, therefore, should we find it difficult to believe that a intelligent being could do the same if he or she wanted to do so?

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Why would an intelligent being go to the extra effort of making life look like it evolved when it is not necessary to do so? Do humans go through the extra effort to make sure that only one lineage of car has an airbag, and then find completely different adaptations for safety in all other lineages of cars? No. Why would humans do that? Humans mix and match features in designs where it makes functional sense, not to make it look like cars evolved from a common ancestor.

WisdomSpy said:

I reiterate: What should be the most common length of gene produced by naturalistic processes, either during abiogenesis or by subsequent gene mutation (specifically; insertions, deletions, any form of splicing, etc.--anything that risks creation of random frame reading)?

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For abiogenesis, the process may not have even needed DNA genes that are translated into protein.

For evolution, gene length can vary greatly as both truncations of genes and extension of genes are produced by mutations and pass through natural selection.

The answer has been published in at least one science article that I am aware of. And it directly addresses the conundrum regarding expected and observed gene length frequencies. It offers numerous hypotheses which are then back-tested on the data. What do you think the highest percent correlation was? I asked it before: What percentage would you consider a passing grade in anyone's classroom? Someone please venture an opinion as to what percentage correlation with the evidence would cause you to accept the hypothesis as legitimate... then we will look at the study. This could be fun.

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Expected gene length frequencies for what? Abiogenesis? Myosin genes? Antibody genes? Hemoglobin genes? What exactly?

JacksBratt said:

Check this portion of an explanatary paper;

Psalm 19:6 is a passage that often is cited as another example of Scripture teaching pre-Copernican astronomy. In this verse, the Sun is said to move, rather than the Earth, and therefore is said by some to imply that the Sun revolves around the Earth. There are many other verses in the Bible that talk about the Sun “going down” or “rising up.” This hardly should be surprising, however, since events in the Bible often are written in accommodative or “phenomenal” language—i.e., the language used to express phenomena as man sees them. Even today we teach our children that “the Sun rises in the east and sets in the west,” and astronomers and navigators use the Earth as a fixed point for purposes of simple observation, expressing distances and directions in relation to it. The weatherman on the evening news often will state that the Sun is going to “rise” at a certain time the following morning and “set” at a certain time the following evening. Why does no one accuse him of scientific error? Because we all are perfectly aware of, and understand, the Copernican view of the solar system, and because we likewise understand that our weatherman is using “phenomenal” language.

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"Second, I say that, as you know, the Council of Trent forbids the interpretation of the Scriptures in a way contrary to the common agreement of the holy Fathers. Now if your Reverence will read, not merely the Fathers, but modern commentators on Genesis, the Psalms, Ecclesiastes, and Joshua, you will discover that all agree in interpreting them literally as teaching that the Sun is in the heavens and revolves round the Earth with immense speed and that the Earth is very distant from the heavens, at the centre of the universe, and motionless. Consider, then in your prudence, whether the Church can support that the Scriptures should be interpreted in a manner contrary to that of the holy Fathers and of all modern commentators, both Latin and Greek…."--Cardinal Bellarmine, 1615

The earth is on an orbit. A path. And it will not be moved from that path.

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An orbit IS A MOVED PATH. The Earth is trying to move in a straight line. The Sun MOVES THE EARTH FROM A STRAIGHT LINE PATH. The Sun pulls on the Earth and moves it.

Also, the oribt of the Earth changes with every path around the Sun. It is one of the features of the Milankovitch cycles. The eccentricity of the Earth's orbit changes over time between nearly circular to more elliptical.

Milankovitch cycles - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

So you have everything wrong.

It is imovable.

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The Sun is moving the Earth as we speak. The plates under our feet are moving as we speak. Jupiter also moves the Earth as it travels through the Solar System. The Moon moves the Earth about a barycenter. The Moon causes the Earth to bulge, and makes that bulge move across the Earth. The Earth is even moved by the supermassive blackhole at the center of the galaxy. The Earth is moved all about.

WisdomSpy said:

Absolutely not! That is a complete twisting of the facts, and a naked assertion. Please demonstrate by referencing observational evidence of processes in action within cells that could be described as natural selection.

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Why would natural selection have to happen "within the cell"? That makes no sense.

Let's use hemophilia as our example here. Hemophilia is a deleterious and dominant genetic disease. It only takes a single copy of the disease allele in order to suffer from the disease. It turns out that children are born with the disease, even though neither of their parents has the disease. They have even confirmed through DNA tests that they are the real parents. This means that the mutation that caused hemophilia in these children is a brand new mutation. Nothing stops this mutation from occuring. Nothing would stop this mutation from being passed on to that child's offspring. These mutations have been happening since humans have been on this planet.

So why isn't hemophilia that common? What is stopping the hemophilia allele from being as widespread as the non-disease allele? Why aren't 3/4 of all humans suffering from hemophilia? How do you explain this?

What you should have said was; "most indels are deleterious and I sure hope that somebody someday proves how natural selection could have operated within cells to clean up the outrageous mess they normally leave."

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Why would something inside of cells need to remove deleterious indels in order for natural selection to work?

What provides the selection pressure?

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Darwin figured it out 150 years ago. Perhaps you should read up.

Literature.org - The Online Literature Library

Is there unlimited food? Does every offspring survive to have offspring of their own? Does every individual in a population have the same number of offspring?

First of all, "datum" is singular whereas "data" is plural. So your question should be: "Perhaps you could tell us how the data falsify evolution?" I mention this because this grammar point is tested on the GMAT, and who knows–you might want to take the GMAT at one point.

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There is no consistent rule in English that "data" should be treated as a plural. See here, here and here. I'm skeptical that GMAT actually tests this.

ETA: good, Safari still works.

By way, am I the only one who finds this site to be increasingly broken? I can't read posts here at all using Chrome, and now I can't edit my post using Firefox.

sfs said:

By way, am I the only one who finds this site to be increasingly broken? I can't read posts here at all using Chrome, and now I can't edit my post using Firefox.

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Definitely increasingly broken. Sometimes the quote feature works, sometimes it doesn't at all, and other times it borks the quotes. I have the best success with Safari and IE.

WisdomSpy said:

SFS posted: "First, your gene-length research shows nothing at all about any process relevant to gene length. All it shows is that most coding indels are deleterious and will be removed by natural selection."

Absolutely not! That is a complete twisting of the facts, and a naked assertion. Please demonstrate by referencing observational evidence of processes in action within cells that could be described as natural selection.

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All genes act within cells -- where else would they act? Mutations that damage critical genes cause the organism to die before reproducing. Mutations to the dystrophin gene, for example, cause males to die young. That's why nearly a third of all cases of DMD are caused by new mutations: selection is highly efficient at weeding out the old ones.

Did you miss Gould's rebuttal of this idea?

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Gould never rebutted the idea of natural selection. You continue to demonstrate a near-total failure to understand evolutionary biology.

What you should have said was; "most indels are deleterious and I sure hope that somebody someday proves how natural selection could have operated within cells to clean up the outrageous mess they normally leave."

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Most of us are aware that Darwin and Wallace already figured out that particular puzzle.

What provides the selection pressure? What magical force mysteriously knows what to purge and what to hold onto--within the genome? It's all quite absurd, you know. Genomes are not like the Serengeti. Genes don't compete with introns or junk DNA for survival or for sustenance. When cells replicate their DNA, they replicate it all, with near-perfect accuracy. No magical wizard is there sorting one DNA sequence from the other.

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I asked you this before: what do you think happens to mutations that kill their hosts. Are they passed on or not? This is really not a hard question -- you should be able to answer it.

You also haven't answered my other question: Did you ever read the article I linked to about the sources of new genes?