Boston Marathon explosions......

[PearlWatson]

Okay I am not going to address each response individually.

You are all just trying to convince me of something I already acknowledge.

Species that exist today adapt to their environment. We can observe that.

Humans have changing skull sizes...but they are still humans.
Galapagos birds have different shapes of beaks...but they are still birds.
Bacteria have different types of eating systems...but they are still bacteria.

What I have a real problem with is:

How did we get skulls (with their coordinated functioning parts...like jawbone with teeth)?
How did birds get beaks (the "swiss army knife" of mouths)?
How did bacteria already have an eating system?

All I get from Darwiniacs is, "It was an accident! Accidents happen all the time!" Or I get the ever so convincing scientific argument "Mutations happen!" (<---has a "crap-like" ancestor)

I guess Darwiniacs want me to assume (<---very scientific) that a "bird like ancestor" existed that had a pie hole of some kind and the mother ancestor with a pie hole had a baby with a mutated pie hole and wah lah an accidental beak!

Or maybe the skull (and the skeleton that goes with it) developed when a bunch of unrelated mutations were just laying around inside soft-bodied animals doing other things and a random "co-option" event occured. Of course there is no use for an accidentally produced skull unless there was already an accidental brain to protect. Also all the coordinated piecies of a skeleton came together in a "co-option" event. The leg bone was busy doing something else when it was randomly attached to all the other connecting bones. And those bones accidentally have amazing features and functions.

So, I have all these dudes claiming all these coodinated and complex things were a result of random accidents and they claim I'm irrational and I my beliefs are faith-based? Dudes, I don't have enough faith for all these crazy *** stories involving a bunch of assumptions that you have come up with in order to deny the existence of an intelligent force. Why can't you prolific "assumers" just assume there is intelligent life out there that you can't see. Oh wait, you already do. You call them "space aliens."

Behold the features of the beautifully designed bone!

That ain't no accident.

 

[PearlWatson]

As for the Darwiniac's intelligently designed "mountains of evidence" quip

What does the fossil record look like?
*Mostly just bacteria and worms for 3 billion years.
(My favorite creature from the pre-Cambrian period is this hard bodied, 5 eyed, snorkel-nosed opabinia.)
*Sudden bursts of all kinds of plants and animals, that remain largely unchanged.
*Then sudden and total extinction.

Dinosaurs appeared, lived for 150 million years, then disappeared.
They were quickly replaced by mammals.
Neither the creation or extinction of the dinosaur involved a gradual process of any sort.

Well, Darwiniacs already had their "It was a random accident" theory so they tried to explain the lack of evidence for their theory by saying, "our evidence didn't fossilize."

ID theorists saw the fossil record and said since it looks like a chronological progression from simple to complex animals we must have a common ancestor. It looks like a progressive selective force is a work here, since random accidents can't account for the complex coordinated design we are seeing.

Creationists might say just because there appears to be progress from simple to complex doesn't mean we have a common ancestor. It could simply mean the designer went through different stages of design. He first tried his hand at simple little creatures. Then he progressed to more complex creatures and was getting the hang of it so he had a "Cambrian Explosion" design phase.

Nobody really has the answers, but there is no reason to exclude any "origin of life" theory because they all count on faith based assumptions.

 

[PearlWatson]

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

Could that event have been a flood?

 

[PearlWatson]

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.

That lesson is independent of your crazy *** story.

Any God believer can conclude that the more children they have the more chances they'll have to get grandchildren.

You Darwiniacs say the more kids you have the more chances you'll have to accidentally have a merman grandkid.

Woohoo! I want a merman grandkid! I am going to have 20 kids.

 

[One Brow]

Humans have changing skull sizes...but they are still humans.

Humans are also still apes, still primates, still mammals, still lizards, still fish, and still worms.

How did we get skulls (with their coordinated functioning parts...like jawbone with teeth)?

We have fossils of invertebrate-to-fish evolution. We have knowledge of various developmental pathways required for teeth, and how they have changed over the millenia. I can't summarize all this in a post. If you really care, you can research it. This has a primer, but it's only a start.

https://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/comdesc/section1.html#morphological_intermediates_ex2

Same for your next two questions.

All I get from Darwiniacs is, "It was an accident! Accidents happen all the time!" Or I get the ever so convincing scientific argument "Mutations happen!" (<---has a "crap-like" ancestor)

Perhaps that all you understand, but it's not all you are told.

So, I have all these dudes claiming all these coodinated and complex things were a result of random accidents ...

Random accidents in part, not in total.

That ain't no accident.

Agreed.

What does the fossil record look like?
*Mostly just bacteria and worms for 3 billion years.
(My favorite creature from the pre-Cambrian period is this hard bodied, 5 eyed, snorkel-nosed opabinia.)
*Sudden bursts of all kinds of plants and animals, that remain largely unchanged.

Actually, we can track how many of them changed over millions of years.

*Then sudden and total extinction.

Dinosaurs appeared, lived for 150 million years, then disappeared.

Birds are the descendants of dinosaurs. Also, no dinosaur species was alive for 150 million years. Species came and went. You can see the changes over time, as some populations grew heavier, had larger teeth, etc.

It looks like a progressive selective force is a work here, since random accidents can't account for the complex coordinated design we are seeing.

Complexity is the natural result of randomness.

Could that event have been a flood?

No.

That lesson is independent of your crazy *** story.

Any God believer can conclude that the more children they have ...

More children from the same people is not diversity.

 

[PearlWatson]

Go go gadget anti-Darwiniac!

 

[PearlWatson]

DEMBSKI'S INFORMATION THEORY
I'll pick back up on our discussion of "experts" in information theory.

Mathematicians who write on information theory professionally, for a start. You need to have experts of your own, first. Dembski is not one.

So you say mathematicians who write on information theory professionally are experts.
I give you a brilliant mathematician who writes on information theory professionally and that still ain't good enough for you. Okay.
Since we can't agree on who constitutes an expert, let's just look at the content of Dembski's design theory.

Complexity: a measure of improbability
Specificity: a recognized pattern (a story in a book, a royal flush in poker)

One Brow: "Complexity is the natural result of randomness."
No, complexity is the intelligent result of design.
A skyscraper is complex specifity. It is improbable that a skyscraper came together randomly.
A story in a book is complex specificity. It is improbable that the stories in a book came together randomly.
You say an accident is "not the usual occurrence" so we have to look at the usual occurrence.
You could say the "usual occurence" for a set of letters in the alphabet is not being a story. The "usual occurrence" of a set of letters is not even to be in alphabetical order, but we see design (universally recognized pattern) when a set of letters is in alphabetical order.

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

No, the last and final step to Darwin's theory is that a new attribute/species is created. Any test of such a theory would have to account for the final step.

**************

Of course, natural selection is not really a tautology.

It absolutely is. You can't predict events after they have occured, and then claim they were an accident after observing the repeated occurence.
It is like someone predicting the 9-11 terror attacks on 9-12, and also claiming the planes flew into the building on accident, after observing the second plane hit the second tower. It is not only tautological to do this it is also absurd. The first plane hitting might be believable as an accident (many people thought so) until the second plane hit the other building in about the same location and not to long afterward (Dembski uses time and space as measures of complexity).
There is no such thing as predictably random, or repeatedly accidental.
If something repeats itself we recognize it as a pattern. You know like when we observe apples falling from trees we start calling that pattern "gravity." If we are rational we stop believing that it was an accident once we observe a repeated pattern/design.

I've read [Dembski's theory] 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.

What if I had a bum hole right behind my bum hole?

Your presentation of a story book pattern that never happens (<---intelligent publishers wouldn't do that so it ain't a pattern we see) dismisses what concept?

 

[PearlWatson]

PearlWatson: All I get from Darwiniacs is, "It was an accident! Accidents happen all the time!" Or I get the ever so convincing scientific argument "Mutations happen!" (<---has a "crap-like" ancestor)[/QUOTE]

One Brow: Perhaps that all you understand, but it's not all you are told.

PearlWatson: That was almost word for word what you and Siro have used as arguments to support your accidental common ancestry theory.

Things happen, for no reason, all the time.

So if one agrees that mutations do happen, then they agree with evolution.

 

[PearlWatson]

But you can argue that evolution is driving towards better product.

Yes, you can. ID Therists do it all the time. They say intelligence is this driving force.

 

[PearlWatson]

The appendix is a highly useful organ in herbivores.
It's actually much smaller, compared to our body size, than it was in our ancestors.
Ancestors with larger mouths had room for more teeth.

Yeah, the appendix still has its uses even for meat eaters who live in uncivilized hell holes.

How would you know your gggggrandpappy's appendix size. Appendixes don't fossilize.

Ancestors with big mouths have room for more teeth, but that doesn't mean the ancestor had any other "ape-like" features. There are plenty of humans with big mouths. Wisdom teeth are just designed human features that served as replacement teeth (for any size mouth) when the first humans didn't have a toothbrush/toothpaste to prevent rotting. This would be an example of "unnatural" (<---human intelligence caused) selection for you Darwiniacs. Englishmen probably still need their replacement teeth since they have socialized dentistry.

 

[PearlWatson]

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.

Yes, but you'll notice that to create a sculpture(design) you need a sculptor(intelligence). It is so damn obvious even Hellen Keller could see it.

 

[PearlWatson]

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

The University simply didn't have the balls to allow any dissent to the official state creation myth (they got all kinds of crap from Liberal Darwiniacs everywhere) and it was too "mathematical-centered" for the apes they brought in from outside universities for the official review, to understand.