Boston Marathon explosions......

[PearlWatson]

Me: Behe is my darling for kicking Darwin’s theory in the ***.
You: Darwin's theory is no longer used, regardless. Instead, we have modern evolutionary theory (MET), and Behe has done nothing to discredit it.
Me: Behe concludes natural selection = intelligent design.
You: No, he does not, at any point. It's sad you didn't even take the time to understand this person you supposedly respect so much.
Me: You then provide an example involving “selection” as a refutation of Behe
You are then kicking yourself in the *** if you think that claim(ICS’s are impossible without “natural selection”) has been refuted.
You: We've seen the evolution of irreducibly complex systems even within a single lifetime (for example, the strain of bacteria that was evolved to eat a different type of sugar). Thus, Behe's claim that it can't happen is refuted by evidence.
Me: Darwin’s mechanism ...
You: I accept MET based on evidence. I have no interest in defending a 150-year-old theory.
Me: Behe says even if there were randomly generated parts lying around doing other things they have no reason to come together to do something else.
You: Things happen, for no reason, all the time.

That was a fast edit job.I liked your first answers better
Darwiniacs(METers) may replace the first step of Darwn’s mechanism (random mutation) with a different step, but the moment they involve “natural selection” as the final step they’ve turned their “MET” into a non-disprovable pseudoscience.
I don’t see how your bacteria eating a different type of sugar is an example of the development of a complex system. It sounds like an example of a change in a system that already existed. That is what us God-believers call adapting to one’s environment. (Darwiniacs say the environment adapts you.)
“Things” may happen for no reason. But you have to have a lot of faith to believe that individual, unrelated mutations accidentally facilitated the production of the 200 necessary parts, completely by chance, to “create” the flagellum Behe was looking at.

 

[PearlWatson]

So basically PW really hates Darwin, and at one point she read a website that defended Behe's work. There, saved you several pages of nothing.

I don’t have a problem with Darwin the Naturalist.
Darwin’s contribution to evolutionary thought, “natural selection,” is simply tautology.

Darwiniac: The fit survive.
Critical person: Who are the fit?
Darwiniac: The ones who survive. It happens every time!​

If you haven’t figured it out by now I’m not wedded to ID theory. The Darwiniac reaction to Behe’s refutation is what I find so laughably telling. Darwiniacs unwittingly provide all the criticism for “natural selection” in the name of “intelligent design.”
When AKMVVP says intelligent design is speculation he is really saying “natural selection” is speculation.
When One Brow says intelligent design is refuted, he is really saying “natural selection” is refuted.

 

[PearlWatson]

Did you have your wisdom teeth removed BTW? How come "intelligent designer" made them unnecessary and unable to fit in our jaws in these days? What about other numerous vestigial organs?

If you look at the concept behind “survival of the fittest”, wisdom teeth and the appendix don’t do much for the theory of “natural selection” either. How does a survival of the fittest system evolve an organ that kills the host organism? Why hasn’t “natural selection” evolved the appendix away? How does “natural selection” evolve unnecessary teeth that come in sideways and cause pain?
An obvious sign that your “scientific” theory is in trouble: When you argument against an opposing theory also disproves your own.

 

[PearlWatson]

So it is excusable when you reply fast but worthy of mocking when he does? Hypocrite.

In your rush to make your typical pot shot you missed the little detail about how the posts I was responding to happened days ago.

Shoo fly don't bother me. I hear Obongo's face is a popular attraction for your kind.

 

[PearlWatson]

There is no difference between "macro and micro" evolution. They are one and the same. It takes some impressive mental acrobatics to pretend that mutations can only accumulate to a certain point, but not to the point where a splinter group will have underwent too much change to maintain the ability to reproduce with its ancestor. This is like someone observing a baby over 48 hours, and then deciding the changes were too small to produce the eventual adult, and that the baby's "growth" is only restricted to tiny adaptations that don't stray from babyness.

Darwiniacs calling adaptions on things that already exist “micro evolution” is like the Flat Earth Society pointing to the Salt Flats and calling it the “micro flat-Earth.” Just because one part of the Earth is flat doesn’t mean the entire thing is.
The problem with your baby analogy is that you Darwiniacs catapult your way from a one-celled organism to the “ape-like” ancestor you can’t even produce for “observation.” While Darwiniacs may carry the intelligently designed drawings of this story in their wallets, they forgot to scrapbook up the amoeba to the ape stage. Call us God-believers up when you can adequately do that. Until then keep your crazy *** stories to yourself.

 

[MVP]

If you look at the concept behind “survival of the fittest”, wisdom teeth and the appendix don’t do much for the theory of “natural selection” either. How does a survival of the fittest system evolve an organ that kills the host organism? Why hasn’t “natural selection” evolved the appendix away? How does “natural selection” evolve unnecessary teeth that come in sideways and cause pain?
An obvious sign that your “scientific” theory is in trouble: When you argument against an opposing theory also disproves your own.

You totally got that all mixed up upside down. Wisdom teeth, apendix and tail bone are vestigial organs or perfect example of evolution working in the way of dismissing unnecessary parts ( some can add back hair lol). They are not yet completely gone ( althought there are individuals who are born without wisdom teeth already) but it is inevitable that they will disappear completely ( you are expecting it to be complete in few thousand years only?? Patience my friend! ). In fact if you think how our feeding habbits are changing throughout 400.000 years since first homo sapiens appeared it is very likely we as species will have no teeth by another 100.000 years or so. We might be feeding on liquid diets only and thus all teeth may become vestigial. I can't believe you even arguing about it when comparision of human skeletons now and from thousands years ago already shows changes ( current human jaws smaller thus no place for wisdom teeth). Think bigger - hundreds of thousands years or millions.
Have you seen WALL-E? Did you see what happened to humans in USA in the future)))?

 

[Siro]

Darwiniacs calling adaptions on things that already exist “micro evolution” is like the Flat Earth Society pointing to the Salt Flats and calling it the “micro flat-Earth.” Just because one part of the Earth is flat doesn’t mean the entire thing is.
The problem with your baby analogy is that you Darwiniacs catapult your way from a one-celled organism to the “ape-like” ancestor you can’t even produce for “observation.” While Darwiniacs may carry the intelligently designed drawings of this story in their wallets, they forgot to scrapbook up the amoeba to the ape stage. Call us God-believers up when you can adequately do that. Until then keep your crazy *** stories to yourself.

So you have to go all the way back to the Precambrian to find your crutch?

Evolution is nothing like your fantasy of perfectly adapted species. It is a fact that more than 99% of all the creatures that emerged on this planet are now extinct. So much for your clumsy bioengineer god.

It's really so simple that even you should be able to see it. There is no escaping the fact that species that survive eons of mutations will be very different from where they started. You don't need science to understand that. You don't even have to look at the incredibly obvious observation that animals are closely related to other animals (or perhaps the intelligent designer is clumsy AND lazy?). If mutations occur, then species change. There is absolutely no rational justification to the claim that species can only change until they meet your threshold for divine intervention. You may believe whatever you want, of course. But don't expect anyone to take your personal emotional attachment to an arbitrary religious principle seriously, unless they already share your ideology.

 

[MVP]

they forgot to scrapbook up the amoeba to the ape stage. Call us God-believers up when you can adequately do that. Until then keep your crazy *** stories to yourself.

We are talking grade 7-8 class science here, are you really serious?
Nature is full of examples of intermediate species. Lancelets, mudskippers, amphiumas and sirens, platypus or echidnas for example. That we in our your short life did not observe lancelet turning into fish or mudskipper into amphibian directly it does not mean it will not happen in million years. Fossils show it happened before on regular basis, not sure whats there to argue about.

 

[Siro]

You totally got that all mixed up upside down. Wisdom teeth, apendix and tail bone are vestigial organs or perfect example of evolution working in the way of dismissing unnecessary parts ( some can add back hair lol). They are not yet completely gone ( althought there are individuals who are born without wisdom teeth already) but it is inevitable that they will disappear completely ( you are expecting it to be complete in few thousand years only?? Patience my friend! ). In fact if you think how our feeding habbits are changing throughout 400.000 years since first homo sapiens appeared it is very likely we as species will have no teeth by another 100.000 years or so. We might be feeding on liquid diets only and thus all teeth may become vestigial. I can't believe you even arguing about it when comparision of human skeletons now and from thousands years ago already shows changes ( current human jaws smaller thus no place for wisdom teeth). Think bigger - hundreds of thousands years or millions.
Have you seen WALL-E? Did you see what happened to humans in USA in the future)))?

There is no final product that evolution is driving toward. A hairy ape is not "less evolved" than a hairless one. The claim that Homo sapiens' body hair is a left over from a previous ancestor is also suspect. The more likely scenario is that Homo erectus had already lost their body hair, and that it reappeared in our species. That better explains some facts, like the existence of separate species of lice for human's head and body hair.

 

[MVP]

And the final point for evolution is this - simple animals and plants existed on earth long before more complex ones (invertebrate animals, for example, were around for a very long time before there were any vertebrates). Here again, the evidence from fossils is overwhelming. In the deepest rock layers, there are no signs of life. The first fossil remains are of very simple living things. As the strata get more recent, the variety and complexity of life increase (although not at a uniform rate). And no human fossils have ever been found except in the most superficial layers of the earth (e.g., battlefields, graveyards, flood deposits, and so on). In all the countless geological excavations and inspections (for example, of the Grand Canyon), no one has ever come up with a genuine fossil remnant which goes against this general principle (and it would only take one genuine find to overturn this principle).
If that does not prove that more complex organisms developed from simpliest then I not sure what can. You just can't ignore such overhelming evidence PW. Unless you want to argue that your "intelligent designer" was creating those organisms somewhere in space and dropping more and more complex species on earth every few millions of years or so .... think it is less "crazy *** story" then evolution?

 

[MVP]

There is no final product that evolution is driving toward. A hairy ape is not "less evolved" than a hairless one. .

But you can argue that evolution is driving towards better product. Even amongst us humans we have racial differences which can be used as argument for evolution and adaptation to living environment, climate and other conditions through thousands of years. Is one or the other less evolved? I am for sure less evolved to live in hot climate then for example black person. My skin would burn everyday and I will get skin cancer within few years. Why some races are less lactose tolerant? Maybe because in their evolution they did not use milk as food source. Examples of evolution are everywhere, you just need to see them.

 

[Siro]

But you can argue that evolution is driving towards better product. Even amongst us humans we have racial differences which can be used as argument for evolution and adaptation to living environment, climate and other conditions through thousands of years. Is one or the other less evolved? I am for sure less evolved to live in hot climate then for example black person. My skin would burn everyday and I will get skin cancer within few years. Why some races are less lactose tolerant? Maybe because in their evolution they did not use milk as food source. Examples of evolution are everywhere, you just need to see them.

Being adapted to an environment does not make you more or less evolved. A fair skinned person is more adapted to living in Scandinavia than a dark skinned one (the latter would need to make sure s/he is getting enough vitamin D), but a polar bear is far more adapted to polar weather than a fair skinned human. Is a polar bear more evolved than a human? Is it more evolved as far as cold climate is concerned? As I hope you can see, this is a very silly way of looking at things.

A case can be made that evolution tends to move in a direction of increased complexity. That is not always the case. But it is true in general. I suppose you can argue than a more complex organism is more evolved than a less complex one. But measuring complexity in a meaningful objective way is quite difficult. So why bother with these constructs at all?

 

[MVP]

Being adapted to an environment does not make you more or less evolved. A fair skinned person is more adapted to living in Scandinavia than a dark skinned one (the latter would need to make sure s/he is getting enough vitamin D), but a polar bear is far more adapted to polar weather than a fair skinned human. Is a polar bear more evolved than a human? Is it more evolved as far as cold climate is concerned? As I hope you can see, this is a very silly way of looking at things.

Not sure why you comparing human to bear. Polar bear is better adopted to polar conditions then grizzly. Inuit is better adopted to it then pygmy. My point is that even small adaptation like that is a living proof of evolution which PW so stubbornly refusing to accept.

 

[PearlWatson]

Wow, it has evolved into a Darwiniac on Darwiniac debate purely by accident.

I'm joining in again. It is a fruitless endeavor trying to argue against your culty faith but fun has been accidentally had.

 

[PearlWatson]

You totally got that all mixed up upside down. Wisdom teeth, apendix and tail bone are vestigial organs or perfect example of evolution working in the way of dismissing unnecessary parts ( some can add back hair lol). They are not yet completely gone ( althought there are individuals who are born without wisdom teeth already) but it is inevitable that they will disappear completely ( you are expecting it to be complete in few thousand years only?? Patience my friend! ). In fact if you think how our feeding habbits are changing throughout 400.000 years since first homo sapiens appeared it is very likely we as species will have no teeth by another 100.000 years or so. We might be feeding on liquid diets only and thus all teeth may become vestigial. I can't believe you even arguing about it when comparision of human skeletons now and from thousands years ago already shows changes ( current human jaws smaller thus no place for wisdom teeth). Think bigger - hundreds of thousands years or millions.
Have you seen WALL-E? Did you see what happened to humans in USA in the future)))?

Questions posed to you: How does a survival of the fittest system evolve an organ that kills the host organism? Why hasn’t “natural selection” evolved the appendix away?

Your answer to the second question: The appendix existed (with or without a purpose?) for our “ape-like” ancestors and now “natural selection” is in the process of evolving it away. So “natural selection” is negative force.

So what is your answer to the first question? How do you account for the appendix in the first place?

ID theory says “intelligence/nature” is a positive force to create the appendix in the first place.
But then again they don’t assume it was vestigial from “hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago.”
They assume it was designed for a purpose. They look into this possibility:

A God-believer named William Parker(a professor of surgery @ Duke University) who thinks life is for “Well… Basically for benefiting the fellow man and getting closer to God,” discovered that the appendix “acted as a good safe house for bacteria essential for healthy digestion, in effect re-booting the digestive system after the host has contracted diseases such as amoebic dysentery or cholera, which kill off helpful germs and purge the gut.”
Turns out that “this function has been made obsolete by modern, industrialized society; populations are now so dense that people pick up essential bacteria from each other, allowing gut organisms to regrow without help from the appendix.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/life-...oes-have-a-use--rebooting-the-gut-396277.html

Darwiniacs everywhere: Natural Selection strikes again!
ID Theorists: You nutjobs! You probably still believe the appendix was the result of a brazillian separate random mutations coming together for a “co-option” event.

WALL-E was an intelligently designed cartoon about an intelligently designed cannibal robot.

 

[PearlWatson]

You culties don't even have the same doctine. You must follow separate prophets.

AKMVP thinks “natural selection” is a negative force acting on accidentally evolved systems.

One Brow thinks “natural selection” is a positive force acting on some mysterious MET mechanisms.
The ironic thing is that One Brow is an ID theorist disguised as an METer.

I don’t know what this “chemical selection” Siro is going on about involves. It sounds like he thinks it can be both a positive and a negative force.

 

[babe]

You culties don't even have the same doctine. You must follow separate prophets.

AKMVP thinks “natural selection” is a negative force acting on accidentally evolved systems.

One Brow thinks “natural selection” is a positive force acting on some mysterious MET mechanisms.
The ironic thing is that One Brow is an ID theorist disguised as an METer.

I don’t know what this “chemical selection” Siro is going on about involves. It sounds like he thinks it can be both a positive and a negative force.

well, I could sorta follow the variant opinions. Don't make the mistake of supposing scientists need prophets to define the narrow way to truth. . . ..

The reason I like science is because it's all about having some new twist on things. . . .

 

[babe]

There are new developments in the original topic of this thread.

Now our guys are blaming the Russians for not sending our intel folks all their info on the bombers. . . . sorta trying to whitewash themselves, distance themselves.

How many times are we just gonna blow off sheer incompetence on the part of our anti-terrorists people? You really want idiots running the Data Center who won't do something about terrorists even the Russians say are dangerous??? Why do we even try to have people looking out for us if the best we can get for the job are this stupid???

 

[PearlWatson]

Do you have the expertise to address his competence?
The experts in information theory say Dembski has not addressed his fundamental oxymoron in any competent manner. would you care to try in this forum?
Mathematicians who write on information theory professionally, for a start.
You need to have experts of your own, first. Dembski is not one.

You know how I address whether Dembski is competent or not? I look at his fat *** resume:

The dude has a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Chicago.
Master of Divinity degree from Princeton Theological Seminary. (Oh No! He's a God believer!)
He has done postdoctoral work
in mathematics at MIT
in physics at University of Chicago
in computer science at Princeton
He has held Nation Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.

He started up a research center at Baylor University to test theories of design in the universe.
Not one Darwiniac (9 biologists) on the committee to review his work were qualified to assess it but the apes decided to abolish his research center anyhow.

I will post Dembski's own explanation of CSI(complex specified information) since I'm not sure you trusted your own intelligence enough to read his explanation rather than trusting "experts" to make your judgements for you.
Dembski's own explanation in mostly laymans terms can be found here (the first 3 sections are particularly relevant):
https://www.arn.org/docs/dembski/wd_idtheory.htm

 

[PearlWatson]

well, I could sorta follow the variant opinions. Don't make the mistake of supposing scientists need prophets to define the narrow way to truth. . . ..

The reason I like science is because it's all about having some new twist on things. . . .

I seriously question whether they are acting like scientists (being objective) when they present their opinions. It seems more faith based (subjective) opinion to me. Whether they care about the truth is another matter.

Actually AKMVP is moving more toward "natural selection" being a positive force now (presented the idea that humans are the highest form of evolution), and Siro is trying to talk him back down from this notion by arguing that each animal has its own adaptations. No animal is more fit than another.

So, I wonder if he thinks humans with higher IQ are more evolved, or equally evolved than those with less IQ? Most Darwiniacs of the eugenic variety would say stupid people are less fit and babies aren't fit enough.