Creationists

[UltimateReality]

Fitness is very easily defined as reproductive success. Differential reproductive success is ultimately what drives evolution.

Whats more, the phylogenetic study of rRNA sequences has revolutionized evolutionary biology such that a "tree of life" can be resolved from comparative studies of ribosomal sequences that is largely unbiased by HGT artifacts. Your supposition that modern genetics has convoluted the 'tree of life' could not be further from the truth. To help clarify your understanding of how modern phylogenetic analysis has only empowered evolutionary biology I have linked a review from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that was published in 2011.

Phylogeny and beyond: Scientific, historical, and conceptual significance of the first tree of life

While the detractors of the TOE will allude to flaws, gaps and evidence that contradicts the TOE they have failed to produce any credible scientific discourse that supports their position.

I challenge the opponents of the TOE to link one publication from the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences that explicitly refutes the modern synthesis of the TOE. Its time to crap or get off the pot folks.

What you are saying is built on circular reasoning,just because we have the same genetic code and DNA similarity. DNA similarity proves nothing.

First of all, my post references RNA not DNA.... there is a difference. Additionally, your OPINION that the comparative phylogenetics based on small subunit ribosomal sequences proves nothing is well outside of the scientific mainstream- see the PNAS I provided in my previous post. I'm not exactly sure how you arrived at the conclusion that comaparative phylogentics is circular reasoning but your conclusion that the conservation of the genetic code and translation mechanisms among all known life is not due to common descent but is instead due to a 'designer' has no basis in science.

Ultimately the quantitative phylogenetic analysis of SSU rRNA is in agreement with numerous other lines of evidence i.e. the fossil record that support the modern synthesis of the TOE.

Again, I posit my challenge to those who oppose the TOE:

I challenge the opponents of the TOE to link one publication from the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences that explicitly refutes the modern synthesis of the TOE

Please help me understand why we would need to limit our source from the PONAS? While I get working on that, please find a passage in the Bible, and just the Bible, that explicitly refutes the Creation story.

 

[UltimateReality]

Fitness is very easily defined as reproductive success. Differential reproductive success is ultimately what drives evolution.

So you are basically saying the kinds of organisms that survive and reproduce are the kinds of organisms that survive and reproduce. This is what YWC is calling a circular argument. Evolutionary theory based on natural selection (survival of the fittest) is vacuous: it states that, first, evolution can be explained by the fact that, on the whole, only the fitter organisms survive and achieve reproductive success; and second, what makes an organism fit is the fact that it survives and successfully reproduces. This is the long-running and much-debated claim that natural selection, as an explanation of the evolutionary origin of species, is tautological — it cannot be falsified because it attempts no real explanation.

The New Atlantis » Evolution and the Illusion of Randomness

 

[UltimateReality]

So... what you're suggesting is that the gawds spent time "designing" every terrestrial animal and human which has ever walked or crawled on the planet but for some reason "designed" DNA as a comment component of life just to fool us?

Your self-inflicted ignorance Is your own.

Each family was designed yes. Recombination of genes that was already present in the genome is how we got the diversity in each family group.

So to clarify, the gawds made two (male and female) of every creature? If that is the case, why produce a "design" with inherent flaws? Why "design" a gene pool the will recombine with flaws thus producing errors.

How do you account for worms, as one example, which can reproduce asexaully? Were the gawds just having a bit of fun with that?

How do you account for dinosaurs being "designed" hundreds of millions of years ago and the literal account of a 6,000 year old earth?

Have the gawds played a cruel joke on you?

And what about asexual humans like Pat?

 

[UltimateReality]

First of all, my post references RNA not DNA.... there is a difference. Additionally, your OPINION that the comparative phylogenetics based on small subunit ribosomal sequences proves nothing is well outside of the scientific mainstream- see the PNAS I provided in my previous post. I'm not exactly sure how you arrived at the conclusion that comaparative phylogentics is circular reasoning but your conclusion that the conservation of the genetic code and translation mechanisms among all known life is not due to common descent but is instead due to a 'designer' has no basis in science.

Ultimately the quantitative phylogenetic analysis of SSU rRNA is in agreement with numerous other lines of evidence i.e. the fossil record that support the modern synthesis of the TOE.

Again, I posit my challenge to those who oppose the TOE:

I challenge the opponents of the TOE to link one publication from the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences that explicitly refutes the modern synthesis of the TOE

Dna is converted to Rna so the information does not get tainted,so what is your point ? Naturally you are looking for such an article because you and everyone who knows anything about science,know that the heads of the curriculum in the field of science will not allow anything supporting design.That's a fact. Secularists are in control and have been for a while.

They don't allow anything in that refutes the lie being taught. I may have jumped the gun about where I thought you were headed.

It's definitely a conspiracy formed and maintained by multiple conspirators to keep ancient fears and superstitions out of the public school classroom.

Oh you poor, poor dispossessed fundie.

I would tend to agree that the lack of teaching about the means and methods for burning people at the stake for practicing witchcraft has irreperablly damaged this nations impressionable yutes.

But why on earth would we teach Christian creationism as opposed to older, more established tales of creation which are actually true as opposed to the false doctrines of the Christian fundies.

 

[UltimateReality]

, hope you got the letter, and...
I pray you can make it better down here.
I don't mean a big reduction in the price of beer
But all the people that you made in your image, see
Them starving on their feet 'cause they don't get
Enough to eat from God, I can't believe in you

Dear God, sorry to disturb you, but... I feel that I should be heard
Loud and clear. We all need a big reduction in amount of tears
And all the people that you made in your image, see them fighting
In the street 'cause they can't make opinions meet about God,
I can't believe in you

Did you make disease, and the diamond blue? Did you make
Mankind after we made you? And the devil too!

, don't know if you noticed, but... your name is on
A lot of quotes in this book, and us crazy humans wrote it, you
Should take a look, and all the people that you made in your
Image still believing that junk is true. Well I know it ain't, and
So do you, dear God, I can't believe in I don't believe in

I won't believe in heaven and hell. No saints, no sinners, no
Devil as well. No pearly gates, no thorny crown. You're always
Letting us humans down. The wars you bring, the babes you
Drown. Those lost at sea and never found, and it's the same the
Whole world 'round. The hurt I see helps to compound that
Father, Son and Holy Ghost is just somebody's unholy hoax,
And if you're up there you'd perceive that my heart's here upon
My sleeve. If there's one thing I don't believe in

It's you....

Yep. This is just another proof of my claim there are no true atheists... only people angry at God. When faced with situations they can not reconcile in their lives, instead of turning to God, some decide to hate God, and go on a mission to try to destroy belief in him. If you don't believe in God, why do you care if others do? Why make it your personal mission to persecute those that choose to freely exercise their freedom of religion our country was founded on?

 

[UltimateReality]

It's definitely a conspiracy formed and maintained by multiple conspirators to keep ancient fears and superstitions out of the public school classroom.

Oh you poor, poor dispossessed fundie.

I would tend to agree that the lack of teaching about the means and methods for burning people at the stake for practicing witchcraft has irreperablly damaged this nations impressionable yutes.

But why on earth would we teach Christian creationism as opposed to older, more established tales of creation which are actually true as opposed to the false doctrines of the Christian fundies.

You are a nutcase,we are through. Time to ignore your hateful uneducated rhetoric.

I wasn’t surprised you went slithering for the exits.
It’s just a fact that Christian creationism is a more recent creationist tale of gawds, supernatural / metaphysical beings who fundies demand we bend and scrape to.

While the sacred cows of Christianity are being heaped upon the altar of religious indoctrination, there are many more religions that would require representation if we're not to be accused of being biased or capricious toward lesser followed – but just as likely – religions and gods. There is absolutely nothing that better defines the Abrahamic god vs. the various polytheistic gods of Hinduism, for example. Unless someone can speak with authority regarding Vishnu as one of the true gods extant as opposed to Zeus or Isis, we shouldn't allow head count as the only basis for determining which religions are represented within a public school syllabus. Why not study the worship of Osiris?, or Isis, worshipped for 5,000 years. Using timeline as the criteria for a "real" religion, the worship of Isis far exceeds the more recent constructs and configurations of god and gods.

What fundie christian creationists need to account for is that as soon as they begin dismissing the claims of others' gods, they have inadvertently condemned the arguments for their own gods. The sectarian fundie Christian (supernatural), contention is dependent on claims of a particular god(s). As soon as one begins to approach any discussion of a specific sectarian version of gawd(s), you must hold that gawd(s) to the same standards of proof that all gawds must meet. To dismiss the Greek gods as an absurd claim while holding different gods to be extant supplies the Greek god did it'ists with all the necessary ammunition to shoot down in flames your version as absurd.

If you have evidence for the existence of a creator Gawd, then provide it. But please, stop pretending that there is logical parity between believing something for which there is no evidence and not believing it.

But what of the ICR and Haran Yahan? How do they fit into all of this?

 

[UltimateReality]

It is my opinions mutations were used by God to put an end to eternal life after adam and eve sinned.

These mutations have been passed on for 6,000 years.

I see. So humanity is a lot like a 1970's vintage Chevy vega - cheaply built with planned obsolescence.

Otherwise, your gawds have done to humanity what they have done throughout their tenure. Their hate for humanity has caused them to "design" an environment where people will die in horrific ways with horrific pain and suffering.

To worship such an entity is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

You are a mental midget. My belief system doesn't limit me to my childish, human view. Your comment assumes that this life is all there is. If that is the case, then the joke is on you. While sin has caused some immense suffering and pain, God sees the big picture. Death is not unlike the birthing process... A short and very intense amount of physical pain and suffering with the end result being an amazing blessing and new life.

 

[UltimateReality]

Scientists would like to believe that the popularity of new theories depends entirely on their scientific value, in terms of novelty, importance and technical correctness. But the Bristol study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, shows that scientists pay less attention to theories that are crammed with mathematical details.

Cooky, maybe their math was all wrong.

Scientists struggle with mathematical details, study by biologists finds

 

[UltimateReality]

In other words, rather than the slow incorporation of random mutations via natural selection as envisioned by evolution, populations respond rapidly to challenges with intelligent, directed adaptations. These results make no sense on evolution, but that has not stopped evolutionists from trying to force-fit them into the theory. Here is how one recent paper summarized these findings:

1. Heredity involves more than DNA. There are heritable variations that are independent of variations in DNA sequence, and they have a degree of autonomy from DNA variations. These non-DNA variations can form an additional substrate for evolutionary change and guide genetic evolution.

2. Soft inheritance, the inheritance of developmentally induced and regulated variations, exists and it is important. Soft inheritance includes both non-DNA variations and developmentally induced variations in DNA sequence.

3. Since many organisms (including humans) contain symbionts and parasites that are transferred from one generation of the “host” to the next, it may be necessary to consider such communities as targets of selection.

4. Saltational changes leading to evolution beyond the species level are common, and the mechanisms underlying them are beginning to be understood. Macroevolution may be the result of specific, stress-induced mechanisms that lead to a re-patterning of the genome - to systemic mutations.

5. The Tree Of Life pattern of divergence, which was supposed to be universal, fails to explain all the sources of similarities and differences between taxa. Sharing whole genomes (through hybridization, symbiosis and parasitism) and partial exchange of genomes (through various types of horizontal gene transfer) lead to web-like patterns of relations. These web-like patterns are particularly evident in some taxa (e.g. plants, bacteria) and for some periods of evolution (e.g. the initial stages following genome sharing or exchange).


So now those random mutations must have created life not only with DNA-based heredity, but other heredity mechanisms within the cell. The astronomically unlikely requirements for evolution just increased exponentially.

Darwin's God

 

[UltimateReality]

For years evolutionists attempted to explain this growing list of contradictions using their evolutionary tree model. But it is obvious that this was an exercise in forcing the evidence to fit the theory rather than the other way around. The inexorable march of science has taken its toll and in recent years evolutionists have finally begun to deemphasize their iconic evolutionary tree model. What this does not change, however, is their insistence that evolution is a fact.

Falsification

Now, thirty years after Penny cited the congruence of different evolutionary trees as a prediction that could falsify evolution, it is not controversial even amongst evolutionists that the prediction is false. The plethora of new DNA and protein sequence data have provided a steady stream of incongruent evolutionary trees. These trees strongly conflict with the trees based on other sequence data, or with the consensus evolutionary tree. And the disagreement is far beyond evolutionary “noise.” As one evolution wrote:

Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.

And as usual evolutionists appeal to a spectrum of explanatory devices to correct the narrative. The most prevalent of these epicycles is the horizontal gene transfer (HGT), a term that encompasses several known mechanisms by which genes can transfer between organisms such as bacteria.

In fact, if evolution is true then HGT must have been one of its key players. As one paper explained, HGT “has emerged as a central force in the evolution of many different prokaryotes.”

But under evolution, HGT must also have been important in the evolution of eukaryotes:

and now cases of HGT in eukaryotes are emerging at an increasing rate and account for many adaptively important traits


So HGT is now a key mechanism of the evolutionary process. It can do what the old mechanisms could not. In fact, one must wonder how this powerful mechanism knows when to send which genes where. For the various versions of HGT are incredibly intelligent.

Darwin's God: Search results for tree of life

 

[Hollie]

It is my opinions mutations were used by God to put an end to eternal life after adam and eve sinned.

These mutations have been passed on for 6,000 years.

I see. So humanity is a lot like a 1970's vintage Chevy vega - cheaply built with planned obsolescence.

Otherwise, your gawds have done to humanity what they have done throughout their tenure. Their hate for humanity has caused them to "design" an environment where people will die in horrific ways with horrific pain and suffering.

To worship such an entity is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

You are a mental midget. My belief system doesn't limit me to my childish, human view. Your comment assumes that this life is all there is. If that is the case, then the joke is on you. While sin has caused some immense suffering and pain, God sees the big picture. Death is not unlike the birthing process... A short and very intense amount of physical pain and suffering with the end result being an amazing blessing and new life.

Predictably, the Kool-aid drinker takes to thunping her bible insetad of addressing the immense pain and suffering that religion (and christianity in particular), has caused humanity.

The rabid fundie should make an effort to learn her christianity. For example, the various sects of Christianity were completely at odds with one another as colonial states. Catholics couldn't live in one state, Quakers were executed if they went to another, Protestants were reviled in still others, and so on. These documents still exist. Take a few minutes, go to the library, or even here on the Net (the library is better because you can know for sure that the documents are for real) and research the laws of the original 13 colonies. You'll be surprised at what you'll learn.

 

[Hollie]

For years evolutionists attempted to explain this growing list of contradictions using their evolutionary tree model. But it is obvious that this was an exercise in forcing the evidence to fit the theory rather than the other way around. The inexorable march of science has taken its toll and in recent years evolutionists have finally begun to deemphasize their iconic evolutionary tree model. What this does not change, however, is their insistence that evolution is a fact.

Falsification

Now, thirty years after Penny cited the congruence of different evolutionary trees as a prediction that could falsify evolution, it is not controversial even amongst evolutionists that the prediction is false. The plethora of new DNA and protein sequence data have provided a steady stream of incongruent evolutionary trees. These trees strongly conflict with the trees based on other sequence data, or with the consensus evolutionary tree. And the disagreement is far beyond evolutionary “noise.” As one evolution wrote:

Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.

And as usual evolutionists appeal to a spectrum of explanatory devices to correct the narrative. The most prevalent of these epicycles is the horizontal gene transfer (HGT), a term that encompasses several known mechanisms by which genes can transfer between organisms such as bacteria.

In fact, if evolution is true then HGT must have been one of its key players. As one paper explained, HGT “has emerged as a central force in the evolution of many different prokaryotes.”

But under evolution, HGT must also have been important in the evolution of eukaryotes:

and now cases of HGT in eukaryotes are emerging at an increasing rate and account for many adaptively important traits


So HGT is now a key mechanism of the evolutionary process. It can do what the old mechanisms could not. In fact, one must wonder how this powerful mechanism knows when to send which genes where. For the various versions of HGT are incredibly intelligent.

Darwin's God: Search results for tree of life

Ah yes. Cornelius Hunter, another creationist hack


If and only if Cornelius Hunter made sense, then…

If and only if Cornelius Hunter made sense, then... - The Panda's Thumb

I consider myself pretty well-educated about creationism, and of course I know it’s all silly, but I pride myself on usually being able to understand what argument the creationists are trying to make, even when they are doing it poorly. But I need help with this one.

Via the Discovery Institute Blog/Misinformation Service, I came across this post from Hunter, which is his Monday post. I also read Hunter’s Sunday post and got confused.

Starting on Sunday, we have: Cornelius Hunter, Sunday, July 25, 2010, speaking about shared errors in pseudogenes:

This claim, that such shared errors indicate, or demonstrate, or reveal common ancestry, is the result of an implicit truth claim which does not, and cannot, come from science. It is the claim that evolution and only evolution can explain such evidences. It is the equivalent of what is known as an IF-AND-ONLY-IF claim.

Science makes IF-THEN statements (if evolution is true, then species with recent common ancestors should have similarities between them). IF-AND-ONLY-IF statements (if and only if evolution is true, then species with recent common ancestors should have similarities between them) cannot be known from science. [italics original]

OK, so here he’s saying, I guess, that science can only make if-then statements, and test hypotheses on that basis. Science cannot formally say that X is the ONLY possible explanation of Y, because, I suppose, there always might be some other explanation out there.

He thinks this is important for evolution because sometimes evolutionists say Y (lanugo, shared errors in pseudogenes, etc.) can “only” be explained by common ancestry. Of course, any fair assessment of these sorts of statements would note that people use such language all the time (“the only explanation for the 20 identical paragraphs in these two students’ term papers is copying from each other or from a common source”), and they don’t mean that they can formally exclude, say, miraculous intervention by Thor or something. All people typically mean by these statements is “this is the only decent explanation of Y that has been put forward to date; if someone else comes up with a better explanation, fine, but until then X is what I’m going with.” But if creationists were fair about such things, they wouldn’t be creationists.

(Parenthetical, Hunter throws in some total bunkum:

Any scientific analysis of the evidence [of pseudogenes] would come up empty handed. Pseudogenes reveal various patterns, some which can be employed to argue for common descent, others which violate common descent (they could be explained, for instance, by common mechanism). Furthermore pseudogenes reveal evidence of mutational hotspots.

Side rant: This is, basically, total crap. Hunter apparently has no idea that, in phylogenetics, it is trivial to test hypotheses like “there is no tree structure in the sequence data” or “these two phylogenies from two different genes agree/disagree with each other”, to quantify the amount of agreement/disagreement, etc. The amount of homoplasy (character states which evolved independently, as might occur occasionally with pseudogenes) can be estimated, and we can tell whether or not we are close or far from a situation in which there is so much homoplasy that no phylogenetic structure is statistically supported. And when this kind of thing is done, the result is typically *massive* statistical support for common ancestry. At least, it would be considered such in any other field of science, but Hunter wants to treat evolution differently from all other parts of science. For evolution, he wants to have the special privilege of pulling out a few characters that disagree with some pattern, and ignore the hundreds/thousands of other characters that support the pattern. Hunter complains and complains about the unscientific nature of evolutionists, but when it comes to doing an actual fair data analysis that actually looks at the statistical support for common ancestry, he’s totally at sea. OK, end of rant.)

(Not quite done. I should add that my first encounter with Hunter was in 2001 or so. Somehow or other we were in an argument about whether or not some genetic sequence data produced a tree structure. He had calculated the pairwise distances between the genes and done a histogram of the distances. The distribution of gene-gene distances had a number of separate humps. He claimed that this falsified tree structure. I pointed out that this pattern was exactly what you would expect from distances produced from a tree. After a lot of arguing, he eventually got it, but then said something irate about how he was sorry but just because he was totally wrong about this (I would say the definition of a surprising successful prediction is one where someone claims their data is good and a good falsification of a hypothesis, but then it turns out that their data has exactly the pattern they claimed it didn’t have), he wasn’t going to “genuflect” to evolution. Sadly I can’t find the email now and the only word I can remember is “genuflect”. Ah well.)

Anyway, so, everyone’s got his argument so far? Evolutionists shouldn’t use “IF-AND-ONLY-IF statements”, they should be real scientists and just use “IF-THEN statements” like other scientists, the good kind of scientists.

(By the way, if Hunter is right, he’s just nuked Stephen Meyer’s argument in Signature in the Cell, which relies almost entirely on the argument that intelligence is the ONLY source of genetic “information”. Oops. Of course, Meyer’s assertion is wrong, but that’s a different story.)

With that, I give you, Cornelius Hunter, Monday, July 26, 2010. He is complaining about an introductory biology textbook by Johnson & Lobos. After saying the authors “rehearse the usual lies”, Hunter really gets going on the fossil record:

Such misrepresentations of science, as damaging as they are, pale in comparison to Johnson’s and Lobos’ next move. The apologists make a pathetic attempt to enlist the fossil record as powerful evidence for evolution, and end up with only the usual religious dogma.

They write:
If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected.

Very interesting. And how do evolutionary clowns know so much? From where did Johnson and Lobos learn such ultimate truths? If evolution is not correct then such orderly change is not expected? Tell us more.

What are all the possibilities aside from evolution and why do none of them predict “such orderly change”? Why is it that evolution, and only evolution, predicts such an outcome? This is truly fascinating. If and only if evolution is true would we see such orderly change. Johnson and Lobos are real geniuses–they have knowledge of all possible causes.

You cannot make this stuff up. In two and half pages the text’s chapter on evolution has gone from misleading to absurd. What will come next?

But this is nothing new in evolutionary circles. Only evolutionists can make fools of themselves with a straight face and then repeat the process ad nauseam.

But, did they use the word “only”? No! And they said nothing about “ultimate truths”, and nothing about whatever mysterious alternatives Hunter endlessly claims are out there, but which he shockingly, cravenly, scandalously never bothers to elucidate, as any real scientist would have to. All the authors did was make an if-then statement, like Hunter JUST FREAKING SAID scientists were supposed to do the day before! Instead of congratulating them on saying the right thing, Hunter convicts them of vast, grand metaphysical sins.

So I’m at a loss. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s just mad and letting emotion run his argumentation, under the cover of unsupported blather about metaphysics. Maybe this textbook is being used in his home town or something?

 

[Hollie]

You are a nutcase,we are through. Time to ignore your hateful uneducated rhetoric.

I wasn’t surprised you went slithering for the exits.
It’s just a fact that Christian creationism is a more recent creationist tale of gawds, supernatural / metaphysical beings who fundies demand we bend and scrape to.

While the sacred cows of Christianity are being heaped upon the altar of religious indoctrination, there are many more religions that would require representation if we're not to be accused of being biased or capricious toward lesser followed – but just as likely – religions and gods. There is absolutely nothing that better defines the Abrahamic god vs. the various polytheistic gods of Hinduism, for example. Unless someone can speak with authority regarding Vishnu as one of the true gods extant as opposed to Zeus or Isis, we shouldn't allow head count as the only basis for determining which religions are represented within a public school syllabus. Why not study the worship of Osiris?, or Isis, worshipped for 5,000 years. Using timeline as the criteria for a "real" religion, the worship of Isis far exceeds the more recent constructs and configurations of god and gods.

What fundie christian creationists need to account for is that as soon as they begin dismissing the claims of others' gods, they have inadvertently condemned the arguments for their own gods. The sectarian fundie Christian (supernatural), contention is dependent on claims of a particular god(s). As soon as one begins to approach any discussion of a specific sectarian version of gawd(s), you must hold that gawd(s) to the same standards of proof that all gawds must meet. To dismiss the Greek gods as an absurd claim while holding different gods to be extant supplies the Greek god did it'ists with all the necessary ammunition to shoot down in flames your version as absurd.

If you have evidence for the existence of a creator Gawd, then provide it. But please, stop pretending that there is logical parity between believing something for which there is no evidence and not believing it.

But what of the ICR and Haran Yahan? How do they fit into all of this?

Another mindless waste of time.

I've noticed that absent cutting and pasting from religious websites, you're hopeless at assembling words into coherent sentences.

 

[UltimateReality]

I see. So humanity is a lot like a 1970's vintage Chevy vega - cheaply built with planned obsolescence.

Otherwise, your gawds have done to humanity what they have done throughout their tenure. Their hate for humanity has caused them to "design" an environment where people will die in horrific ways with horrific pain and suffering.

To worship such an entity is a prescription for a maladjusted personality.

You are a mental midget. My belief system doesn't limit me to my childish, human view. Your comment assumes that this life is all there is. If that is the case, then the joke is on you. While sin has caused some immense suffering and pain, God sees the big picture. Death is not unlike the birthing process... A short and very intense amount of physical pain and suffering with the end result being an amazing blessing and new life.

Predictably, the Kool-aid drinker takes to thunping her bible insetad of addressing the immense pain and suffering that religion (and christianity in particular), has caused humanity.

The rabid fundie should make an effort to learn her christianity. For example, the various sects of Christianity were completely at odds with one another as colonial states. Catholics couldn't live in one state, Quakers were executed if they went to another, Protestants were reviled in still others, and so on. These documents still exist. Take a few minutes, go to the library, or even here on the Net (the library is better because you can know for sure that the documents are for real) and research the laws of the original 13 colonies. You'll be surprised at what you'll learn.

Look at all this pain and suffering these Christians are causing. They're probably burning a few witches along the way too.

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[UltimateReality]

For years evolutionists attempted to explain this growing list of contradictions using their evolutionary tree model. But it is obvious that this was an exercise in forcing the evidence to fit the theory rather than the other way around. The inexorable march of science has taken its toll and in recent years evolutionists have finally begun to deemphasize their iconic evolutionary tree model. What this does not change, however, is their insistence that evolution is a fact.

Falsification

Now, thirty years after Penny cited the congruence of different evolutionary trees as a prediction that could falsify evolution, it is not controversial even amongst evolutionists that the prediction is false. The plethora of new DNA and protein sequence data have provided a steady stream of incongruent evolutionary trees. These trees strongly conflict with the trees based on other sequence data, or with the consensus evolutionary tree. And the disagreement is far beyond evolutionary “noise.” As one evolution wrote:

Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.

And as usual evolutionists appeal to a spectrum of explanatory devices to correct the narrative. The most prevalent of these epicycles is the horizontal gene transfer (HGT), a term that encompasses several known mechanisms by which genes can transfer between organisms such as bacteria.

In fact, if evolution is true then HGT must have been one of its key players. As one paper explained, HGT “has emerged as a central force in the evolution of many different prokaryotes.”

But under evolution, HGT must also have been important in the evolution of eukaryotes:

and now cases of HGT in eukaryotes are emerging at an increasing rate and account for many adaptively important traits


So HGT is now a key mechanism of the evolutionary process. It can do what the old mechanisms could not. In fact, one must wonder how this powerful mechanism knows when to send which genes where. For the various versions of HGT are incredibly intelligent.

Darwin's God: Search results for tree of life

Ah yes. Cornelius Hunter, another creationist hack


If and only if Cornelius Hunter made sense, then…

If and only if Cornelius Hunter made sense, then... - The Panda's Thumb

I consider myself pretty well-educated about creationism, and of course I know it’s all silly, but I pride myself on usually being able to understand what argument the creationists are trying to make, even when they are doing it poorly. But I need help with this one.

Via the Discovery Institute Blog/Misinformation Service, I came across this post from Hunter, which is his Monday post. I also read Hunter’s Sunday post and got confused.

Starting on Sunday, we have: Cornelius Hunter, Sunday, July 25, 2010, speaking about shared errors in pseudogenes:

This claim, that such shared errors indicate, or demonstrate, or reveal common ancestry, is the result of an implicit truth claim which does not, and cannot, come from science. It is the claim that evolution and only evolution can explain such evidences. It is the equivalent of what is known as an IF-AND-ONLY-IF claim.

Science makes IF-THEN statements (if evolution is true, then species with recent common ancestors should have similarities between them). IF-AND-ONLY-IF statements (if and only if evolution is true, then species with recent common ancestors should have similarities between them) cannot be known from science. [italics original]

OK, so here he’s saying, I guess, that science can only make if-then statements, and test hypotheses on that basis. Science cannot formally say that X is the ONLY possible explanation of Y, because, I suppose, there always might be some other explanation out there.

He thinks this is important for evolution because sometimes evolutionists say Y (lanugo, shared errors in pseudogenes, etc.) can “only” be explained by common ancestry. Of course, any fair assessment of these sorts of statements would note that people use such language all the time (“the only explanation for the 20 identical paragraphs in these two students’ term papers is copying from each other or from a common source”), and they don’t mean that they can formally exclude, say, miraculous intervention by Thor or something. All people typically mean by these statements is “this is the only decent explanation of Y that has been put forward to date; if someone else comes up with a better explanation, fine, but until then X is what I’m going with.” But if creationists were fair about such things, they wouldn’t be creationists.

(Parenthetical, Hunter throws in some total bunkum:

Any scientific analysis of the evidence [of pseudogenes] would come up empty handed. Pseudogenes reveal various patterns, some which can be employed to argue for common descent, others which violate common descent (they could be explained, for instance, by common mechanism). Furthermore pseudogenes reveal evidence of mutational hotspots.

Side rant: This is, basically, total crap. Hunter apparently has no idea that, in phylogenetics, it is trivial to test hypotheses like “there is no tree structure in the sequence data” or “these two phylogenies from two different genes agree/disagree with each other”, to quantify the amount of agreement/disagreement, etc. The amount of homoplasy (character states which evolved independently, as might occur occasionally with pseudogenes) can be estimated, and we can tell whether or not we are close or far from a situation in which there is so much homoplasy that no phylogenetic structure is statistically supported. And when this kind of thing is done, the result is typically *massive* statistical support for common ancestry. At least, it would be considered such in any other field of science, but Hunter wants to treat evolution differently from all other parts of science. For evolution, he wants to have the special privilege of pulling out a few characters that disagree with some pattern, and ignore the hundreds/thousands of other characters that support the pattern. Hunter complains and complains about the unscientific nature of evolutionists, but when it comes to doing an actual fair data analysis that actually looks at the statistical support for common ancestry, he’s totally at sea. OK, end of rant.)

(Not quite done. I should add that my first encounter with Hunter was in 2001 or so. Somehow or other we were in an argument about whether or not some genetic sequence data produced a tree structure. He had calculated the pairwise distances between the genes and done a histogram of the distances. The distribution of gene-gene distances had a number of separate humps. He claimed that this falsified tree structure. I pointed out that this pattern was exactly what you would expect from distances produced from a tree. After a lot of arguing, he eventually got it, but then said something irate about how he was sorry but just because he was totally wrong about this (I would say the definition of a surprising successful prediction is one where someone claims their data is good and a good falsification of a hypothesis, but then it turns out that their data has exactly the pattern they claimed it didn’t have), he wasn’t going to “genuflect” to evolution. Sadly I can’t find the email now and the only word I can remember is “genuflect”. Ah well.)

Anyway, so, everyone’s got his argument so far? Evolutionists shouldn’t use “IF-AND-ONLY-IF statements”, they should be real scientists and just use “IF-THEN statements” like other scientists, the good kind of scientists.

(By the way, if Hunter is right, he’s just nuked Stephen Meyer’s argument in Signature in the Cell, which relies almost entirely on the argument that intelligence is the ONLY source of genetic “information”. Oops. Of course, Meyer’s assertion is wrong, but that’s a different story.)

With that, I give you, Cornelius Hunter, Monday, July 26, 2010. He is complaining about an introductory biology textbook by Johnson & Lobos. After saying the authors “rehearse the usual lies”, Hunter really gets going on the fossil record:

Such misrepresentations of science, as damaging as they are, pale in comparison to Johnson’s and Lobos’ next move. The apologists make a pathetic attempt to enlist the fossil record as powerful evidence for evolution, and end up with only the usual religious dogma.

They write:
If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected.

Very interesting. And how do evolutionary clowns know so much? From where did Johnson and Lobos learn such ultimate truths? If evolution is not correct then such orderly change is not expected? Tell us more.

What are all the possibilities aside from evolution and why do none of them predict “such orderly change”? Why is it that evolution, and only evolution, predicts such an outcome? This is truly fascinating. If and only if evolution is true would we see such orderly change. Johnson and Lobos are real geniuses–they have knowledge of all possible causes.

You cannot make this stuff up. In two and half pages the text’s chapter on evolution has gone from misleading to absurd. What will come next?

But this is nothing new in evolutionary circles. Only evolutionists can make fools of themselves with a straight face and then repeat the process ad nauseam.

But, did they use the word “only”? No! And they said nothing about “ultimate truths”, and nothing about whatever mysterious alternatives Hunter endlessly claims are out there, but which he shockingly, cravenly, scandalously never bothers to elucidate, as any real scientist would have to. All the authors did was make an if-then statement, like Hunter JUST FREAKING SAID scientists were supposed to do the day before! Instead of congratulating them on saying the right thing, Hunter convicts them of vast, grand metaphysical sins.

So I’m at a loss. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s just mad and letting emotion run his argumentation, under the cover of unsupported blather about metaphysics. Maybe this textbook is being used in his home town or something?

I'm sure Hunter is part of the ICR.

 

[UltimateReality]

I wasn’t surprised you went slithering for the exits.
It’s just a fact that Christian creationism is a more recent creationist tale of gawds, supernatural / metaphysical beings who fundies demand we bend and scrape to.

While the sacred cows of Christianity are being heaped upon the altar of religious indoctrination, there are many more religions that would require representation if we're not to be accused of being biased or capricious toward lesser followed – but just as likely – religions and gods. There is absolutely nothing that better defines the Abrahamic god vs. the various polytheistic gods of Hinduism, for example. Unless someone can speak with authority regarding Vishnu as one of the true gods extant as opposed to Zeus or Isis, we shouldn't allow head count as the only basis for determining which religions are represented within a public school syllabus. Why not study the worship of Osiris?, or Isis, worshipped for 5,000 years. Using timeline as the criteria for a "real" religion, the worship of Isis far exceeds the more recent constructs and configurations of god and gods.

What fundie christian creationists need to account for is that as soon as they begin dismissing the claims of others' gods, they have inadvertently condemned the arguments for their own gods. The sectarian fundie Christian (supernatural), contention is dependent on claims of a particular god(s). As soon as one begins to approach any discussion of a specific sectarian version of gawd(s), you must hold that gawd(s) to the same standards of proof that all gawds must meet. To dismiss the Greek gods as an absurd claim while holding different gods to be extant supplies the Greek god did it'ists with all the necessary ammunition to shoot down in flames your version as absurd.

If you have evidence for the existence of a creator Gawd, then provide it. But please, stop pretending that there is logical parity between believing something for which there is no evidence and not believing it.

But what of the ICR and Haran Yahan? How do they fit into all of this?

Another mindless waste of time.

I've noticed that absent cutting and pasting from religious websites, you're hopeless at assembling words into coherent sentences.

Says the queen of cutting and pasting, who just copied a small volume above.

 

[Youwerecreated]

The manner in which life first came to inhabit the earth is not a phenomena described by the modern synthesis of the TOE. The scietific community has been quite candid and open about how at present an insufficiency of data precludes a compelling explanation for the origins of life on earth.

The notion that an intrinsic secular bias among the leaders of thought in modern science is the primary reason tenets of creationism and design have been excluded and/or rebuffed by the mainstream scientific community is a total farse. The real reason that the tenets of creation and ID 'science' ( I use that term loosely in conjunction with ID and creationism) have failed to find mainstream acceptance is because the explanations espoused by ID and creationism lack empirical support and/or were developed outside of accepted scientific norms.

I will hold you to the same standards you do creationists.

The real problem is you have no clue but are willing to ignore evidence for design.

I provided a scientific source on the phylogenetics.

Please elaborate how i have "no clue" and how I am ignoring evidence for design.

You still did not address your point concerning RNA. The origins question that you act like was not asked. You are expecting us to provide you an article from the science community that rejects anything to do with design even though there is plenty of evidence for design which has been pointed out too many times to number in this thread.

 

[Hollie]

For years evolutionists attempted to explain this growing list of contradictions using their evolutionary tree model. But it is obvious that this was an exercise in forcing the evidence to fit the theory rather than the other way around. The inexorable march of science has taken its toll and in recent years evolutionists have finally begun to deemphasize their iconic evolutionary tree model. What this does not change, however, is their insistence that evolution is a fact.

Falsification

Now, thirty years after Penny cited the congruence of different evolutionary trees as a prediction that could falsify evolution, it is not controversial even amongst evolutionists that the prediction is false. The plethora of new DNA and protein sequence data have provided a steady stream of incongruent evolutionary trees. These trees strongly conflict with the trees based on other sequence data, or with the consensus evolutionary tree. And the disagreement is far beyond evolutionary “noise.” As one evolution wrote:

Phylogenetic incongruities can be seen everywhere in the universal tree, from its root to the major branchings within and among the various taxa to the makeup of the primary groupings themselves.

And as usual evolutionists appeal to a spectrum of explanatory devices to correct the narrative. The most prevalent of these epicycles is the horizontal gene transfer (HGT), a term that encompasses several known mechanisms by which genes can transfer between organisms such as bacteria.

In fact, if evolution is true then HGT must have been one of its key players. As one paper explained, HGT “has emerged as a central force in the evolution of many different prokaryotes.”

But under evolution, HGT must also have been important in the evolution of eukaryotes:

and now cases of HGT in eukaryotes are emerging at an increasing rate and account for many adaptively important traits


So HGT is now a key mechanism of the evolutionary process. It can do what the old mechanisms could not. In fact, one must wonder how this powerful mechanism knows when to send which genes where. For the various versions of HGT are incredibly intelligent.

Darwin's God: Search results for tree of life

Ah yes. Cornelius Hunter, another creationist hack


If and only if Cornelius Hunter made sense, then…

If and only if Cornelius Hunter made sense, then... - The Panda's Thumb

I consider myself pretty well-educated about creationism, and of course I know it’s all silly, but I pride myself on usually being able to understand what argument the creationists are trying to make, even when they are doing it poorly. But I need help with this one.

Via the Discovery Institute Blog/Misinformation Service, I came across this post from Hunter, which is his Monday post. I also read Hunter’s Sunday post and got confused.

Starting on Sunday, we have: Cornelius Hunter, Sunday, July 25, 2010, speaking about shared errors in pseudogenes:


Science makes IF-THEN statements (if evolution is true, then species with recent common ancestors should have similarities between them). IF-AND-ONLY-IF statements (if and only if evolution is true, then species with recent common ancestors should have similarities between them) cannot be known from science. [italics original]

OK, so here he’s saying, I guess, that science can only make if-then statements, and test hypotheses on that basis. Science cannot formally say that X is the ONLY possible explanation of Y, because, I suppose, there always might be some other explanation out there.

He thinks this is important for evolution because sometimes evolutionists say Y (lanugo, shared errors in pseudogenes, etc.) can “only” be explained by common ancestry. Of course, any fair assessment of these sorts of statements would note that people use such language all the time (“the only explanation for the 20 identical paragraphs in these two students’ term papers is copying from each other or from a common source”), and they don’t mean that they can formally exclude, say, miraculous intervention by Thor or something. All people typically mean by these statements is “this is the only decent explanation of Y that has been put forward to date; if someone else comes up with a better explanation, fine, but until then X is what I’m going with.” But if creationists were fair about such things, they wouldn’t be creationists.

(Parenthetical, Hunter throws in some total bunkum:


Side rant: This is, basically, total crap. Hunter apparently has no idea that, in phylogenetics, it is trivial to test hypotheses like “there is no tree structure in the sequence data” or “these two phylogenies from two different genes agree/disagree with each other”, to quantify the amount of agreement/disagreement, etc. The amount of homoplasy (character states which evolved independently, as might occur occasionally with pseudogenes) can be estimated, and we can tell whether or not we are close or far from a situation in which there is so much homoplasy that no phylogenetic structure is statistically supported. And when this kind of thing is done, the result is typically *massive* statistical support for common ancestry. At least, it would be considered such in any other field of science, but Hunter wants to treat evolution differently from all other parts of science. For evolution, he wants to have the special privilege of pulling out a few characters that disagree with some pattern, and ignore the hundreds/thousands of other characters that support the pattern. Hunter complains and complains about the unscientific nature of evolutionists, but when it comes to doing an actual fair data analysis that actually looks at the statistical support for common ancestry, he’s totally at sea. OK, end of rant.)

(Not quite done. I should add that my first encounter with Hunter was in 2001 or so. Somehow or other we were in an argument about whether or not some genetic sequence data produced a tree structure. He had calculated the pairwise distances between the genes and done a histogram of the distances. The distribution of gene-gene distances had a number of separate humps. He claimed that this falsified tree structure. I pointed out that this pattern was exactly what you would expect from distances produced from a tree. After a lot of arguing, he eventually got it, but then said something irate about how he was sorry but just because he was totally wrong about this (I would say the definition of a surprising successful prediction is one where someone claims their data is good and a good falsification of a hypothesis, but then it turns out that their data has exactly the pattern they claimed it didn’t have), he wasn’t going to “genuflect” to evolution. Sadly I can’t find the email now and the only word I can remember is “genuflect”. Ah well.)

Anyway, so, everyone’s got his argument so far? Evolutionists shouldn’t use “IF-AND-ONLY-IF statements”, they should be real scientists and just use “IF-THEN statements” like other scientists, the good kind of scientists.

(By the way, if Hunter is right, he’s just nuked Stephen Meyer’s argument in Signature in the Cell, which relies almost entirely on the argument that intelligence is the ONLY source of genetic “information”. Oops. Of course, Meyer’s assertion is wrong, but that’s a different story.)

With that, I give you, Cornelius Hunter, Monday, July 26, 2010. He is complaining about an introductory biology textbook by Johnson & Lobos. After saying the authors “rehearse the usual lies”, Hunter really gets going on the fossil record:

Such misrepresentations of science, as damaging as they are, pale in comparison to Johnson’s and Lobos’ next move. The apologists make a pathetic attempt to enlist the fossil record as powerful evidence for evolution, and end up with only the usual religious dogma.

They write:
If the theory of evolution is not correct, on the other hand, then such orderly change is not expected.

Very interesting. And how do evolutionary clowns know so much? From where did Johnson and Lobos learn such ultimate truths? If evolution is not correct then such orderly change is not expected? Tell us more.

What are all the possibilities aside from evolution and why do none of them predict “such orderly change”? Why is it that evolution, and only evolution, predicts such an outcome? This is truly fascinating. If and only if evolution is true would we see such orderly change. Johnson and Lobos are real geniuses–they have knowledge of all possible causes.

You cannot make this stuff up. In two and half pages the text’s chapter on evolution has gone from misleading to absurd. What will come next?

But this is nothing new in evolutionary circles. Only evolutionists can make fools of themselves with a straight face and then repeat the process ad nauseam.

But, did they use the word “only”? No! And they said nothing about “ultimate truths”, and nothing about whatever mysterious alternatives Hunter endlessly claims are out there, but which he shockingly, cravenly, scandalously never bothers to elucidate, as any real scientist would have to. All the authors did was make an if-then statement, like Hunter JUST FREAKING SAID scientists were supposed to do the day before! Instead of congratulating them on saying the right thing, Hunter convicts them of vast, grand metaphysical sins.

So I’m at a loss. If I had to guess, I’d say he’s just mad and letting emotion run his argumentation, under the cover of unsupported blather about metaphysics. Maybe this textbook is being used in his home town or something?

I'm sure Hunter is part of the ICR.

He might as well be. The creationist drivel he foams at the mouth with is in concert with the crackpots you worship at the ICR.

 

[Hollie]

But what of the ICR and Haran Yahan? How do they fit into all of this?

Another mindless waste of time.

I've noticed that absent cutting and pasting from religious websites, you're hopeless at assembling words into coherent sentences.

Says the queen of cutting and pasting, who just copied a small volume above.

As we see, it exposes the fraud promoted by the creationist agenda of promoting a hateful religious agenda under the guise of science.

What we see consistently from religious hacks are failed attempts at lies and deceit in flailing attempts to promote fear and superstition which defines their agenda if ignorance.

 

[Hollie]

But what of the ICR and Haran Yahan? How do they fit into all of this?

Another mindless waste of time.

I've noticed that absent cutting and pasting from religious websites, you're hopeless at assembling words into coherent sentences.

Says the queen of cutting and pasting, who just copied a small volume above.

As we see, it exposes the fraud promoted by the creationist agenda of promoting a hateful religious ideology under the guise of science.

What we see consistently from religious hacks are failed attempts at lies and deceit in flailing attempts to promote fear and superstition which defines their agenda if ignorance.