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Oh, and I just realized - your argument about the ostrich being too heavy to fly is complete nonsense. Roadrunners can't fly either, and they're much, much lighter.
Do road runners have nonfunctional wings?
EDIT: Actually, I did a little digging and it turns out that roadrunners can fly...barely. Their wings aren't well built for it, and they can only do it for less than a minute, tops. So what would you call them? Half-functional?
in a court room
your honor this man is untrustworthy.
Unless you want fallacy stamped on your forehead. lol
Creationists continue to claim there are no transitional fossils (which is not true) and will ignore any evidence presented to them regarding the same. So, what about the DNA evidence that supports evolution? And, what about Francis Collins (a christian) who led the Human Genome Project and his stance below?
http://www.astro.umd.edu/~miller/teaching/astr380f09/slides08.pdf
Francis Collins: The evidence is overwhelming. And it is becoming more and more robust down to the details almost by the day, especially because we have this ability now to use the study of DNA as a digital record of the way Darwins theory has played out over the course of long periods of time.
Darwin could hardly have imagined that there would turn out to be such strong proof of his theory because he didnt know about DNA - but we have that information. I would say we are as solid in claiming the truth of evolution as we are in claiming the truth of the germ theory. It is so profoundly well-documented in multiple different perspectives, all of which give you a consistent view with enormous explanatory power that make it the central core of biology. Trying to do biology without evolution would be like trying to do physics without mathematics
I'm curious how you would categorize the responses you've gotten thus far?
Well and quite predictably, many responses from those who don't support evolution, have gone off in different directions in a clear attempt to muddy the waters and avoid discussion of the DNA evidence.
Have you heard anything yet that you would categorize as an actual "argument" per se?
I'm not going to re-read the entire thread, but most of the discussion either went back to discussing the fossils or where a bunch of quote mines to muddy the waters and not delve into the DNA evidence.
What about you, has anyone brought up a sound argument against the DNA evidence supporting evolution?
No. The reason that I asked you is that I've tried your approach before, but I've personally yet to hear anything that I would call an 'argument' against the DNA evidence, let alone a 'good' one. Your experience of muddying the waters is typical, but any sign of an actual argument has always been lacking IMO.
Denial processes tend to evoke two basic responses, regardless of the topic in my experience. Deflection from the topic is first one, and anger that is directed at the messenger is typically the other.
I agree.
When a good lawyer has a client who is guilty and there is overwhelming evidence to support the same, what do they do?
They do everything they can to divert the juries attention away from the evidence, try desperately to discredit the evidence and play on emotions whenever it is helpful.
It is also the common debate tactic (when you don't have the evidence on your side) and one poster specifically, takes these tactics to all new levels. It is quite predictable, but still some what amazing to watch the lengths some will go to, to protect their position.
Indeed. FYI, that pattern of behavior seems to be unrelated to the topic under discussion. It tends to be more of a standard operating procedure that is associated with the human self defense mechanism of denial.
Indeed. FYI, that pattern of behavior seems to be unrelated to the topic under discussion. It tends to be more of a standard operating procedure that is associated with the human self defense mechanism of denial.
One thing that keeps me coming back to this site, is trying to figure out the following:
Which people have actually truly convinced themselves what they claim to be true and which one's don't really believe (or have serious doubts) what they are claiming is true, but instead, just have a desire to ruffle feathers and thoroughly enjoy the response they get when they do so.
Maybe I'm a little goofy, but I find it very entertaining and I think I have several posters pegged. Of course, I am willing to admit, I could be wrong.
Because you are taking claims out of context.
Most DNA is still "junk DNA". You will find that those cases where some bit of junk DNA has a function that it is not the whole strand of junk DNA that has a function, only the very start of a string of "junk" or the end of a string of "junk' has function. The interior, which is still the most of those strings is still junk. They could be changed and you would not be affected in the least. In fact you have on the order of 100 mutations from your parents. Most of those mutations are in junk DNA and have no effect at all.
According to Axel Visel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and his colleagues, more variation is controlled by distant-acting enhancers. These are short sequences of DNA, in non-coding regions of the genome, that can influence the activity of the facial genes, even if they are a long way along the DNA strand.Like i have said im not a geneticists but to me they have a lot more work to do and haven't sampled the total gnome. So who knows what they will find. I'm just think that if there are more parts of the gnome that do something even if its a relatively small role then it expands the importance of some sort of activity through more of the gnome.
As time goes on we may find that more and more of the gnome plays an important role in how our features are made and its relation to disease. It may identify us more specifically from other species and make it harder to see how we could have evolved from apes and how other species evolved to become new species. It may show that this is virtually impossible.
So maybe there is more to it that will identify us from apes and other species from each other. It may show that each species is specific and that it is even harder to have mutations affecting change within the gnome to create an new creature. Maybe they will show how there is much more capability with variation than we think. That what evolutionists were saying was a new species that evolved from another species was just the great variation within a species. The process maybe more complicated that has been made out and therefore harder to believe that we evolved from a common ancestor.
You're repeating yourself. Yes, quite a lot of noncoding DNA is functional. Yes, ENCODE added to the catalog of bits that are probably functional. No, it is not news that a lot of noncoding DNA is functional: that's been known for a long time. No, "junk DNA" was never intended to refer to all noncoding DNA. It meant (and still means) sequence whose base composition does not affect the fitness of the organism. Basically, very little has changed in our understanding of noncoding DNA as a result of ENCODE.In fact, because ENCODE hasnt looked at every possible type of cell or every possible protein that sticks to DNA, this figure is almost certainly too low. Birneys estimate is that its out by half. This means that the total proportion of the genome that either creates a protein or sticks to one, is around 20 percent.
To get from 20 to 80 percent, we include all the other elements that ENCODE looked for not just the sequences that have proteins latched onto them, but those that affects how DNA is packaged and those that are transcribed at all. Birney says, [That figure] best coveys the difference between a genome made mostly of dead wood and one that is alive with activity. [Update 5/9/12 23:00: For Birney's own, very measured, take on this, check out his post. ]
That 80 percent covers many classes of sequence that were thought to be essentially functionless. These include introns the parts of a gene that are cut out at the RNA stage, and dont contribute to a proteins manufacture. The idea that introns are definitely deadweight isnt true, says Birney. The same could be said for our many repetitive sequences: small chunks of DNA that have the ability to copy themselves, and are found in large, recurring chains. These are typically viewed as parasites, which duplicate themselves at the expense of the rest of the genome. Or are they?
To me they have a lot more work to do and haven't sampled the total gnome. So who knows what they will find. Im just think that if there are more parts of the gnome that do something even if its a relatively small role then it expands the importance of some sort of activity through more of the gnome.
As time goes on we may find that more and more of the gnome plays an important role in how our features are made and its relation to disease. It may identify us more specifically from other species and make it harder to see how we could have evolved from apes and how other species evolved to become new species. It may show that this is virtually impossible.
According to Axel Visel of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California and his colleagues, more variation is controlled by distant-acting enhancers. These are short sequences of DNA, in non-coding regions of the genome, that can influence the activity of the facial genes, even if they are a long way along the DNA strand.
"Enhancers are part of the 98 per cent of the human genome that is non-coding DNA long thought of as 'junk DNA'," says Visel. "It's increasingly clear that important functions are embedded in this 'junk'."
So maybe there is more to it that will identify us from apes and other species from each other. It may show that each species is specific and that it is even harder to have mutations affecting change within the gnome to create an new creature. The process maybe more complicated that has been made out and therefore harder to believe that we evolved from a common ancestor.
You're repeating yourself. Yes, quite a lot of noncoding DNA is functional. Yes, ENCODE added to the catalog of bits that are probably functional. No, it is not news that a lot of noncoding DNA is functional: that's been known for a long time. No, "junk DNA" was never intended to refer to all noncoding DNA. It meant (and still means) sequence whose base composition does not affect the fitness of the organism. Basically, very little has changed in our understanding of noncoding DNA as a result of ENCODE.
What you're not dealing with are the reasons that scientists think that much of the genome is nonfunctional. We don't just assume that anything we haven't found a function for is junk. (In fact, the original expectation in evolutionary biology was that the entire genome would be functional; junk DNA is certainly not a prediction of evolution.)
One important reason is that the amount of DNA in an organism varies enormously across species. Some amoebas, for example, have many times as much DNA as humans. Sometimes, very similar species will have wildly different amounts. It makes very little sense that such similar creatures should need very different amounts of functional DNA, or that much simpler creatures should need far more DNA than complex ones. This suggests that the functional core is smaller. (Indeed, the parts that we think are functional are more similar across species than the rest.)
A second reason to think that much DNA is nonfunctional is that we know how it got there. Huge swathes of the human genome are relics of various kinds of transposable element, DNA that copies itself into new, random places in the genome. For example, there are 500,000 copies of the Alu element in the human genome, and new copies are still being added to some people's genomes. Thus, we have a known source for new DNA that has nothing to do with serving a function for the organism.
A third reason is that you can test whether DNA is functional by seeing how mutations accumulate in it. Functional DNA will have fewer variants present in the population, and the ones it does have will be less common, since natural selection suppresses them. Based on this kind of test, the best estimate for the fraction of the genome that is really functional is something like 9 to 15 percent. (The study making the estimate was actually one of the ENCODE papers, by the way.)
There are additional reasons that are persuasive to evolutionary biologists but wouldn't matter to creationists, since they reject the framework we're working from.
I'm just wondering why they say 80% has some function or activity. I can appropriate that only a very small amount of the gnome is associated with how proteins are made within our cells. And that some or a lot of the 80% may just be a copying process but there maybe more that is associated with important connections to that process and are vital.
I cannot really comment more than this as i dont fully understand how it all works. Like i said i have to rely on the experts and assess what they say. You have a more detailed understanding and i am certainly not going to pretend i know more than i do. I just suspect that as we find out more we will see that it is more complicated than we think. Like i said when it comes to evolution it is the genetics that will tell the true story as the fossil record and the picture that evolutionist paint sometimes is based on a lot of speculation.
I'm just wondering why they say 80% has some function or activity. I can appropriate that only a very small amount of the gnome is associated with how proteins are made within our cells. And that some or a lot of the 80% may just be a copying process but there maybe more that is associated with important connections to that process and are vital.
In a courtroom, you impeach a witness by showing he is lying and or misleading and they lose credibility.
If you saw in my profile that the Bible mentions biological evolution, you were hallucinating. My profile doesn't say that.
The Gap Theory was an attempt to rescue Biblical literalism that became popular around the beginning of the 20th century, when it had become impossible to ignore the fact that the Earth was much older than a few thousand years. Its popularity was aided by its mention in the notes of the Scofield Reference Bible (the Bible I grew up with, as it happens). (Looking online, I see it originated more than a century earlier than that.) Hebrew scholars that I've heard have said that it lacks any basis in the text.
Impossible or not, death existed long before humans did.
No, let's do talk about the DNA evidence supporting biological evolution, since that's what the OP was asking about. If you don't believe me, ask the poster.
Is your point that you're not going to address the DNA evidence for evolution?
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