The curious case of dog evolution

[Agonaces of Susa]

Because it is untestable (anything claiming to be a theory must be testable) it also flails to allow the making of predictions.

Darwinist scientists claim otherwise. They say ID and Darwinism are both testable.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." -- Charles R. Darwin, naturalist, Novemer 24th 1859

"Well, it [Intelligent Design] could come about in the folowing way, it could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilisation ... [came] to a very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility, an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe." -- Richard Dawkins, atheist preacher, 2008

Here is a test you can do:

"A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe." -- Fred Hoyle, cosmologist, 1983

Technically legitimate scientists call it unsupported, in that there is nothing to support ID as a workable theory, no evidence is just the tip of that particular iceberg.

Technically legitimate scientists say otherwise.

Crick, F.H.C., and Orgel, L.E., Directed Panspermia, Icarus, Volume 19, Pages 341-346, 1973

Axe, D.D., Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds, Journal of Molecular Biology, Volume 341, Issue 5, Pages 1295-1315, Aug 2004

Behe, M.J., and Snoke, D.W., Simulating Evolution By Gene Duplication of Protein Features that Require Multiple Amino Acid Residues, Protein Science, Volume 13, Number 10, Pages 2651-2664, Oct 2004

Lönnig, W-E., Dynamic Genomes Morphological Stasis and the Origin of Irreducible Complexity, Dynamical Genetics, Pages 101-119, 2005

Couvreur, P., and Vauthier, C., Nanotechnology; Intelligent Design to Treat Complex Diseases, Pharmaceutical Research, Volume 23, Number 7, Jul 2006

Meyer, S.C., The Origin Of Biological Information And The Higher Taxonomic Categories, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Volume 117, Number 2, Pages 213-239, May 2007

Marks, R.J., and Dembski, W.A., Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success, Systems Man and Cybernetics: Part A Systems and Humans, IEEE Transactions, Volume 39, Issue 5, Pages 1051-1061, Sep 2009

False. (and a rather silly statement) To be testable a theory has to lend itself to naturalistic observation and/or to laboratory analysis.

What observation or experiment have you done to demonstrate that self-replicating organisms, complex codes, and machines can be generated by chance and random mutation?

The theory that disease is caused by microorganisms is testable because we can collect suspect microorganisms and watch their interaction with human or animal test subjects. The theory that disease is caused by invisible and intangible alien parasites clinging to our bodies is not testable because…well how do you find something imaginary?

We're not talking about that.

Which can be observed in the form of intermediate steps and changing functionality of your example of flagellum adaptability.

What intermediate steps? The imaginary ones which have never been observed?

Which cannot be tested as it is unobservable and no evidence for such meddling intelligence exists

Do you claim that human beings are not intelligent agents?

Because ID has been shown in court of law to be nothing more than thinly disguised religion.

It doesn't matter what the courts say. Courts do not detemine the truth. Rather they determine that evolutionists can't win the debate in the court of public opinion and have to go tattle to Big Brother that their government enforced monopoly on education is being threatened.

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

The non-material aspect (if such exists) is not.

I agree that Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Flow, black holes and gravitons are untestable. Yet scientists still have faith in them.

Scientists don't claim that non-material events are testable.

Why do they believe in Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Dark Flow?

Only ID proponents do and few of them are scientists.

That is absurd.

See peer-reviewed scientists and PhDs you are deliberately ignoring posted above.

So, he agrees that species do change, since they do not always retain an advantage.

Everyone agrees that species change. We aren't talking about change. We're talking about the origin of species via random mutation and natural selection.

"Well, evolution is a kind of funny word. It depends on how one defines it. If it means simply change over time, even the most rock-ribbed fundamentalist knows that the history of the Earth has changed, that there's been change over time. If you define evolution precisely though to mean the common descent of all life on Earth from a single ancestor via undirected mutation and natural selection, that's textbook definition of Neo-Darwinism, biologists of the first rank have real questions. -- Paul A. Nelson, philosopher, 2008

there is no such thing as "Darwinian" atheism.

Oh really?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vuVSIG265b4

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

Except in every single case it has been shown that they can be.

"There is no unintelligent processes known to science that can generate codes and machines." -- Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon, February 5th 2009

 

[metherion]

"There is no unintelligent processes known to science that can generate codes and machines." -- Michael Egnor, neurosurgeon, February 5th 2009

Oh yes, your neurosurgeon who hasn’t studied evolution. The same one you still haven’t shown to have a significant knowledge of statistical thermodynamics or advanced biochemistry.

Also, he is WRONG on one count because ‘unintelligent processes known to man’ CAN generate RNA.

Secondly, he also says “known to science”. Which means it is possible there is an UNKNOWN process.

And furthermore, DNA can certainly generate MORE codes from the code already present, so the quote isn’t even APPLICABLE because the original point that was being talked about was relevant to Darwin’s qoute about series of small changes in organs!

Here is a test you can do:

"A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe." -- Fred Hoyle, cosmologist, 1983

And this is COMPLETE bull excrement because junk parts in a junkyard do not have complex chemical affinities that can spontaneously or with naturally occurring catalysts assemble completely different structures. On the other hand, compounds of carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, phosphorous and other DO. Utter failure.

What intermediate steps? The imaginary ones which have never been observed?

The ones that can be observed to be homologous in other related organisms.

Of course, throwing hands up in the air and claiming ‘some intelligent agent’ must have caused it is much easier.

It doesn't matter what the courts say. Courts do not detemine the truth. Rather they determine that evolutionists can't win the debate in the court of public opinion and have to go tattle to Big Brother that their government enforced monopoly on education is being threatened.

HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA! Oh, that’s a good one.

You seem to have forgotten the context of the trial and what happened in it. Do you remember the perjury of the man who bought the copies of “Pandas and People”? Cdesign Proponentists? The utter failure of most of the intelligent design “experts” to show up or testify under oath? The violation of separation of church and state? Or the part about how the school district’s lawyers told them they’d get sued if they tried something like that? How about the teachers refusing to read the statement because their oaths said they couldn’t knowingly teach false information? No, ID are the people trying to use courts to weasel their way through legal means because they haven’t got a scientific leg to stand on.

Oh, and by the way, science isn’t determined by popular opinion. Thank goodness. After all, in the West it was popular opinion for a long time that the earth was flat. Galileo. That diseases were caused by demons. That bleeding was an effective form of medical treatment. That phlogiston and the ether were real. Who overturned those? The experts. That’s why science is a meritocracy. Ideas with merit are put through testing and review. Those with merit pass and are part of science. Those without any die a bloody death.

But then again, you seem to be a proponent of the whole ‘conspiracy of science’ thing. So don’t trust the scientists. Trust the companies that hire people who deal in evolution and pay them money to use evolution. The pharmaceutical companies who deal with anti-biotic resistant drug cures. The ones that research genetic diseases. The ones who... you get the idea. Unless you’re saying that those companies are literally throwing away billions upon billions if not trillions of dollars KNOWING hiring people with a method that doesn’t work, using methods that are wrong, producing no results, AND are hiring in secret people who do it the right way.

Why do they believe in Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and Dark Flow?

They aren’t beliefs. They’re hypothesis. Big difference.

"Well, evolution is a kind of funny word. It depends on how one defines it. If it means simply change over time, even the most rock-ribbed fundamentalist knows that the history of the Earth has changed, that there's been change over time. If you define evolution precisely though to mean the common descent of all life on Earth from a single ancestor via undirected mutation and natural selection, that's textbook definition of Neo-Darwinism, biologists of the first rank have real questions. -- Paul A. Nelson, philosopher, 2008

Yes, by all means, quote a philosopher who doesn’t even name names of ‘biologists of the first rank’. Don’t pay any attention to the mountains of Ph.Ds with MORE mountains of papers of supporting evidence, go with the people who aren’t even in SCIENCE much less the correct field.

Oh really?

And you show a clip from EXPELLED?! EXPELLED?! Really, now, are you even trying to find credible sources... at all?

Metherion

EDIT: I am rather busy with grad schools apps and though I would like to I cannot read all the articles, even if they are all available (some I suspect are not available for free online), however, the Stephen C Meyer article was the subject of a huge controversy, was disavowed by the journal, and the AAAS released a statement on the utter lack of credible evidence for ID. So it might not be the best example, since it was disavowed by the very journal it was published in.

 

[laconicstudent]

quotes from people, regardless of their credentials, are meaningless appeals to authority. If you are going to quote anything, lets quote peer-reviewed research. Honestly, we should really just stop responding to quote mining in its entirety.

I honestly don't care if Dawkins woke up tomorrow and declared himself a YEC, he would still be wrong.


And lol at the Expelled clip. Can we at least find a video that wasn't put together by directors who had to resort to stealing microbiology animations from Harvard and doesn't resort to quite so many ad hominems?

 

[shernren]

Darwinist scientists claim otherwise. They say ID and Darwinism are both testable.

"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." -- Charles R. Darwin, naturalist, Novemer 24th 1859

"Well, it [Intelligent Design] could come about in the folowing way, it could be that at some earlier time somewhere in the universe a civilisation ... [came] to a very high level of technology and designed a form of life that they seeded onto perhaps this planet. Now that is a possibility, an intriguing possibility, and I suppose it's possible that you might find evidence for that if you look at the details of biochemistry and molecular biology you might find a signature of some sort of designer. And that designer could well be a higher intelligence from elsewhere in the universe." -- Richard Dawkins, atheist preacher, 2008

Here is a test you can do:

"A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe." -- Fred Hoyle, cosmologist, 1983

Technically legitimate scientists say otherwise.

Crick, F.H.C., and Orgel, L.E., Directed Panspermia, Icarus, Volume 19, Pages 341-346, 1973

Axe, D.D., Estimating the Prevalence of Protein Sequences Adopting Functional Enzyme Folds, Journal of Molecular Biology, Volume 341, Issue 5, Pages 1295-1315, Aug 2004

Behe, M.J., and Snoke, D.W., Simulating Evolution By Gene Duplication of Protein Features that Require Multiple Amino Acid Residues, Protein Science, Volume 13, Number 10, Pages 2651-2664, Oct 2004

Lönnig, W-E., Dynamic Genomes Morphological Stasis and the Origin of Irreducible Complexity, Dynamical Genetics, Pages 101-119, 2005

Couvreur, P., and Vauthier, C., Nanotechnology; Intelligent Design to Treat Complex Diseases, Pharmaceutical Research, Volume 23, Number 7, Jul 2006

Meyer, S.C., The Origin Of Biological Information And The Higher Taxonomic Categories, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, Volume 117, Number 2, Pages 213-239, May 2007

Marks, R.J., and Dembski, W.A., Conservation of Information in Search: Measuring the Cost of Success, Systems Man and Cybernetics: Part A Systems and Humans, IEEE Transactions, Volume 39, Issue 5, Pages 1051-1061, Sep 2009

Well guess what?

It's irrelevant who I quote. All that matters is the evidence and the facts.

I love the smell of creationists contradicting themselves in the morning; it smells like victory.

 

[Agonaces of Susa]

If you are going to quote anything, lets quote peer-reviewed research.

Why? So you can deliberately ignore it?

http://www.christianforums.com/t7426348-7/#post53798131

 

[TheBlueBlurr]

Still throwing ''Darwinist'' and ''Darwinism'' around like it means something other than A word some fundies made up?

 

[gluadys]

Here is a test you can do:

"A junkyard contains all the bits and pieces of a Boeing 747, dismembered and in disarray. A whirlwind happens to blow through the yard. What is the chance that after its passage a fully assembled 747, ready to fly, will be found standing there? So small as to be negligible, even if a tornado were to blow through enough junkyards to fill the whole Universe." -- Fred Hoyle, cosmologist, 1983

You could but it would have nothing to do with evolution. Hoyle was a physicist who backed the wrong theory on cosmology (steady-state not big bang). In fact, he was the person who originated the term "big bang" as a mockery. If he was wrong in his own specialty, what would make him reliable outside his field?

I agree that Dark Matter, Dark Energy, Dark Flow, black holes and gravitons are untestable. Yet scientists still have faith in them.

Each of these concepts has been proposed because of their testable, material effects. So it is incorrect to say they are not testable.

Everyone agrees that species change. We aren't talking about change. We're talking about the origin of species via random mutation and natural selection.

Which comes about through species change under circumstances which lead to speciation.

Oh really?

Yeah, really.

 

[The Barbarian]

It doesn't matter what the courts say. Courts do not detemine the truth. Rather they determine that evolutionists can't win the debate in the court of public opinion and have to go tattle to Big Brother that their government enforced monopoly on education is being threatened.

In fact, what was the turning point for the trial was the admission under oath by IDer Michael Behe, that ID is a science in the same sense that astrology is a science.

And now, there is no such thing as atheistic Darwinism. It's a contradiction in terms, since Darwin suggested that God created the first organisms. (last sentence in The Origin of Species.

Yes, we know that Stein's movie presented it otherwise. But as you might know, he banned any scientists from his movie if they accepted evolution and believed in God. "No intelligence allowed." He really meant it, I guess.

 

[The Barbarian]

You could but it would have nothing to do with evolution. Hoyle was a physicist who backed the wrong theory on cosmology (steady-state not big bang). In fact, he was the person who originated the term "big bang" as a mockery. If he was wrong in his own specialty, what would make him reliable outside his field?

Hoyle also thought that insects are more intelligent than we are, but are hiding it from us.

Smart guy, but he had a few really, really weird ideas.

 

[Faith.Man]

The Primordial Soup

Any discussion on the origin is life is not complete without considering the primordial soup. There is no direct evidence of the soup’s existence, and on purely theoretical ground it should not exist. If it did exist, science can say with certainty that it was a very localized existence. That is it may have been a small puddle, near a volcano, right at the entrance of a cave, near an ocean or a river. The primitive ocean was definitely not the primordial soup. The ocean could not possibly serve as the soup because it would dilute the biological precursors, and it would not protect the precursors from ultraviolet light.

Many authors have criticized the concept of the soup. Its resilience in biology text books is quite amazing given that so few scientists believe that it ever existed.

"Accordingly, Abelson(1966), Hull(1960), Sillen(1965), and many others have criticized the hypothesis that the primitive ocean, unlike the contemporary ocean, was a "thick soup" containing all of the micro molecules required for the next stage of molecular evolution. The concept of a primitive "thick soup" or "primordial broth" is one of the most persistent ideas at the same time that is most strongly contraindicated by thermodynamic reasoning and by lack of experimental support." - Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose on page 37 in Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life.

"the primitive ocean was steadily irradiated with a relatively high dose of solar ultraviolet light . . . A steady irradiation of a rather homogeneous solution results in degradative rather than synthetic reactions" Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose in Molecular Evolution and the Origin of Life.

"Based on the foregoing geochemical assessment, we conclude that both in the atmosphere and in the various water basins of the primitive earth, many destructive interactions would have so vastly diminished, if not altogether consumed, essential precursor chemicals, that chemical evolution rates would have been negligible. The soup would have been too dilute for polymerization to occur. Even local ponds for concentrating soup ingredients would have met with the same problem.

Furthermore, no geological evidence indicates an organic soup, even a small organic pond, ever existed on this planet. It is becoming clear that however life began on earth, the usual conceived notion that life emerged from an oceanic soup of organic chemicals is a most implausible hypothesis. We may therefore with fairness call this scenario the myth of the prebiotic soup." - Thaxton, Bradley, Olsen on page 66 of The Mystery of Life's Origin.

“Contrary to earlier suggestions that essentially all stages of chemical evolution occurred in the open seas, it is now generally accepted that the concentration of the soup was probably too small for efficient synthesis......”- Nissenbaum, Kenyon, Oro, in the “Journal of Molecular Evolution,” 1975.

Furthermore, any organic compounds not destroyed by UV light would react to form an insoluble polymer. This reaction known as the Maillard reaction would remove most of the organic molecules in the soup making them unavailable for chemical evolution.

“ The rapid formation of this insoluble polymeric material would have removed the bulk of the dissolved organic carbon from the primitive oceans and would thus have prevented the formation of the organic soup.” - Nissenbaum, Kenyon, Oro, Journal of Molecular Evolution, 1975.

In summary: 1) It is extremely difficult to create information and knowledge before life exists. 2) Excessive investigator interference is required to make biological subunits polymerize. 3) The prebiotic synthesis of the subunits required for DNA and RNA (especially ribose and cytosine) presents some very serious challenges. 4) It is unlikely that any single chemical can possess the required knowledge to replicate, because it must not only know how to replicate, but it must also know how to use an energy source to drive its own replication. 5) Any favorable environment for chemical evolution would have been highly localized to a small puddle. 6) Because of the localized nature of the soup and the low concentration of biological precursors, any robust self replicating system (i.e. Life) would need the ability to synthesize many of the chemicals required for self replication. Any self replicating system lacking this capability would not be able to survive much less replicate.

Taken together the evidence suggests that the first living thing was not a self replicating molecule, but rather a system of chemicals that contained the knowledge required to replicate, and the ability to couple this replication to an energy source. Furthermore, the scarcity of chemicals like ribose, adenine, and cytosine imply that for this system to survive, it must have been able to synthesize many if not all such chemicals from more abundant chemicals. All of these factors imply that the first living thing was not that much simpler than life as it exists today. It may have even been more complex.

The primordial soup is often envisioned as an evaporating pond next to the ocean. The tides and waves continually bring new chemicals into the pond, the sun evaporates the water concentrating the chemicals, and the chemicals polymerize into things like RNA molecules. Thaxton discussed this myth at length in his out of print book: The Mystery of Life's Origin. The basic problem is that the uv light destroys biological molecules faster than it synthesizes them. And the salt in the ocean once concentrated will prevent the polymerization of organic molecules (salt causes these molecules to precipitate out of solution so that they are no longer available for polymerization). The primordial soup is a myth - it never existed.

From the website linked below.


The Primordial Soup Myth

 

[Papias]

[yawn]

No original thought, just a giant cut and paste of off topic PRATTs from a error-packed creationist website..... [/yawn]


Papias

 

[shernren]

I sure believe in primordial soup: every once in a while I go to a cheap diner and what I ordered often turns out to be a big bowl of steaming something that sure tastes as if it was around since the dawn of time.

 

[Willtor]

I sure believe in primordial soup: every once in a while I go to a cheap diner and what I ordered often turns out to be a big bowl of steaming something that sure tastes as if it was around since the dawn of time.

Seriously.

When I go to such a diner, I usually like to get the primordial "turkey" sandwich since it isn't clear that there's anything in it that ever approached biological.

 

[BigBadWlf]

The Primordial Soup

Any discussion on the origin is life is not complete without considering the primordial soup. There is no direct evidence of the soup’s existence, and on purely theoretical ground it should not exist. If it did exist, science can say with certainty that it was a very localized existence. That is it may have been a small puddle, near a volcano, right at the entrance of a cave, near an ocean or a river. The primitive ocean was definitely not the primordial soup. The ocean could not possibly serve as the soup because it would dilute the biological precursors,

Considering such places as black smokers and various hot spots exist in modern oceans as hosts for unique primitive life forms I don’t think it is that difficult to imagine.

and it would not protect the precursors from ultraviolet light.

Why don’t you go look up exactly how far ultra violet light penetrates water

Many authors have criticized the concept of the soup. Its resilience in biology text books is quite amazing given that so few scientists believe that it ever existed.

It seems to be universally accepted by scientists who study this particular field

"Accordingly, Abelson(1966), Hull(1960), Sillen(1965), and many others have criticized the hypothesis that the primitive ocean,

and what do modern researchers say?