Why I post, or Yes, you can be a Christian and accept evolution!

[Liberty Wing]

raphael_aa,
I have seen creationists refer to these Biblical 'kinds' often but I have yet to see a biological definition.

Let me try and define a Biblical kind for you with the assistance of the AiG article Variation, information and the created kinds:

The Scriptures imply that this originally created information was not in the form of one ‘super species’ from which all of today’s populations have split off by this ‘thinning out’ process, but was created as a number of distinct gene pools. Each group of sexually reproducing organisms had at least two members. Thus,
1. Each original group began with a built-in amount of genetic information which is the raw material for virtually all subsequent useful variation.

2. Each original group was presumably genetically and reproductively isolated from other such groups, yet was able to interbreed within its own group. Hence the original kinds would truly have earned the modern biological definition of ‘species’. The more variability in the original gene pool, the more easily can such new groups arise. However, each ‘splitting’ reduces the potential for further change and hence even this is limited. All the descendants of such an original kind which was once a species, may then end up being classified together in a much higher taxonomic category—e.g., family.

Groups of living organisms belong in the same created kind if they have descended from the same ancestral gene pool.

So how do we know what animals of today belong to what kind? We ask, "Which of today’s populations are related to each other by this form of common descent, and are thus of the same created kind?" Notice that this is vastly removed from the evolutionist’s notion of common descent. As the creationist looks back in time along a line of descent, he sees an expansion of the gene pool. As the evolutionist does likewise, he sees a contraction.

Evolution does not predict or postulate animals changing in one great leap from reptile to mammal. To say that animals don't do this has nothing to do with falsifying evolution. We do observe small changes in populations [LW: these are always down-hill information losing to which I don't disagree with].

Did I say that evolution says that animals changed in one great leap and if they didn't, evolution is wrong? No. I never even implied such a thing. You must go back and re-read my post before replying to this new post. Let me define my position just for you...

GTE says that all life present today has evolved from a single-celled organism eons of years ago, that itself was spontanesouly produced in a primeval sea. Ignoring the fact that life came from lifeless chemicals is impossible, and assuming the best case scenario for the evolutionists that life did in fact arise fom non-life (although this has never been proven by experiment), macro-evolution says that this microbe turned into a human over millions of years.

So how much information is in a microbe? A typical single-celled smallish bacteria has the equivalent of about 1 book of 500 pages (fine print) of highly complex information in it's single cell. We will ignore the issue of irreduciable complexity here. How much information is there in a human? Approximately 1,000 books of 500 pages (fine print) of the highly complex information. That's a lot of information, isn't it? That is how much information is in every one of our cells. Since humans supposedly evolved from a single-celled organism, can you see how much information must be added? About 999 books of 500 pages (fine print) of brand new (previously unseen) information must be added. Where does this information come from? The evolutionist places their faith in natural selection and mutation. We will examine both these mechanisms to illustrate for you my position.

Does natural selection add the new information required by macro-evolutioin? Well no. We will quickly use an example to examplify this. We have a population of dogs with varying fur sizes; some have short fur (ff), some have medium fur (Ff) and others have long fur (FF), where F = long fur gene and f = short fur gene. Let us say that we take them to a very cold environment. Can you guess what will happen? Both the short and medium fured dogs will freeze to death, and thus taking the short fur gene out of the population when they die. Only the long fur dogs will survive because their fur insulates them from the cold. You can see from this simplified example that natural selection destroys information from a population that will inhibit (or prevent) a population from surviving in a given environment, in this case, the short fur gene is eliminated. This is moving in the opposite direction that molecules-to-man evolution requires, i.e. an addition of brand new information.

What about mutations? Dr Lee Spetner, an Israeli biophysicist who has studied mutations extensively, in his book called "Not by Chance!" says that there is not one example that one can give of a mutation that on the molecular level that turns out to increase the information in the genome. Mutations are basically copying errors. Scientists know about mutations by the dieases and defects they cause.

To illustrate further—the molecule haemoglobin in man carries out its project of transporting and delivering oxygen in red cells in a functionally efficient manner. A gene or ‘sentence’ exists which codes for the production of haemoglobin. There is a known mutation (actually three separate ones, giving the same result) in which only one letter in the sentence has been accidentally replaced by another. If you inherit this change from both parents, you will be seriously ill with a disease called sickle cell anaemia and will not survive for very long. Yet evolutionists frequently use this as an example of a ‘beneficial mutation’. This is because if you inherit it from only one parent, your red cells will be affected, but not seriously enough to affect your survival—just enough to prevent the malaria parasite from using them as an effective host. Hence, you will be more immune to malaria and better able to survive in malaria-infested areas. This shows us how a functionally efficient haemoglobin molecule became a functionally crippled haemoglobin molecule. The mutation-caused gene for this disease is maintained at high levels in malaria-endemic regions by this incidental phenomenon of heterozygote superiority. Its damaging effect in a proportion of offspring is balanced by the protection it gives against malaria. It is decidedly not an ‘upward’ change. We have not seen a new, efficient oxygen transport mechanism or its beginnings evolve. We have not seen the haemoglobin transport mechanism improved.

Not much of a gain there for the evolutionists <un-intended pun> with mutations. The TNR mutant (Totally Naked Rooster) is also an example of where the mutation has destroyed information for making feathers thus leaving the rooster to freeze in winter and fry in summer. No improvement for the rooster.

Now mix in time and the adding of layer upon layer of these changes in populations and you end up with a sequence of changes where amphibians indeed turn into reptiles.

Ah, the time argument. Given enough time, the impossible becomes possible, right? Wrong. Will humans produce wings and be able to fly? This generation - impossible. The next generation - impossible. The next generation after that -impossible. The next - impossible and so on. By now we are up to over 100 years... Humans will never produce wings because we don't have the information for making wings and feathers and we cannot gain that information because there is not one observed natural phenonomen or process that can add any brand new information to the genome (even over eons of years). That is why this argument is so effective against evolution. You need brand new information if you are going to put feathers of reptiles, and change the reptile's lungs into birds lungs - the two are totally different. The thing is that we see no natural process (including mutations) adding any brand new previous unseen information to the genome in any creature. Not to mention that any intermediate (or transitional) creature between a reptile and a bird would die because half formed lungs wouldn't work. You need the whole thing to be properly connected and wired up with all the parts there before the thing will function.

Besides, if there were any observed natural or evolutionary process that can add brand new (and previously unseen information for GTE to be true), why didn't Dr Dawkins say that when he was questioned about it on the AiG video "A Frog to a Prince". For those of you who don't know about this, the interviewer asked Dr Dawkins the following question [not exact wording, but same effect], "Is there any observed natural process or any other evolutionary process that can be seen to add new information to the genome?"

Dr Dawkins answer: Several seconds of silence, then he gave an answer that didn't answer the question. The Australian Skeptics Association, worried that it was a creationist conspiracy, gave Dr Dawkins three whole pages to defend himself, but in those three pages he never answered the question.

I say this not to put Dr Dawkins down, but to illustrate how powerful this area of biology really is. I certainly wouldn't have been able answer the question.

Add to that overwhelming evidence from other scientific disciplines that point to an ancient cosmos and an old earth and it seems to me the evidence is there.

The evidence itself doesn't speak. It must be interpreted by people for any sense to be made of it. This interpretation is heavily influenced by people's underlying belief systems, i.e. philosophies and religious views. That is why you and I can't agree about origins. I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and can be both trusted and defended from the very first verse. Shoving man's fallible ideas of billions of years into the Bible implies that man is above God. God told us clearly how He made things. People telling God how He made things is kind of like the patient telling the doctor how to operate!

The same evidence that you have for evolution is evidence for creation! This is because we have the same evidence and the same science (observation and experimental data included) for both sides to use. The only thing different is the interpretation about the origins of the science - which is based on people's starting faiths and belief systems.

Here is just one of the scientific evidence that makes no sense with an old universe and is in total harmony with a young universe, the 3rd stage SNRs (SuperNova Remnants). A supernova is just the technical term for an exploding star and happens when super massive stars die. On average a galaxy like our own should produce one supernova every 25 years. When a star has exploded in this way, the huge expanding cloud of debris is called a SuperNova Remnant (SNR). A well-known example is the Crab Nebula in the constellation of Taurus, produced by a supernova so bright that it could be seen during daytime for a few weeks in 1054. By applying physical laws (and using powerful computers), astronomers can predict what should happen to this cloud.

According to their model, the SNR should reach a diameter of about 300 light years after 120,000 years. So if our galaxy was billions of years old, we should be able to observe many SNRs this size. But if our galaxy is 6,000–10,000 years old, no SNRs would have had time to reach this size. So the number of observed SNRs of a particular size is an excellent test of whether the galaxy is old or young. In fact, the results are consistent with a universe thousands of years old, but are a puzzle if the universe has existed for billions of years.

The conclusions are below:
1st Stage SNRs
Number of 1st Stage SNRs predicted if our galaxy were...
... billions of years old = 2.
... 7,000 years old = 2.
Number of 1st SNRs actually observed = 5.

2nd Stage SNRs
Number of 2nd Stage SNRs predicted if our galaxy were...
... billions of years old = 2,260.
... 7,000 years old = 125.
Number of 2nd Stage SNRs actually observed = 200.

3rd Stage SNRs
Number of 3rd Stage SNRs predicted if our galaxy were...
... billions of years old = 5, 000.
... 7, 000 years old = 0.
Number of 3rd Stage SNRs actually observed = 0.

As we can see above, a young universe model fits the data of the lower number of observed SNRs. If the universe were really billions of years old, there are about 7,000 missing SNRs in our galaxy.

Not only that, but the predictions for the Milky Way’s satellite galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud are also consistent with a young universe. Theory predicts 340 observable SNRs if the LMC were billions of years old, and 24 if it were 7000 years old. The number of actually observed SNRs in the LMC is 29.

As the evolutionist astronomers Clark and Caswell say, ‘Why have the large number of expected remnants not been detected?’ and these authors refer to ‘The mystery of the missing remnants’ [Clark and Caswell, 1976. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 174:267.]

The above information came from the AiG article Exploding stars point to a young universe that is based on a paper by Keith Davies, Distribution of Supernova Remnants in the Galaxy, that was also published in the 'Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Creationism' in Pittsburgh, PA, U.S.A.


There are many other evidences that appear to contradict the old age view, some can be found on AiG's Young Earth Evidence Q&A page. I have already written too much, so I won't waste any more of your time.

Sorry about the length again

- Liberty Wing (WL).

 

[Liberty Wing]

rmwilliamsll,
we have been over this carefully so many times on these forums

Sorry, I'm just new here...

GENE DUPLICATION does 'add information'
although i think that the phrase 'add information' is a red herring, i will use your terminology.

No sentences in the DNA appear which did not previous exist. This is just the multiplication ('photocopying') of information already present.


apparently another major evolutionary way of making new dna sequences available for mutation-NS to operate on is the retroviral insertations, including pieces of DNA picked up from previous hosts.
("The human endogenous retrovirus HERV-W multicopy family includes a unique proviral locus, termed ERVWE1, which contains gag and pol pseudogenes and has retained a full-length envelope open reading frame (ORF). This Env protein (syncytin) is a highly fusogenic membrane glycoprotein and has been proposed to be involved in hominoid placental physiology."


I went to the link you provided and the following words jumped straight out at me, so to speak:
The comparison of ERVWE1 and paralogous HERV-W copies revealed an ERVWE1-specific signature consisting of a four amino acid deletion in the intracytoplasmic tail of the glycoprotein. We show that this deletion is crucial for the envelope fusogenic activity.

Notice the word in bold: deletion. What is it? I had no idea so I did a google define search, and this is one of them:
A type of mutation caused by loss of one or more nucleotides from a DNA segment. Deletions can be very large, encompassing many genes and megabases of DNA, to the point of producing a visible cytological abnormality in a chromosome. Small deletions within a gene can alter the reading frame, and thus the amino acid sequence of the encoded protein.

Once again, notice the words, a type of mutation caused by loss of one or more nucleotides from a DNA segment. Mutation in this case still = loss of information (i.e. a loss of DNA).

I went to the link you provided again (the last one), and I would like to bring up a few falicies with the author's (persumably owner's) comments at the top of the screen, he writes:

"Creationists often say that all mutations are harmful and deleterious, and degrade the genome. They say that mutations can only scramble the information that's there, and that mutations cannot produce new "information." This page shows why they are wrong."

[Red words were already put there]. First thing, no informed creationist says that all mutations are harmful to the organism. For example, let's say that there is beetle population living on a windy island and one beetle has a mutation that causes it to lose or corrupt the information coding for wing manufacture; hence its wingless successors will not be so easily blown out to sea and will thus have a selective advantage. This is what could be called a "beneficial mutation". But notice that it still a loss. Also, recombination of already existing genes is not prohibited by the creationary model.

Creationists do claim that there is not one mutation that has been observed to add any brand new information. Even evolutionary scientists treat mutations as genetic load or burden. It is possibly that in our complex world that there may be a mutation that does indeed add the new information to the genome, but evolution requires many of these if they are going to put feathers on reptiles and change a microbe into a human! This is all in-line with observation.

look at the nylon bug. certainly it is not a gene duplication, but a frame shift mutation on a non-coding repetitive sequence. the reason for looking at it is the radical change from 1 bp mutation. this can happen on the duplicated gene and not effect the product of the original gene which is still being made by that original dna. here again is NEW INFORMATION, in fact a new enzyme that the living world had never seen before, that metabolizes a product that the living world never made--nylon.

I am not very knowledgable on this particular topic of the nylon bug, but I did pick up on something on the nmsr rebuttal of AiG's reply to the Feedback 24/7/00 (in the Australian way). The author of the rebuttal only delt with the out-of-date part. AiG updated that response on the 9th April, 2004 with the following information that the author of the rebuttal does not mess with:

Research has shown that the correct explanation for the nylon-eating enzyme produced on the plasmids is somewhat different from the previous two paragraphs. It also confirms that the frameshift idea is totally wrong. Rather, there seems to be a special mechanism that recombines parts of the genes in the plasmids in a way that is non-random. This is shown by the absence of stop codons, which would be generated if the variation were random.

What were the previous two paragraphs? One of them was the part that the author tried to refute on the nmsr website (coloured brown):

"Finally, Mr Cerutti is out of date about this new nylon digesting ability allegedly from a frame shift. New evidence shows that the ability was due to plasmids [e.g. K. Kato, et al., ‘A plasmid encoding enzymes for nylon oligomer degradation: Nucleotide sequence analysis of pOAD2’, Microbiology (Reading) 141(10):2585–2590, 1995.] In fact, more than one species of bacteria have the ability, residing on plasmids. This suggests that the information probably already existed, and was just passed between different types of bacteria.

All that would be needed to enable an enzyme to digest nylon is a mutation causing loss of specificity in a proteolytic (protein-degrading) enzyme. This may seem surprising—how would a loss of information create a new ability? Answer: enzymes are usually tuned very precisely to only one type of molecule (the substrate). Loss of information would reduce the effectiveness of its primary function, but would enable it to degrade other substrates, too. Since both nylon and proteins are broken down by breaking amide linkages, a change in a proteolytic enzyme could also allow it to work on nylon. If this process were continued, the result would be a general enzyme with a weakly catalytic effect on the hydrolysis of too many chemicals to be useful where much selectivity is required. To put it into perspective, acids and alkalis also catalyze many hydrolysis reactions, but they also lack specificity. Indeed, an inhibitor of a protein degrading enzyme also inhibits the action of the nylon degrading enzyme."

The nmsr website was dated as being last updated at November 5, 2004. Too bad he didn't try and refute the editor's note at the bottom of the page (above in red).

As you should be able to see, the nmsr's website has not refuted the information in red. Does that mean that the cause was not because of frameshift idea, but instead the result of aspecial mechanism that recombines parts of the genes in the plasmids in a way that is non-random?

I'll let you choose what you wish to believe...

- Liberty Wing (LW).

 

[rmwilliamsll]

All that would be needed to enable an enzyme to digest nylon is a mutation causing loss of specificity in a proteolytic (protein-degrading) enzyme. This may seem surprising—how would a loss of information create a new ability? Answer: enzymes are usually tuned very precisely to only one type of molecule (the substrate). Loss of information would reduce the effectiveness of its primary function, but would enable it to degrade other substrates, too.

but a frame shift mutation on a non-coding repetitive sequence

it was a non-coding sequence, not another enzyme.
- 1bp = frame shift = a never before seen protein.

Once again, notice the words, a type of mutation caused by loss of one or more nucleotides from a DNA segment. Mutation in this case still = loss of information (i.e. a loss of DNA).

i dont think you understand.
retrovirus incorporates itself into human genome.
after time and mutation this sequence creates a protein useful in placentas. (syncytin) its source is a viral envelope protein sequence.

are you seriously claiming that:
1-gene duplications
2-retroviral insertations
3-frame shift mutations
are not new information?

First thing, no informed creationist says that all mutations are harmful to the organism

actually it is a common YECist claim....

All mutations have proved to be harmful.

from: http://www.evolutiondeceit.com/chapter4_1.php

actually i got 290 hits on phrase "all mutations are harmful" on google
and only 2 on google scholar...neat trick. winnow out the chaff.....

but that merely means there a lots of uninformed creationists with webpages *grin*

The evidence itself doesn't speak. It must be interpreted by people for any sense to be made of it. This interpretation is heavily influenced by people's underlying belief systems, i.e. philosophies and religious views. That is why you and I can't agree about origins. I believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God and can be both trusted and defended from the very first verse. Shoving man's fallible ideas of billions of years into the Bible implies that man is above God. God told us clearly how He made things. People telling God how He made things is kind of like the patient telling the doctor how to operate!

i am a conservative Christian not a humanist see my webpage at:
http://www.dakotacom.net/~rmwillia/index_ced.html

this is a variant on only the YEC are true believers argument.
evolution =/= atheism
evolution =/= humanism
evolution =/= a worldview is not Christian
evolution is science not metaphysics.
certainly there exist humanists, atheists, materialists that use evolution to support their worldview, but this is an illegitimate use of the science.

Shoving man's fallible ideas of billions of years into the Bible implies that man is above God

likewise reading genesis 1-6 as a modern science textbook is not proper hermeneutics and does Gods revelation a disservice.

 

[JohnR7]

This means I am a Theistic Evolutionist (or TE in the forum lingo). This position happens to be the minority opinion here in the U.S

According to a 1999 Gallup poll there are 40% Theistic Evolutionists compared to 9% Atheistic Evolutionists and 47% creationists:

http://www.creationscience.com/onlinebook/FAQ415.html

 

[gluadys]

gluadys,

A thorough and open-minded exploration of the evidence for evolution would probably dissolve your doubt about its ability to meet the higher standard. Biologists consistently refer to the evidence in favour of evolution as "overwhelming". I would say that goes well past "beyond a reasonable doubt".

Many have a misunderstanding of parts of evolution and what parts have been proven and what parts have not. Micro-evolution has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt to a certain extent.

As far as science is concerned, evolution is a fact. Macro-evolution is an inevitable consequence of micro-evolution, so any admission that micro-evolution happens implies that macro-evolution also occurs. You cannot have micro-evolution occurring over billions of years in different habitats with different environmental pressures without, as a consequence, speciation and the appearance of higher order taxa. Macro-evolution follows micro-evolution as day follows night. They are simply different phases of the same process.

The only changes on the molecular level are information losing,

Do spelling mistakes delete letters of the alphabet? Has our alphabet shrunk from 45 letters in the past to only 26 today? The notion that mutations cause loss of information is as silly as that.

(where information is defined as specified complexity, which includes DNA)

This is an ID definition, not used in biology where it makes no sense.

never information gaining, which is what is needed for macro-evolution to be true.

Not true. Macroevolution can occur whether the mutations produce more, less, or different information. The amount of information is irrelevant to natural selection. The only thing that is relevant is whether the mutation is beneficial, harmful or neutral. If a gain in information is harmful, natural selection will suppress it. If a loss of information is beneficial, natural selection will encourage it. And vice versa, of course.

Creationists know that there is these changes, but they acknowledge that not one change by mutation is ever observed to create the new information

They have not observed any such thing because they have never defined "information" in a measurable way and shown whether information is lost or gained or remains in the same quantity though different in quality. Until a unit of genetic information is established and a means of measuring it, all assertions of loss or gain of information is just that: an unsupported assertion.

required to change a reptile into a bird or a reptile into a mammal.

Nevertheless, since it happened, whatever was necessary to cause it to happen must have happened.

As such, these changes are called "varriation within a kind" by creationists.

And "kind" is also an undefined term which creationists prefer to keep as elastic as possible, to include a whole order (e.g. frogs) if neccessary, yet exclude all but a single species (e.g. H. sapiens) when their religion calls for it. This sort of maneouvre has absolutely nothing to do with actually observing and studying species, and everything to do with distorting the evidence to fit one's a priori belief.

Basically, varriation within a kind is another word for micro-evolution.

When the kind being discussed includes 3500 different species, that is macro-evolution.

The only difference is that varriation within a kind cannot allow for any or too many up hill mutations, i.e. mutations that add brand new information to the genome.

"up-hill" mutations? That one word alone tells us that you do not know what evolution is or how it works. There is no such thing as "up-hill" mutations.

As for "brand new information" explain what that is first. Then we will decide whether or not it can be added to the genome.

Is "brand new information" like a new base nucleotide (other than the four currently used) added to the DNA? Like a new letter being added to the alphabet?

Many bring up gene duplication, but this is neglectable because it doesn't add any new information to the genome - just doubles what is already there!

Just like duplicating the "t" in "mating" adds no new information. After all "mating" and "matting" mean the same thing, right? (If you think they do mean the same thing, I recommend a good dictionary.)

This doubling of the same information does not lead to any new function or an enhancement of prexisting functions. It is just meaningless and is in no way new information.

Plants tend to hybridize easier than animals, but plant hybrids tend to be unstable and don't generally produce a new species, or even revert to the parent species. (A fact seed companies rely on to keep selling F1 hybrids.)

Every so often however, a plant hybrid breeds true as a new species which neither reverts to either of the parent species nor interbreeds with them. One such mechanism to get this result--a whole new species (aka macro-evolution) is called "polyploidy". Polyploidy is the doubling of the chromosome number. Just a meaningless "no new information" doubling of information that was already there. But the result is a new species of plant.

- Liberty Wing (WL).

Btw, both creationists and evolutionists are in complete agreence over what we observe today. The above is my understanding of the issue and partly why I don't believe in the GTE.

As you see, your understanding has a few holes in it. You need to learn more about evolution. The limits which you believe apply to evolution to keep it hemmed into certain parameters simply don't exist.

When your terms (information, kind, etc.) are analysed, they are meaningless and do not describe actual observations of species and how they change.

This is why I believe that evolution is not "proved beyond reasonable doubt" and IMHO fails on the "balance of probabilities" to use legal terms. I do realise that this is a response to the first page of posts, so sorry about that.

That's ok. Brings us back on topic.

 

[JohnR7]

As far as science is concerned, evolution is a fact.

As far as science is concerned evolution is a fact and a theory.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

 

[gluadys]

As far as science is concerned evolution is a fact and a theory.

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolution-fact.html

Right, John. My bad.

 

[Liberty Wing]

rmwilliamsll,

Sorry, I think we have a minor confusion, my bad. That quote that you replied to straight up was a part of the two paragraphs that I mentioned AiG said were incorrect. I should have put the quote in italics, I put the "" around the two paragraphs though. I'll edit that if I can. The text in red above is the real explaination that you would have noticed if you read it properly:

Research has shown that the correct explanation for the nylon-eating enzyme produced on the plasmids is somewhat different from the previous two paragraphs. [LW: It then goes on to explain how].

are you seriously claiming that:
1-gene duplications
2-retroviral insertations
3-frame shift mutations
are not new information?


I'll answer each one as best I can:
1. Gene duplications - I have already said that it is not adding any "new" information that previously didn't exist, just multiplication of information already present. You appear to be confused by what I mean by "new". When I say new information, I mean information which did previously not exist. Take a reptile for example. Evolutionists claim that some reptiles evolved into birds. Reptiles previously had no information for making wings and feathers, they therefore had to somehow gain this information. As you can see, gene duplication is pointless as it doesn't add this brand new previously unseen information into the genome. Remember the context of this conversation, i.e. molecules-to-man evolution.

2. Retroviral insertations - I am not too familar with such things, but from the information on the site, it relied on the information given to me in the link. And the link said:
The comparison of ERVWE1 and paralogous HERV-W copies revealed an ERVWE1-specific signature consisting of a four amino acid deletion in the intracytoplasmic tail of the glycoprotein. We show that this deletion is crucial for the envelope fusogenic activity.
And you may remember that the google search defined 'deletion' as, A type of mutation caused by loss of one or more nucleotides from a DNA segment.

If I am misunderstanding this, please inform me.

3. Frame-shift mutations. Research confirms that the frameshift idea is totally wrong (with relation to the nylon bug issue previously raised). Rather, there seems to be a special mechanism that recombines parts of the genes in the plasmids in a way that is non-random. This is shown by the absence of stop codons, which would be generated if the variation were random. In fact, I had never even heard of such an idea before you brought this up!

actually i got 290 hits on phrase "all mutations are harmful" on google.......


but that merely means there a lots of uninformed creationists with webpages


Shall we bring up the idea of embryonic recapitulation - which was a fraud invented by Ernst Haeckel and was exposed since the 1960's? Did you know that the idea of embryonic recapitulation is still being taught to kids in biology classes today?? I was in a book store a few weeks ago with my mum and I opened one of the biology books (for HSC students in Australia) and this was one of the so-called evidences for evolution! I was horrified that such a lie was being taught 40 years after it has been discredited!

Did you look at some of those web pages? How do you know that they weren't cautioning against creationists making such claims? I typed in embryonic recapitulation and got 11, 000 results! Most of the first page, however, were saying that it is a dud.

this is a variant on only the YEC are true believers argument [LW: not intended - just TEs have different starting positions, see below].
evolution =/= atheism
evolution =/= humanism
evolution =/= a worldview is not Christian
evolution is science not metaphysics.
certainly there exist humanists, atheists, materialists that use evolution to support their worldview, but this is an illegitimate use of the science.

Okay, so maybe the quote that you are replying to was not worded as good as I intended it to be. Let me try and clear it up. Everyone has their starting assumptions, right? Creationists is that Genesis is meant to be taken literally, while TEs believe that it is figurative (i.e. not meant to be taken literally). Atheistic evolutionists don't believe in a God and hence must rely on naturalistic processes.

Evolution may not be philosophy per se, but it was heavily influenced by people's preconcieved beliefs. Let us start off with the one who started and popularized such an idea: Darwin.

Darwin's faith began to decline when he first started to doubt the truth of the first chapters of Genesis. This unwillingness to accept the Bible as meaning what it said probably started with and certainly was greatly influenced by his shipboard reading matter - the newly published first volume of Charles Lyell's "Principles of Geology". The book was revolutionary for that time. It subtly ridiculed belief in recent cretion in favour of an old earth, and denied that Noah's Flood was world-wide; this of course, was also a denial of divine judgment. Lyell's book presented Darwin with the time frame of vast geological ages needed to make his theory of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution 'work'.

Inevitably, the more Darwin convinced himself that species had originated by chance and developed by a long course of gradual modification, the less he could accept not only the Genesis account of creation, but also the rest of the Old Testament as the divinely inspired Word of God.

Here Darwin has already been convinced of the long age idea (an idea from outside the Bible). This is where Darwin's preconcieved beliefs kick in. He didn't believe Genesis as literal truth. Hence he created the idea of evolution as an alternative idea. By 1850 his faith was dead and evolution (developed during the 1840's) justified his new agnostic (possibly atheistic) position. We can see clearly that evolution is based upon Darwin's preconcieved belief that Genesis is meant to be taken literally. He used the evidence availble to show how evolution was 'plausible'. He just used different interpretations (based on different starting - or preconcieved - beliefs/faiths) to the creationists.

There is a profound difference between evolution (GTE) and other sciences like physics, chemistry, genetics, astronomy, etc. That being that GTE (and macro-evolution) deals with the origins of the evidence that exists today. It describes how everything came to be. Creation does likewise. The other sciences, some of which are listed above, do not involve anything to do in the past! They all involve stuff to do with the present, examples may be electricity, the human genome project, motors and generators, model of the atom, etc, etc. All of these things can be either (some all) observed, tested experimentally, and repeated. For example, we can test the idea that metals conduct electricity while non-metals do not (with the exception of graphite - a form of carbon). Likewise we can test the idea about p-type and n-type semi-conductors, magnetic forces, distances between stars, brightness of stars, etc, etc.

But can we observe life coming from non-life (GTE)? No, it had been tested - a test which ended up as a failure. If smart scientists can't do it, why and how could an accidental process (although this only applies to atheistic evolutionists as TEs can rely on God to do the impossible). Can we test or observe the progression of life from the 'simple' to the complex? Once again, no! None of these two main events in evolutionary theory can be tested, observed, repeated. Present day changes can be, however, and creationists agree with everything that an evolutionary scientist observes in the environment today. Instead of calling these changes 'micro-evolution', they call the same changes 'variation within a kind'.

If one wishes to call evolution science, then creation must also be called science - as creation is just a different view about how the same evidence (including laws of nature) originated. Both go under the category of 'origins science', while physics, chemistry and so on go under the category of 'operations science'. It is this operations science that is responsible for our computer and medical technology, putting man on the moon (although others still deny this happened) and so on. I believe that the definition of 'science' has been changed by atheists to be 'naturalistic' only, IMHO. Evolution tries to explain the events, like antibiotic resistance, as evidence for evolution, but it makes just as much sense when interpreted through the creationary model.

likewise reading genesis 1-6 as a modern science textbook is not proper hermeneutics and does Gods revelation a disservice.

Thank goodness it's not a science textbook as they change all the time! The Bible has remained the same for several thousand years (Old Testament).

- Liberty Wing (LW).

 

[Maccie]

According to a 1999 Gallup poll there are 40% Theistic Evolutionists compared to 9% Atheistic Evolutionists and 47% creationists:

Who were they asking? What size was the sample?

 

[Liberty Wing]

Hi all. The forum is taking up too much of my time and my parents want to see some serious preperation and study for college for the two courses I will be doing, Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Teaching. It's about time I started to get my priorities right, talking to people I've never met before about issues relating so closely to people's own personal belief systems will get me nowhere.

God Bless you all,
your brother in Christ
Matthew (Liberty Wing).


gluadys:

The following information from the AiG article Variation, information and the created kinds by Dr Carl Wieland may help explain the issue of information as it relates to this issue and in my arguments; the following is only an exert:

The letters on this [printed] page—that is, the matter making up the ink and paper—all obey the laws of physics and chemistry, but these laws are not responsible for the information they carry. Information may depend on matter for its storage, transmission and retrieval, but is not a property of it. The ideas expressed in this article, for instance, originated in mind and were imposed on the matter. Living things also carry tremendous volumes of information on their biological molecules—again, this information is not a property of their chemistry, not a part of matter and the physical laws per se. It results from the order—from the way in which the letters of the cell’s genetic ‘alphabet’ are arranged. This order has to be imposed on these molecules from outside their own properties. Living things pass this information on from generation to generation. The base sequences of the DNA molecule effectively spell out a genetic ‘blue-print’ which determines the ultimate properties of the organism. In the final analysis, inherited biological variations are expressions of the variations in this information. Genes can be regarded as ‘sentences’ of hereditary information written in the DNA ‘language’.
Imagine now the first population of living things on the evolutionist’s ‘primitive earth’. This so-called ‘simple cell’ would, of course, have a lot of genetic information, but vastly less than the information in only one of its present-day descendant gene pools, e.g., man. The evolutionist proposes that this ‘telegram’ has given rise to ‘encyclopedias’ of meaningful, useful genetic sentences. (See later for discussion of ‘meaning’ and ‘usefulness’ in a biological sense.) Thus he must account for the origin with time of these new and meaningful sentences. His only ultimate source for these is mutation. [Footnote: Transposons or ‘jumping genes’, which involve the transfer of genetic information from one stretch of DNA to another (in the same organism, or even altogether different ones, transferred by viruses for example) are not touched upon in this discussion, as work on these ‘new hopes’ for evolution is not at sufficiently mature stage. It should, however, be noted that these processes would appear to be (like mutations) random and undirected processes, in this case involving transfers of existing information.]

Going back to the analogy of the printed page, the information in a living creature’s genes is copied during reproduction, analogous to the way in which an automatic typewriter reproduces information over and over. A mutation is an accident, a mistake, a ‘typing error’. Although most such changes are acknowledged to be harmful or meaningless, evolutionists propose that occasionally one is useful in a particular environmental context and hence its possessor has a better chance of survival/reproduction. By looking now at the informational basis for other mechanisms of biological variation, it will be seen why these are not the source of new sentences and therefore why the evolutionist generally relies on mutation of one sort or another in his scheme of things.

 

[gluadys]

Hi all. The forum is taking up too much of my time and my parents want to see some serious preperation and study for college for the two courses I will be doing, Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Teaching. It's about time I started to get my priorities right, talking to people I've never met before about issues relating so closely to people's own personal belief systems will get me nowhere.

God Bless you all,
your brother in Christ
Matthew (Liberty Wing).


gluadys:

The following information from the AiG article Variation, information and the created kinds by Dr Carl Wieland may help explain the issue of information as it relates to this issue and in my arguments; the following is only an exert:

No it doesn't, Matthew. I would be asking them the same questions I asked you, for they haven't answered them.

If you have time after studies, perhaps I can clarify why the "information" problem isn't one.

 

[Vance]

Gluadys, that would be a great post topic, since it has become the latest "fall back position" for YEC'ism. It would be useful here and in the other forum as well.