Boston Marathon explosions......

[PearlWatson]

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.

It ain’t so much a crutch as simply wanting to see some kind of evidence before I buy into it. I thought that is what science is all about. The ability to concoct a story and draw pictures about your stories ain’t science. It’s religious. Any old God-believer can do that. You can’t blame me for wanting what people dub science to have actual supportive evidence to back it up. It pisses me off that you Darwiniacs have corrupted actual science with your crazy *** stories in order to support your God-denying fantasies.

99% of all statistics are made up…mostly by Liberals.

Let’s look at the real fossil record not your made up estimates:

There are about 250,000 species that have been identified in the fossil record and over a million that exist today. Even if every species in the fossil record has gone extinct(they haven’t) we still have 80% of species that are still alive. Where do you Darwiniacs get your “facts?” Out of your atheist-driven assumptions that “innumerable varieties” existed in the transitional species. Why do you make this assumption? Because you must have “innumerable varieties” of transitional species to make your theory/story true.
Well sorry Darwiniac, the REAL fossil record doesn’t match your God-denying fantasies.

It might just be time to shake off your Darwiniac faith and realize you don’t have the answers for our origins.
Maybe just maybe there is a bioengineer god, or a “DNA code monkey” god. Could be we did start out as amoebas and an intelligent/natural force drove it toward humans. It could be we don’t share a common ancestry at all. It could be that spiders didn't accidentally acquire the ability to make spider webs and maybe my beautiful breasts were designed to produce milk for any babies that pop out of my lower regions.

But if it turns out that a series of lucky accidents produced my awesome God-believing brain than anything is damn near possible.

 

[One Brow]

Where did you find my picture?

 

[One Brow]

I don’t see how your bacteria eating a different type of sugar is an example of the development of a complex system.

To meet Behe's definition of Irreducible Complexity, you actually only need two parts.

However, I need to apologize for an error. It was not lactose, it was citric acid that the bacteria learned to eat. It did require the development of a new gene, orginating from gene duplication. It easily meets the IC test.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._co...on_of_aerobic_citrate_usage_in_one_population

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.)

The creation of IC systems is still adaptation. Why don't you recognize that?

 

[One Brow]

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!​

In many populations, the ones who die at the right time are the most fit, as opposed to the survivors.

Of course, natural selection is not really a tautology.

https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/evolphil/tautology.html

Darwiniacs unwittingly provide all the criticism for “natural selection” in the name of “intelligent design.”

How so? Why do you think the former concept involves the latter?

 

[One Brow]

How does a survival of the fittest system evolve an organ that kills the host organism?

The appendix is a highly useful organ in herbivores.

Why hasn’t “natural selection” evolved the appendix away?

It's actually much smaller, compared to our body size, than it was in our ancestors.

How does “natural selection” evolve unnecessary teeth that come in sideways and cause pain?

Ancestors with larger mouths had room for more teeth.

An obvious sign that your “scientific” theory is in trouble: When you argument against an opposing theory also disproves your own.

Natural selection doesn't work miracles. It doesn't make things disappear overnight. In fact, as long as an organ does kill much or often, it has very little effect at all.

 

[One Brow]

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.”

Can you produce a native speaker of Old English? Koine Greek? Sanskrit? Does that mean no one ever spoke those languages? Is that a good reason to doubt those languages existed?

We don't have living organisms from single-cell to ape, but we have records that the creatures existed, just like we have records for dead languages.

 

[moevillini]

OK, you lost me on that last post...

 

[MVP]

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.

It is not natural selection. It is adaptation process. It perfectly evolved our tail away and is evolving wisdom teeth away. It evolved legs of the snakes away, it evolved back legs of the whales away and it evolved breathing hole in whales as well. Thousands and thousands examples of it around just look at any animal and you will see it. Will it evolve appendix away? Who knows? I can't predict future, but we can look in the past and see what happened which you stubbornly ignoring.
Not sure I understand your first question about organ that kills host organism - what do you mean by that? Any organ can kill host organism if malfunctioning. Liver killed poor Hanneman from Slayer for example... Don't we all need liver?

You know perfectly that it would be enough to find single more advanced species fossil in the same period as early primitive species to destroy evolution theory - yet nobody has ever done that. All fossil records are indicating that we have common ancestor and that more complicated organisms evolved from primitive ones. Evidence is so clear yet you try to deny it.
I would accept your belief that "intelligent designer" planted first live cell on earth ( gave it a start if you want to say so) and left it here to develop and evolve to all species we have here now. We do not know that and nobody can prove or deny it. Maybe we are all just lab rats of some more advanced species in the universe - who can tell it is true or not?
But we have undeniable proof that today's live organisms developed from the most primitive ones millions millions years ago - there is just no way of denying that, it is to obvious. So you trying to do that that based on Behe's speculations is not really giving you credit. Please stop it. We can speculated about origins of life but not about evolution.

 

[One Brow]

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! ).

No, it isn't. It possession of them doesn't have a major impact on reproductive fitness, they would be around for as long as there are humans.

Please don't rely on fictional movies for examples of evolution.

 

[One Brow]

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

This is about what's true, not about unity. I'd rather correct AKMVP or Siromar and allow an untruth to stand (even one the supposedly favors me), and I hope they would do me the same honor.

 

[One Brow]

Questions posed to you: How does a survival of the fittest system evolve an organ that kills the host organism?

Are you saying that the appendix was intelligently designed to kill the host system?

Seriously, in any population very few people are killed by a burst appendix. The selective pressure is minimal.

Why hasn’t “natural selection” evolved the appendix away?

Why should it?

So “natural selection” is negative force.

When a sculptor takes a hammer and chisel to a chunk of marble, they are removing pieces of marble, so sculpting is a negative force. We nonetheless recognize that such sculpting is a creative effort, and the something is there that was not before.

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.

"Vestigial" refers to something that used to have a purpose, but no longer serves that purpose (it may serve other purposes, or none). Thus, the very act of describing the appendix as vestigial recognizes that it once served a purpose.

 

[One Brow]

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

Resolving different interpretations is part of the fun. Unlike those who follow actual prophets, though, we have methods of seeing who is right via research and experimentation.

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.

I think it's both. You can create by selective removal. Nor are the mechanisms mysterious, many are well known. In service of a different argument, the post below lists a few.

https://lifetheuniverseandonebrow.blogspot.com/2009/03/repostenhanced-probability-and-18.html

The ironic thing is that One Brow is an ID theorist disguised as an METer.

I can see no reason why you so think.

 

[MVP]

No, it isn't. It possession of them doesn't have a major impact on reproductive fitness, they would be around for as long as there are humans.

There are numerous people who have never develop wisdom teeth - it is thought to be due to PAX9 gene which is responsible for dental development and for example in indigenous mexicans wisdom teeth are absent almost at 100% rate.
Reproductive fitness is difficult to apply to humans as we depend on culture way more then on biology. Ugly, disabled and sick people reproduce at pretty much the same rate compared to very fit, healthy and beautiful ones. Are they best for reproduction of human species? No, but we are not in Sparta anymore.

 

[One Brow]

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.

That's the equivalent of completing an apprenticeship. Dembski has very few published papers in the literature, none of them are well-cited. It's not because of his beliefs; last i heard over three-fourths of mathematicians in the US were God-believers.

He has held Nation Science Foundation graduate and postdoctoral fellowships.

Smart and hard-working, I agree with.

He started up a research center at Baylor University to test theories of design in the universe.

He was asked to leave because his ideas were to religion-centered for Baylor, a Baptist university.

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.

Again, Baylor is a Baptist university.

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.

I've read it many times.

One bad statement:
For an example in the same spirit consider that there is no more information in two copies of Shakespeare's Hamlet than in a single copy.

If the two copies are in separate storage locations, true. However, there is no way to measure information where this is true if you tack on one copy Hamlet behind another in the same text. Dembski presents only the former case in his dismissal of the concept.

I could go on, but many others, including those with expertise, already have.

 

[One Brow]

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.

The brain is extremely plastic. IQ is much less inherited than it is picked up socially and culturally.

 

[One Brow]

There are about 250,000 species that have been identified in the fossil record and over a million that exist today. Even if every species in the fossil record has gone extinct(they haven’t) we still have 80% of species that are still alive. Where do you Darwiniacs get your “facts?”

Are you saying every species should be fossilized? Are you saying that fossils are the only form of acceptable evidence? I'm not sure of your point here.

MET gets its fact from thousands of experiments and other methods of research performed every year, of which only a small percentage use fossils.

Out of your atheist-driven assumptions that “innumerable varieties” existed in the transitional species. Why do you make this assumption? Because you must have “innumerable varieties” of transitional species to make your theory/story true.

No, because every animal is different from every other animal. Two cats in the same litter are no more alike that two humans from the same parents. Whether you accept MET or not, innumerable varieties inescapably exist.

 

[One Brow]

OK, you lost me on that last post...

I'm not completely sure of her point, but it seems to be that if we don't have direct evidence for a specific type of organism, we don't have any evidence at all. My reponse is that we have a great deal of indirect evidence.

 

[One Brow]

Ugly, disabled and sick people reproduce at pretty much the same rate compared to very fit, healthy and beautiful ones. Are they best for reproduction of human species? No, but we are not in Sparta anymore.

The correct answer is yes, they are. The more diverse humans are, the better our continued chances for survival. That's a fairly inescapable lesson from evolution.

 

[Gameface]

The correct answer is yes, they are. The more diverse humans are, the better our continued chances for survival. That's a fairly inescapable lesson from evolution.

Right, if we can support the population more genetic diversity is better than less, even if we don't currently see any benefit in some of the traits being carried on.

 

[Siro]

Right, if we can support the population more genetic diversity is better than less, even if we don't currently see any benefit in some of the traits being carried on.

Of course. But humans in general lack genetic diversity compared to almost every other species. So the main benefit (recessive gene suppression) is probably diluted once the population of an area reaches a certain threshold in numbers and ethnic diversity.

The shocking genetic similarity between different human groups is typically explained by a near-extinction event a few tens of thousands of years ago.