Dr Collins, top geneticist, and CHRISTIAN....

[Youwerecreated]

You have failed YWC and brought Alliebebe down with you.

do you have anything that refutes what i presented today J or just rhetoric as usual ?

 

[JScott]

You have failed YWC and brought Alliebebe down with you.

do you have anything that refutes what i presented today J or just rhetoric as usual ?

Can you refute anything that all of us have presented to you? No. No because you havent looked at anything presented to you. You cant even grasp how beneficial genes benefit.

You like to discount scientific fact but, you know what, you cant discount it. It is what it is. You can ignore the facts, that's your prerogative, but the rest of the world can not. This is why creationism will never be taught in public schools.

Creationism can not do anything. It just reacts. It creates words that try to manipulate the listener. Never mind the fact that the words have false meanings.

Will Microsoft ever employ a creationist strictly for his creationist beliefs? No they wont. Will Bell? Or Lockheed Martin? No and no.

If our government wanted to hire a new company to build a new spaceship, do you think they will hire a creationist company to do it? No they wont. They wont because youre beliefs in science are inaccurate, half assed and false.

You place all your unknowns in faith. Thats fine, for you, but when you take other peoples lives in your hands there can not be "faith" involved. People need to know they will survive. This stuff of science we have been talking about for the last 50 some odd pages is what gives us that. You and your brothers and sisters of faith can not.

 

[Youwerecreated]

T


Mutations: evolution’s engine becomes evolution’s end!

by Alex Williams

Oh the old argument that Hitler'f folks used against non-Aryan peoples! How wonderful you people have met up with the white Aryan supremacist arguments and EMBRACED them!!!

Glad it has now found it's way into the foolish white supremacist Christian bunch of baloney!

You choose interesting psuedo science!

Let's look back at Hitler's arguments that only Aryan people had "pure genes"!!!

Oh wait, fast forward to David Duke, and the USA in 1970's

Care to go to so-called religious "scientists" of the 1950's against marrying between the races?
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents, their sentencing judge decreed. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix."

Gay Marriage vs. Miscegenation

Maybe this Facebook page you should sign up for ......it's all the craze

Bring Back Anti-Miscegenation Laws *Now*! | Facebook

Where do you come up and pledge your allegiance to these fools? Are you that foolish? Did you NEVER study history?

I doubt you went to school beyond high school, and I bet you did MOST of your high school study in a religious school, so far you haven't proved me wrong, you have only proved my theory post after post.

Let's make sure you have something beyond a Christian home-schooled education. What have you done that shows you can show that an actual college course took place in your life? How about a transcript? A published paper? A photo in a cap and gown?
Nothing? Not even a proof of college registration for science research reading at JSTOR?

Just faking it, right? and asking ME if I think you are a fake?

Thought so!

Once again only rhetoric,can you not show any evidence that refutes what is being said ?

I already told you where i was educated and you have not done so. Fact is you are alway's avoiding my questions why if you 're who you say you're ?I'll make a deal with you, prove to me who you're and your credentials and then i will reveal mine. clearly i have given you an accurate theory that can't be refuted or you would have done so you big windbag. Poop or get off the pot.

While you scramble around thinking of a way to try and fake who you're i'll give you another reputable Dr. That thinks you're full of pooh.

by Dr. Gary Parker

First published in
Creation: Facts of Life
Chapter 2: Darwin and biologic change

The modern evolutionist is called a neo-Darwinian. He still accepts Darwin’s ideas about natural selection, but something new (neo-) has been added. The modern evolutionist believes that new traits come about by chance, by random changes in genes called “mutations,” and not by use and disuse.

Almost everyone has heard about mutations—from Saturday morning cartoons or horror movies, if nowhere else. In those flicks, some atomic disaster produces people with gnarled skin, one big bulging eye, and other “new traits.” In the real world, mutations are responsible for a number of genetic defects, including hemophilia (bleeders’ disease), loss of protective color in the skin and eyes (albinism), and certain kinds of cancer and brain malfunction.

We have abundant evidence that various kinds of radiations, errors in DNA replication, and certain chemicals can indeed produce mutations, and mutations in reproductive cells can be passed on to future generations. Fig. 16 shows some of the changes that have been brought about in fruit-fly wings because of mutations: shorter wings, very short wings, curled wings, spread-apart wings, miniature wings, wings without cross veins. Students in my genetics classes work with these fruit flies each year, crossing different ones and working out inheritance patterns.


Figure 16. Mutations are random changes in genes (DNA), often caused by radiation. The mutations in the wings above were produced by X-raying fruit flies. According to the modern, neo-Darwinian view, mutations are the source of new traits for evolution, and selection culls out the fittest combinations (or eliminates the “unfittest”) that are first produced just by chance. Mutations certainly occur, but are there limits to extrapolating from mutational changes to evolutionary changes (e.g., “fish to philosopher”)?

Then there’s the flu virus. Why haven’t we yet been able to solve the flu problem? Part of the problem is that this year’s vaccine and your own antibodies are only good against last year’s flu. (They don’t usually tell you that when you get the shot, but it’s already out of date.) The smallpox virus has the common decency to stay the same year in and year out, so once you’re vaccinated or build up an immunity, that’s it. But the flu virus mutates quite easily, so each year its proteins are slightly different from last year’s. They are still flu viruses, but they don’t quite fit our antibodies, so we have to build up our immunity all over again. When it recombines with animal viruses (on the average of once every ten years), the problem is even worse.

Mutations are certainly real. They have profound effects on our lives. And, according to the neo-Darwinian evolutionists, mutations are the raw material for evolution.

But is that possible? Can mutations produce real evolutionary changes? Don’t make any mistakes here. Mutations are real; they’re something we observe; they do make changes in traits. But the question remains: do they produce evolutionary changes? Do they really produce new traits? Do they really help to explain that postulated change from molecules to man, or fish to philosopher?

The answer seems to be: “Mutations, yes. Evolution, no.” In the last analysis, mutations really don’t help evolutionary theory at all. There are three major problems or limits (and many minor ones) that prevent scientific extrapolation from mutational change to evolutionary change.

(1) Mathematical challenges. Problem number one is the mathematical. I won’t dwell on this one, because it’s written up in many books and widely acknowledged by evolutionists themselves as a serious problem for their theory.

Fortunately, mutations are very rare. They occur on an average of perhaps once in every ten million duplications of a DNA molecule (107, a one followed by seven zeroes). That’s fairly rare. On the other hand, it’s not that rare. Our bodies contain nearly 100 trillion cells (1014). So the odds are quite good that we have a couple of cells with a mutated form of almost any gene. A test tube can hold millions of bacteria, so, again, the odds are quite good that there will be mutant forms among them.

The mathematical problem for evolution comes when you want a series of related mutations. The odds of getting two mutations that are related to one another is the product of the separate probabilities: one in 107 x 107, or 1014. That’s a one followed by 14 zeroes, a hundred trillion! Any two mutations might produce no more than a fly with a wavy edge on a bent wing. That’s a long way from producing a truly new structure, and certainly a long way from changing a fly into some new kind of organism. You need more mutations for that. So, what are the odds of getting three mutations in a row? That’s one in a billion trillion (1021). Suddenly, the ocean isn’t big enough to hold enough bacteria to make it likely for you to find a bacterium with three simultaneous or sequential related mutations.

What about trying for four related mutations? One in 1028. Suddenly, the earth isn’t big enough to hold enough organisms to make that very likely. And we’re talking about only four mutations. It would take many more than that to change a fish into a philosopher, or even a fish into a frog. Four mutations don’t even make a start toward any real evolution. But already at this point some evolutionists have given up the classic idea of evolution, because it just plainly doesn’t work.

It was at this level (just four related mutations) that microbiologists gave up on the idea that mutations could explain why some bacteria are resistant to four different antibiotics at the same time. The odds against the mutation explanation were simply too great, so they began to look for another mechanism—and they found it. First of all, using cultures that are routinely kept for long periods of time, they found out that bacteria were resistant to antibiotics, even before commercial antibiotics were “invented.” Genetic variability was “built right into” the bacteria. Did the nonresistant varieties get resistant by mutation? No. Resistant forms were already present. Furthermore, certain bacteria have little rings of DNA, called plasmids, that they trade around among themselves, and they passed on their resistance to antibiotics in that way. It wasn’t mutation and asexual reproduction at all, just ordinary recombination and variation within kind.

Bacteria can be made antibiotic resistant by mutation, but biologist Novick9 calls such forms “evolutionary cripples.” The mutation typically damages a growth factor, so that the mutationally crippled bacteria can scarcely survive outside the lab. The antibiotic resistance carried by plasmids results from enzymes produced to break down the antibiotic. Such bacteria do not have their growth crippled by mutation. Their resistance is by design.

But why, you might well ask, would God create antibiotic resistance? It’s possible God designed antibiotic resistance in bacteria, and antibiotic production by fungi, to balance the growth of these prolific organisms in the soil. Only after the corruption of creation did some bacteria become disease causers, making antibiotic resistance “inadvertently” a medical problem.

Contrary to popular opinion, drug resistance in bacteria does not demonstrate evolution. It doesn’t even demonstrate the production of favorable mutations. It does demonstrate natural selection (or a sort of artificial selection, in this case), but only selection among already existing variations within a kind. It also demonstrates that when the odds that a particular process will produce a given effect get too low, good scientists normally look for a better explanation, such as the plasmid explanation for resistance to multiple antibiotics.

At this point, evolutionists often say that “Time is the hero of the plot.” That’s what I used to say to my students. “Sure, the odds are low, but there’s all that time, nearly 5 billion years!” But 5 billion years is only about 1017 seconds, and the whole universe contains fewer than 1080 atoms. So even by the wildest “guesstimates,” the universe isn’t old enough or big enough to reach odds like the 1 in 103,000,000 that Huxley, an evolutionist, estimated as the odds against the evolution of the horse.

Way back in 1967, a prestigious group of internationally known biologists and mathematicians gathered at the Wistar Institute to consider Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution.10 All present were evolutionists, and they agreed, as the preface clearly states, that no one would be questioning evolution itself. The only question was, could mutations serve as the basis—with natural selection—as a mechanism for evolutionary change? The answer of the mathematicians: no. Just plain no!

Emotions ran high. After a particularly telling paper by Marcel Schutzenberger of the University of Paris, the chairman of the gathering, C. H. Waddington, said, “Your argument is simply that life must have come about by special creation!” The stenographer records, “Schutzenberger: No! Voices: No!” Anything but creation; it wasn’t even fair (in spite of the evidence!) to bring up the word.

Dr. Waddington later called himself, impressively, a “post-neo-Darwinist,” someone who believes in evolution, but who also believes that mutation-selection cannot explain how evolution can occur. Many research evolutionists (but not many textbook writers or teachers) recognize the need for a new generation of evolutionists to forge the “post-neo-Darwinian synthesis.”

In his chapter “Beyond the Reach of Chance,” Denton11 discusses attempts to simulate evolutionary processes on computers. He concludes with these strong words:

If complex computer programs cannot be changed by random mechanisms, then surely the same must apply to the genetic programs of living organisms. The fact that systems in every way analogous to living organisms cannot undergo evolution by pure trial and error [i.e., by mutation and selection] and that their functional distribution invariably conforms to an improbable discontinuum comes, in my opinion, very close to a formal disproof of the whole Darwinian paradigm of nature. By what strange capacity do living organisms defy the laws of chance which are apparently obeyed by all analogous complex systems? (Emphasis added).

Most gratifyingly, Denton seems to look beyond the merely negative insufficiency of chance to glimpse a solution to “The Puzzle of Perfection,” as he calls it, in the “design hypothesis”:

It is the sheer universality of perfection, the fact that everywhere we look, we find an elegance and ingenuity of an absolutely transcending quality, which so mitigates against the idea of chance. … In practically every field of fundamental biological research ever-increasing levels of design and complexity are being revealed at an ever-accelerating rate. The credibility of natural selection is weakened, therefore, not only by the perfection we have already glimpsed but by the expectation of further as yet undreampt [sic] of depths of ingenuity and complexity (p. 342).

Unfortunately, we also have evidence that the transcendent ingenuity and design Denton sees has been marred and scarred. In that sense, mathematics isn’t even the most serious challenge to using mutations as the basis for evolution.

(2) Upward or downward? Even more serious is the fact that mutations are “going the wrong way” as far as evolution is concerned. Almost every mutation we know is identified by the disease or abnormality that it causes. Creationists use mutations to explain the origin of parasites and disease, the origin of hereditary defects, and the loss of traits. In other words, time, chance, and random changes do just what we normally expect: tear things down and make matters worse. Using mutations to explain the breakdown of existing genetic order (creation-corruption) is quite the opposite of using mutations to explain the build up of genetic order (evolution). Clearly, creation-corruption is the most direct inference from the effects of mutations that scientists actually observe.

By producing defects or blocking the normal function of certain genes, mutations have introduced numerous genetic abnormalities into the human population. The hemophilia (bleeders’ disease) that afflicted the royal houses of Europe may have arisen as a mutant of a clotting-factor gene in Queen Victoria, for example; and the dread Tay-Sach’s Disease may have arisen in Czechoslovakia in the 1920’s as a mutation in the gene for producing an enzyme crucial to brain function.

Some people like to call mutations “the means of creation.” But mutations don’t create; they corrupt! Both logically and often observationally, as in the examples above, the ordered state must come before mutations can disorder it. Mutations are real, all right, but they point to a corruption of the created order by time and chance.

As a matter of fact, human beings are now subject to over 3500 mutational disorders. Fortunately, we don’t show as many defects as we carry. The reason they don’t show up is that we each have two sets of genes, one set of genes from our mothers and another set from our fathers. The “bad genes” we inherit from our mothers’ side are usually covered up by our fathers’ genes, and vice versa. We can see what is likely to happen when an animal is born with only one set of genes. Fig. 17, based on a description in a genetics textbook, represents the rare case of a turkey that was hatched from an unfertilized egg, so it had just one set of chromosomes. The poor bird couldn’t hold its head up; instead, it bobbed up and down from a neurological disorder. The feathers were missing in patches, and it finally had to be transferred to a germ-free chamber because its resistance to disease was so low.


Figure 17. Mutations are mostly harmful, and, as time goes on, they impose an increasingly heavy “genetic burden” on a species. The turkey above, lacking a second set of genes to mask its hereditary defects, could scarcely survive. Creationists use mutations to help explain the origin of parasites and disease. Some evolutionists still believe that time, chance, and occasional favorable mutations provide the raw material for “upward-onward” progress, but the “post-neo-Darwinists” are looking for other means to explain evolution.

Now here’s the basis for a good horror story. Picture a mirror at the end of a dark hall. You claw your way through the spider webs to reach the mirror, and then you press a button. The mirror then splits you in two halves, so you can see what you would look like if you had only your mother’s genes or only your father’s genes. In the next scene, you’re writhing there in agony, your hair turning white as you fall over backward and die of fright! Unfortunately, that picture exaggerates only slightly what mutations have done to human beings and to the various kinds of plants and animals as well. If it weren’t for having two sets of genes, few of us would be able to survive.

Evolutionists recognize, of course, the problem of trying to explain “onward and upward” evolution on the basis of mutations that are harmful at least 1000 times more often than they are helpful. No evolutionist believes that standing in front of X-ray machines would eventually improve human beings. No evolutionist argues that destruction of the earth’s ozone layer is good because it increases mutation rates and, therefore, speeds up evolution. Evolutionists know that decrease in the ozone layer will increase mutation rates, but they, like everyone else, recognize that this will lead only to increased skin cancer and to other harmful changes. Perhaps a helpful change might occur, but it would be drowned in the sea of harmful changes.

Because harmful mutations so greatly outnumber any supposed helpful ones, it’s considered unwise nowadays (and illegal in many states) to marry someone too closely related to you. Why? Because you greatly increase the odds that bad genes will show up. By the way, you also increase the odds of bringing out really excellent trait combinations. But did you ever hear anybody say, “Don’t marry your first cousin or you’ll have a genius for a child?” They don’t usually say that, because the odds of something bad happening are far, far, far, far, far greater.

That would not have been a problem, by the way, shortly after creation (no problem for Cain and his wife, for example). Until mutations had a chance to accumulate in the human population, no such risk of bad combinations existed. Mutations are often carried as “hidden genes” (recessives) that are difficult to eliminate by selection, so they tend to build up in populations. The build-up of mutations with time poses a serious problem for plants and animals, as well as for human beings, and time, evolution’s “hero,” only worsens the problem of mutational decay.

Geneticists, even evolutionary geneticists, refer to the problem as “genetic load” or “genetic burden” In their textbook on evolution, Dobzhansky et al.12 state clearly that the term is meant to imply a burden that “weighs down” a species and lowers its genetic quality. In an article paradoxically titled “The Mechanisms of Evolution,” Francisco Ayala13 defines a mutation as “an error” in DNA. Then he explains that inbreeding has revealed that mutations in fruit flies have produced “extremely short wings, deformed bristles, blindness, and other serious defects.” Does that sound like “the raw material for evolution?”

It’s not that beneficial mutations are theoretically impossible. Bacteria that lose the ability to digest certain sugars, for example, can regain that ability by mutation. That’s no help to evolution, however, since the bacterium only gets back to where it started, but at least the mutant is helpful.

Actually, only three evolutionists have ever given me an example of a beneficial mutation. It was the same example all three times: sickle-cell anemia. Sickle-cell anemia is a disease of red blood cells. Why would anyone call that a beneficial mutation? Well, in certain parts of Africa, the death rate from malaria is quite high. Malaria is caused by a tiny, one-celled organism that gets inside the red blood cells and eats up the hemoglobin. Now, that particular germ doesn’t like sickle-cell hemoglobin. Carriers of one sickle-cell gene produce about half normal and half sickle-cell hemoglobin, and the malaria germ leaves them alone, too. So, carriers don’t get malaria. But the cost is high: 25% of the children of carriers can die of sickle-cell anemia, and another 25% are subject to malaria. If you want to call that a good mutation, you’re welcome to it! It seems doubtful to me that real improvement of human beings would result from accumulating that kind of “beneficial” mutant, and certainly hemoglobin’s ability to carry oxygen was not improved.

The gene for sickle-cell anemia has built up to high levels in certain African populations, not because it is “beneficial” in some abstract sense, but simply because the death rate from anemia in those areas is less than the death rate from malaria. Natural selection is a “blind” process that automatically accumulates genes for short-term survival, even if it reduces the long-term survival of the species. For that reason, evolutionists recognize that natural selection can occasionally lead to “mischievous results” detrimental to genetic quality. That’s the effect I think we’re seeing with sickle-cell anemia (Fig. 18).

Figure 18. “Sickle-cell anemia” is often given as an example of a favorable mutation, because people carrying sickle-cell hemoglobin in their red blood cells (Ss) are resistant to malaria. But the price for this protection is high: 25% of the children of carriers may die of the anemia (ss), and another 25% (SS) are subject to malaria. The gene will automatically be selected where the death rate from malaria is high, but evolutionists themselves admit that short-term advantages—all that natural selection can ever favor—can produce “mischievous results” detrimental to long-term survival. What do you think? Is sickle-cell anemia a “mischievous result,” or a good example of evolutionary progress? (Drawing after Parker, Reynolds, and Reynolds, Heredity, 2nd ed., Educational Methods, Inc., Chicago, 1977.)


Furthermore, when the frequency of the sickle-cell gene reaches 18%, natural selection for it “stops.” That’s the point at which the death rates from sickle-cell anemia and malaria balance, demonstrating conclusively that sickle-cell anemia is not a suitable model for the continuous genetic expansion that evolutionists seek.

Suppose I told you I had found a way to make cars run uphill without using gasoline. Then, as you watched in eager anticipation, I showed you how applying the brakes would make the car run downhill more slowly. Would you believe I had discovered a means for getting cars to run uphill without fuel? Similarly, natural selection can and does slow the rate of genetic decay produced by accumulating mutations (as it does with sickle-cell hemoglobin), but that hardly proves that mutation-selection produces upward and onward progress!

A better example of favorable mutation might be the one possibly involved in the change from teosinte into corn, as described by Nobel laureate George Beadle.14 But as Beadle points out, the mutation was favorable to people, not to corn.

Corn, he says, is a “biological monstrosity” that could not survive on its own, without man’s special care. There are many other examples of mutations “beneficial” to people: seedless grapes, short-legged sheep, hairless dogs, but these would all be harmful to the organism in its own environment and, hence, harmful in evolutionary perspective.

While taking a graduate course in evolution on his way to a master-of-science degree in biology, one of my graduates asked his professor a simple question during a lecture on mutations as the raw material for evolution: “Would you please give us some examples of beneficial mutations?” After an uncomfortably long pause, the professor finally replied, “I can’t think of any right now, but there must be hundreds of them.” He did not come back to the next class with a list—but, to his credit, he didn’t try to use sickle-cell anemia to illustrate helpful mutations.

But once again, let me say that it’s not that good mutations are theoretically impossible. Rather, the price is too high. To explain evolution by the gradual selection of beneficial mutations, one must also put up with the millions of harmful mutations that would have to occur along the way. Even though he has been one of the “old guard” defenders of classic neo-Darwinian evolution, Ayala15 faces the problem squarely in his article in the Scientific American book Evolution. He is talking about variation within species (not kind, but species, the smallest possible unit). He says that variation within species is much greater than Darwin postulated. He speaks of such variation as “enormous” and “staggering.” Yet when he gets to the actual figures, the variation is less than I, as a creationist, would have expected. (Ayala did say his figures underestimated the real variation.)

For creationists, all this variation poses no problem at all. If living things were created to multiply and fill the earth, then great variation within kind is simply good design. There would be no price to pay for created variability, since it would result from creation, not from time, chance, and mutation. (Mutations have introduced further variability since creation was corrupted, but it’s the kind of variability a bull introduces into a china shop!)

What problem did Ayala, as an evolutionist, see with all this staggering variability? Just this: for each beneficial mutant a species accumulated, the price would be a thousand or more harmful mutations. When genetic burden gets too great, offspring are so likely to have serious hereditary defects that the ability of the species to survive is threatened.

Time only makes this evolutionary problem worse. Thanks to our accumulated genetic burden, serious hereditary defects are present in perhaps 5% of all human births, and that percentage greatly increases among the children of closely related parents. All of us have some genetic shortcomings, and it’s really only by common consent that most of us agree to call each other “normal.”

Natural selection cannot save us from this awful situation either. Selection can and does eliminate or reduce the worst mutations—but only when these mutants come to visible (phenotypic) expression. Most mutations “hide” as recessives, “invisible” to selection, and continue to build up in secret at multiple loci, somewhat like a “genetic cancer” slowly but steadily eating away at genetic quality.

If early evolutionists had known what we know now about mutations, it’s most unlikely that mutations would ever have been proposed as the pathway to evolutionary progress.

(3) Mutations point back to creation. Mathematics and genetic load are huge problems for evolution, but the biggest reason mutations cannot lead to evolution is an extremely simple one. It’s so simple, I’m almost afraid to say it. But really, mutations presuppose creation. After all, mutations are only changes in genes that already exist.

Most mutations are caused by radiation or replication errors. But what do you have to have before you can have a mutation? Obviously, the gene has to be there first, before the radiation can hit it or before it can make a copying mistake. In one sense, it’s as simple as that: the gene has to be there before it can mutate. All you get as a result of mutation is just a varied form of an already-existing gene, i.e., variation within kind. (Fig. 19.)


Figure 19. The most logical inference from our scientific observations of mutation, selection, and genetic recombination would seem to be variation within created kinds. There’s no “genetic burden” to bear if variety is produced by creation instead of time, chance, and mutation. But could there be enough variation in each created kind to produce all the diversity we see today? Creationists now have some promising answers to that question. (Drawing after Bliss, Origins Two Models, 2nd ed., Master Books, Colorado Springs, 1978.)

Genes of the same kind, like those for straight and curly hair or those for yellow and green seeds, arc called alleles. There are over 300 alleles of the hemoglobin gene. That’s a lot of variation, but all those alleles produce hemoglobin, a protein for carrying oxygen in red blood cells (none better than the normal allele). By concept and definition, alleles are just variants of a given gene, producing variation in a given trait. Mutations produce only alleles, which means they can produce only variation within kind (creation), not change from one kind to others (evolution).

To make evolution happen—or even to make evolution a scientific theory—evolutionists need some kind of “genetic script writer” to increase the quantity and quality of genetic information. Mutations are just “typographic errors” that occur as genetic script is copied. Mutations have no ability to compose genetic sentences, and thus no ability to make evolution happen at all.


Mutations

 

[Youwerecreated]

Later tater, you know what i noticed about you,you suck at debating,and it's clear you don't know much about what we are discussing. You always attack the messenger that are covering issues you can't understand but yet they are ignorant,you're funny. You're calling me uneducated and fake and i was the one responding to your questions,are you really this ignorant or just pretend to be ?

Not one time could you respond with any kind of evidence.

Let's get it done, the deal stands.

You're a phoney!

 

[Youwerecreated]

You have failed YWC and brought Alliebebe down with you.

do you have anything that refutes what i presented today J or just rhetoric as usual ?

No, no peer-reviewed scientific publication. we don't bother with reading white Aryan supremacist malignant pseudo-Christian polemics, that fail to offer any empirical studies, just misapplications of statistical evidence, misinterpretations, and racially charged arguments.

We don't deal with pseudo-science and polemics, we deal with facts. Sorry some posters have minds not sufficiently astute to tell the difference. We don't deal with racist propaganda, we know that one race is favored over another in society, gets less prison time, convicted less often, pays less in percentage of total income. We know that some of you cannot see the forest for the trees, you just continue on with the same school of racial pseudo-science of the 1850's 1930's, 1950's 1970's even now....

You refuse to go to school, you latch onto this and don't have the brain power to figure out the agenda of the web page. We know who you are. When intellectuals take over, we will make sure that people have to pass a basic history and civics test, history of human kind, civics of your opinions toward people of minority races than yours. Only way to finish the Civil War, once and for all, deny racist pseudo-intellectuals of their right to vote forever. Justice!

Why , are you afraid you might learn something ?

Hey the University of Arizona don't teach the science you claimed i am speaking of. Are you really this stupid! Where did you supposedly get your degree ?

 

[Youwerecreated]

You have failed YWC and brought Alliebebe down with you.

do you have anything that refutes what i presented today J or just rhetoric as usual ?

Can you refute anything that all of us have presented to you? No. No because you havent looked at anything presented to you. You cant even grasp how beneficial genes benefit.

You like to discount scientific fact but, you know what, you cant discount it. It is what it is. You can ignore the facts, that's your prerogative, but the rest of the world can not. This is why creationism will never be taught in public schools.

Creationism can not do anything. It just reacts. It creates words that try to manipulate the listener. Never mind the fact that the words have false meanings.

Will Microsoft ever employ a creationist strictly for his creationist beliefs? No they wont. Will Bell? Or Lockheed Martin? No and no.

If our government wanted to hire a new company to build a new spaceship, do you think they will hire a creationist company to do it? No they wont. They wont because youre beliefs in science are inaccurate, half assed and false.

You place all your unknowns in faith. Thats fine, for you, but when you take other peoples lives in your hands there can not be "faith" involved. People need to know they will survive. This stuff of science we have been talking about for the last 50 some odd pages is what gives us that. You and your brothers and sisters of faith can not.

J i already have,have you not been paying attention ?

J if you only knew what my real job was before the stroke. you would realize how foolish your rebuttal was, you just attempted.

 

[Montrovant]

FFS YWC, can you please post links and maybe a paragraph of copypasta, rather than entire articles? It makes trying to read this thread an incredible chore. For that matter, isn't that part of the rules here, something to that effect? Whether it is or not, it would certainly be considerate.

 

[Youwerecreated]

This is to any of the Neo darwinist. I would like to see later tater answer these questions first but she has been avoiding my questions so i don't think she will attempt it.

If you can't answer these questions do not insult me.

1. If some aspect of nature was intelligently designed, how do we know ?

2. The search for SETI is a scientific research program that searches for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should not biologists do the same,and search for signs of intelligence in biological systems ? Why or why not ?

3. How can we account for complex information rich patterns in biological systems ? where did they have their beginning ?

4. Does any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans ? How do we acconut for these structures ?

5. What are irreducibly complex systems ? Do these systems exist in biology ? If they do,are these systems evidence for design ? If no,why not ?

6. Human designers and life forms repeat the use of certain structures,the camera eye for an example.would this be evidence for common descent, evolutionary convergence, common design,or a combination of these ?

7. while trying to understand biological systems,molecular biologists need to "reverse engineer" them.would this be evidence that the systems were engineered in the first place ?

8.Does the neo darwininist theory and the intelligent design theory make different predictions ? example , junk DNA. which theorywould the idea that large stretches of DNA are junk be more plausible ?

9. Is there evidence that would convince you that intelligent design is true and neo is false ? If none exist or can exist, how can neo darwinism be a testable scientific theory ?

10. Can we detect design without knowing anything about it's designer ? can we identify an object as an ancient artifact without knowing anything about the civilization that produced it ?

Well i will be waithing to see your answers.

 

[Youwerecreated]

FFS YWC, can you please post links and maybe a paragraph of copypasta, rather than entire articles? It makes trying to read this thread an incredible chore. For that matter, isn't that part of the rules here, something to that effect? Whether it is or not, it would certainly be considerate.

Sorry,i just don't want anything to be missed.

 

[Alucard]

Darwin himself said his theory of evolution was absurd ...That the human eye alone is so complex it could never evolve naturally ... Somehow Darwinist continue to find a way to ignore this fact ... If Darwin were alive today would consider believers in evolution morons...

 

[Youwerecreated]

FFS YWC, can you please post links and maybe a paragraph of copypasta, rather than entire articles? It makes trying to read this thread an incredible chore. For that matter, isn't that part of the rules here, something to that effect? Whether it is or not, it would certainly be considerate.

The links are always at the bottom of my pages. They're the title of the article underlined,just run your mouse over it and it will light up and click.

 

[Woyzeck]

Wow, an excuse for everything.

But that doesn't change the fact..none of what you propose has been proven. Making guesses on what you think you're seeing is not proof, nor is it evidence.

Stop acting like the retard in class and go read a book that doesn't suck the cock of Jesus for once. You clearly don't know any basic facts about biology, and can't even come up with a convincing reason or argument or anything on why evolution is false.

But I'm not worried. You'll run from the thread with your tail between your legs again for who knows how many times now, and never respond to the evidence I specifically link to you.

 

[Dr.Drock]

Darwin himself said his theory of evolution was absurd ...That the human eye alone is so complex it could never evolve naturally ... Somehow Darwinist continue to find a way to ignore this fact ... If Darwin were alive today would consider believers in evolution morons...

Can I have a link that shows Darwin said his entire life's work was absurd?



Please not a link to an evangelical site that says he said it with no proof.

 

[Youwerecreated]

Darwin himself said his theory of evolution was absurd ...That the human eye alone is so complex it could never evolve naturally ... Somehow Darwinist continue to find a way to ignore this fact ... If Darwin were alive today would consider believers in evolution morons...

Can I have a link that shows Darwin said his entire life's work was absurd?



Please not a link to an evangelical site that says he said it with no proof.

Does it really matter he was wrong ?

 

[Youwerecreated]

Wow, an excuse for everything.

But that doesn't change the fact..none of what you propose has been proven. Making guesses on what you think you're seeing is not proof, nor is it evidence.

Stop acting like the retard in class and go read a book that doesn't suck the cock of Jesus for once. You clearly don't know any basic facts about biology, and can't even come up with a convincing reason or argument or anything on why evolution is false.

But I'm not worried. You'll run from the thread with your tail between your legs again for who knows how many times now, and never respond to the evidence I specifically link to you.

What in your mind do you think these links prove ?

 

[cbirch2]

This is to any of the Neo darwinist. I would like to see later tater answer these questions first but she has been avoiding my questions so i don't think she will attempt it.

If you can't answer these questions do not insult me.

1. If some aspect of nature was intelligently designed, how do we know ?

2. The search for SETI is a scientific research program that searches for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should not biologists do the same,and search for signs of intelligence in biological systems ? Why or why not ?

3. How can we account for complex information rich patterns in biological systems ? where did they have their beginning ?

4. Does any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans ? How do we acconut for these structures ?

5. What are irreducibly complex systems ? Do these systems exist in biology ? If they do,are these systems evidence for design ? If no,why not ?

6. Human designers and life forms repeat the use of certain structures,the camera eye for an example.would this be evidence for common descent, evolutionary convergence, common design,or a combination of these ?

7. while trying to understand biological systems,molecular biologists need to "reverse engineer" them.would this be evidence that the systems were engineered in the first place ?

8.Does the neo darwininist theory and the intelligent design theory make different predictions ? example , junk DNA. which theorywould the idea that large stretches of DNA are junk be more plausible ?

9. Is there evidence that would convince you that intelligent design is true and neo is false ? If none exist or can exist, how can neo darwinism be a testable scientific theory ?

10. Can we detect design without knowing anything about it's designer ? can we identify an object as an ancient artifact without knowing anything about the civilization that produced it ?

Well i will be waithing to see your answers.

1. We can't. So most logical people would not make the assumption that it is unless presented with evidence.

2. What kind of intelligent life are you going to search for in biological systems? We're not going to find little ant cars. Intelligence across species is directly linked to brain structure. Intelligence DOES exist in biological systems. Animals have brains extremely similar to ours, we simply have a much more developed cerebral cortex.

3. What do you define as information rich? Any three nucleotides will form a codon that will create an amino acid in the presence of enzymes like RNA polymerase. That is information. That can, and does, form spontaneously. A nitrogen base is a simple compound, and that is the base unit of information your talking about here.

4. No structures in the cell no not resemble machines made by humans? What does that have to do with anything? Organelles in a cell resemble very simply lipid membranes that work either through an enzyme catalyst, some protein, or some form of stored energy like ATP. Lipid membranes form naturally. The basic theory about the origin of eukaryotic cells is that one prokaryotic cell enveloped a much smaller one, just like a cell does when it gathers "food". Thats the origin of the mitochondria.

5. Irreducibly complex systems are systems that are rendered useless when any single part is removed. According to intelligent design idiots, this means that complex systems could not have evolved from less complex ones because they would be missing a part and therefore be non functional. These systems do exist in biology, but they're no evidence against evolution. Thats like saying your car won't start when you remove the transmission, therefore the internal combustion engine is not built upon the same general technology of the steam engine. Just because i can't cut out my heart and still live, doesn't mean organisms didnt/dont exist without hearts.

6. I would say thats evidence for common descent. You would say that its evidence for common design. If the argument were that simple and that obvious aristotle would have come up with evolution. Evolution is built on much more solid foundations than the simple fact that we all have eyes.

7. No, they don't. You should actually read more scientific journals, you would be surprised. The creation of RNA from non-RNA is very possible. The creation of RNA that codes for specific proteins is possible. The creation of RNA that codes for proteins that create a cyclical reaction is possible. Therefore your argument is wrong in every sense of the word. Its not just wrong, its a lie.

"Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn’t explain how these ingredients might have formed."

“Ribonucleotides are simply an expression of the fundamental principles of organic chemistry,” said Sutherland. “They’re doing it unwittingly. The instructions for them to do it are inherent in the structure of the precursor materials. And if they can self-assemble so easily, perhaps they shouldn’t be viewed as complicated.”

--Wired.com

8. I would say junk DNA would fit in with evolution way better. If human DNA is an amalgam of 3.8 billions years of genetic variation then you would expect random and junk DNA sequences. On the other hand, why would God create junk DNA sequences? That doesn't make sense to me.

9. If you could provide any proof of intelligent design of course i would take it into account. You could never provide proof, thats your problem, not my willingness to believe it. Evolution makes several predictions. So far all of them true. The only one not conclusively provable is speciation. Thats not evidence against or for evolution however. Because evolution doesn't predict speciation would happen so fast. You can't claim lack of sufficient speciation in 5000 years is evidence that evolution is wrong if evolution doesn't even claim it could happen in 5000 years.

10. Are you equating archeology with intelligent design? Seriously? We find pots and tools and such scattered around human skeletons. The correct analogy would be scattered organism fossils and carcasses around the skeleton of a god. When you fools find that, then youll have a valid analogy.

Your still at the same old stuff. You copy pasta from creationist websites with a bunch of points that don't make sense and are totally irrelevant. It shows a total lack of knowledge about anything. Its funny when you keep talking about DNA and genetic information when you clearly dont even know the basics of how information is stored in DNA. You would be laughed out of every science lecture in the country.

 

[Youwerecreated]

This is to any of the Neo darwinist. I would like to see later tater answer these questions first but she has been avoiding my questions so i don't think she will attempt it.

If you can't answer these questions do not insult me.

1. If some aspect of nature was intelligently designed, how do we know ?

2. The search for SETI is a scientific research program that searches for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should not biologists do the same,and search for signs of intelligence in biological systems ? Why or why not ?

3. How can we account for complex information rich patterns in biological systems ? where did they have their beginning ?

4. Does any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans ? How do we acconut for these structures ?

5. What are irreducibly complex systems ? Do these systems exist in biology ? If they do,are these systems evidence for design ? If no,why not ?

6. Human designers and life forms repeat the use of certain structures,the camera eye for an example.would this be evidence for common descent, evolutionary convergence, common design,or a combination of these ?

7. while trying to understand biological systems,molecular biologists need to "reverse engineer" them.would this be evidence that the systems were engineered in the first place ?

8.Does the neo darwininist theory and the intelligent design theory make different predictions ? example , junk DNA. which theorywould the idea that large stretches of DNA are junk be more plausible ?

9. Is there evidence that would convince you that intelligent design is true and neo is false ? If none exist or can exist, how can neo darwinism be a testable scientific theory ?

10. Can we detect design without knowing anything about it's designer ? can we identify an object as an ancient artifact without knowing anything about the civilization that produced it ?

Well i will be waithing to see your answers.

1. We can't. So most logical people would not make the assumption that it is unless presented with evidence.

2. What kind of intelligent life are you going to search for in biological systems? We're not going to find little ant cars. Intelligence across species is directly linked to brain structure. Intelligence DOES exist in biological systems. Animals have brains extremely similar to ours, we simply have a much more developed cerebral cortex.

3. What do you define as information rich? Any three nucleotides will form a codon that will create an amino acid in the presence of enzymes like RNA polymerase. That is information. That can, and does, form spontaneously. A nitrogen base is a simple compound, and that is the base unit of information your talking about here.

4. No structures in the cell no not resemble machines made by humans? What does that have to do with anything? Organelles in a cell resemble very simply lipid membranes that work either through an enzyme catalyst, some protein, or some form of stored energy like ATP. Lipid membranes form naturally. The basic theory about the origin of eukaryotic cells is that one prokaryotic cell enveloped a much smaller one, just like a cell does when it gathers "food". Thats the origin of the mitochondria.

5. Irreducibly complex systems are systems that are rendered useless when any single part is removed. According to intelligent design idiots, this means that complex systems could not have evolved from less complex ones because they would be missing a part and therefore be non functional. These systems do exist in biology, but they're no evidence against evolution. Thats like saying your car won't start when you remove the transmission, therefore the internal combustion engine is not built upon the same general technology of the steam engine. Just because i can't cut out my heart and still live, doesn't mean organisms didnt/dont exist without hearts.

6. I would say thats evidence for common descent. You would say that its evidence for common design. If the argument were that simple and that obvious aristotle would have come up with evolution. Evolution is built on much more solid foundations than the simple fact that we all have eyes.

7. No, they don't. You should actually read more scientific journals, you would be surprised. The creation of RNA from non-RNA is very possible. The creation of RNA that codes for specific proteins is possible. The creation of RNA that codes for proteins that create a cyclical reaction is possible. Therefore your argument is wrong in every sense of the word. Its not just wrong, its a lie.

"Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn’t explain how these ingredients might have formed."

“Ribonucleotides are simply an expression of the fundamental principles of organic chemistry,” said Sutherland. “They’re doing it unwittingly. The instructions for them to do it are inherent in the structure of the precursor materials. And if they can self-assemble so easily, perhaps they shouldn’t be viewed as complicated.”

--Wired.com

8. I would say junk DNA would fit in with evolution way better. If human DNA is an amalgam of 3.8 billions years of genetic variation then you would expect random and junk DNA sequences. On the other hand, why would God create junk DNA sequences? That doesn't make sense to me.

9. If you could provide any proof of intelligent design of course i would take it into account. You could never provide proof, thats your problem, not my willingness to believe it. Evolution makes several predictions. So far all of them true. The only one not conclusively provable is speciation. Thats not evidence against or for evolution however. Because evolution doesn't predict speciation would happen so fast. You can't claim lack of sufficient speciation in 5000 years is evidence that evolution is wrong if evolution doesn't even claim it could happen in 5000 years.

10. Are you equating archeology with intelligent design? Seriously? We find pots and tools and such scattered around human skeletons. The correct analogy would be scattered organism fossils and carcasses around the skeleton of a god. When you fools find that, then your have a valid analogy.

Your still at the same old stuff. You copy pasta from creationist websites with a bunch of points that don't make sense and are totally irrelevant. It shows a total lack of knowledge about anything. Its funny when you keep talking about DNA and genetic information when you clearly dont even know the basics of how information is stored in DNA. You would be laughed out of every science lecture in the country.

Thanks for your answers This was not a test it was to show the intelligence involved with life. Gotcha!

Dr. Bill Dembski


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bill Dembski, one of the organizers of the Mere Creation conference, has a Ph.D. in mathematics and philosophy, and an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. As a visiting scholar at Notre Dame, Dembski is investigating the foundations of design.



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces.
In the foreword to my book The Design Revolution, Chuck Colson writes: “For years— far too many years—Darwinian evolution, the prevailing orthodoxy in the academy, faced no meaningful challenges. Those who believed in any other theory of biological origins were dismissed as religious cranks or fools. This is now beginning to change.”

Indeed, it is changing. With the rise of the intelligent design movement, the image of a defensive, beleaguered, overwhelmed student desperately trying to shore up religious faith against the onslaughts of an invincible Darwinian establishment is finally giving way. Instead, we now have the image of a confident, clued-in, empowered student shaking up the very professors, like Will Provine, who used to teach atheism for fun and profit. The profit may still be there, but the fun is now gone.

The reason the fun is gone is that more and more students are informing themselves about intelligent design and learning to ask the right questions that deflate Darwinism and its atheistic pretensions. According to arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Not any more. Intelligent design is showing that system after biological system is beyond the reach of blind purposeless material processes like the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection.

What is intelligent design? Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence. So defined, intelligent design seems innocuous enough, and includes such fields as archeology, cryptography, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Is a chunk of rock really an arrowhead? Is a random looking screed really an encrypted message? Is a radio transmission from distant space really a meaningful communication? Such questions are uncontroversial so long as they focus on signs of intelligence from designing agents that could conceivably have evolved by Darwinian means.

But what about signs of intelligence that cannot reasonably have originated from Darwinian or other materialistic processes? According to Darwinism, intelligence is not a basic creative force within nature but an evolutionary byproduct. In other words, Darwinism regards all intelligence as the product of evolution. In contrast, any intelligence responsible for biological systems could not be an evolved intelligence but must exist prior to the systems for which it is responsible. This explains why intelligent design is so controversial: it claims to discover signs of intelligence in biological systems for which the underlying intelligence is not, and indeed cannot be, an evolved intelligence. Thus, while not directly proving that God exists, intelligent design is far more friendly to theism than Darwinism.

Intelligent design puts the ball back in Darwinism’s court. It’s not just that students need no longer feel intimidated by Darwinist bullying. Rather, it’s that students are now in a position to challenge the Darwinian establishment head on. Darwinism is like a submarine—allow just one pinhole leak, and it implodes. The pinhole leak here is design. What’s more, students now have the tools to probe this leak. To do so effectively, however, they need to know the right questions to ask their biology teachers. What follows are ten such questions, along with some pointers to be aware of when asking them:

1. Design Detection
If nature, or some aspect of it, is intelligently designed, how can we tell?

For design to be a fruitful concept in the natural sciences, scientists have to be< sure they can reliably determine whether something is designed. For instance, Johannes Kepler thought the craters on the moon were intelligently designed by moon dwellers. We now know that the craters were formed by blind material processes (like meteor impacts). This worry of falsely attributing something to design only to have it overturned later has hindered design from entering the scientific mainstream.

Proponents of intelligent design argue that they now have formulated a precise criterion that reliably infers intelligence while also avoiding Kepler’s mistake— the criterion of “specified complexity.” An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent in the sense of being one of several live possibilities; if it is complex in the sense of allowing many alternatives and therefore not being easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern. For instance, a repetitive sequence is specified without being complex. A random sequence is complex without being specified. A functional sequence, like DNA that codes for proteins, is both complex and specified, and therefore designed.

2. Generalizing SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a scientific research program that searches for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should biologists likewise search for signs of intelligence in biological systems? Why or why not?

Biologists don’t have a problem with SETI. As far as they’re concerned, looking for signs of intelligence from distant space is a perfectly legitimate scientific enterprise. Nevertheless, many biologists regard it as illegitimate to look for signs of intelligence in biological systems. In their view, any such signs of intelligence are fundamentally misleading because the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection is supposed to be able to mimic the effects of intelligence apart from actual intelligence. As Richard Dawkins puts it, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Yes, biological systems appear to be designed. But in fact they are not designed, and to look for signs of actual intelligence will only lead biologists astray. Better to look not for signs of intelligence but for how natural selection explains certain apparent signs of intelligence. This is the received wisdom in the biological community. This received wisdom is at best a mistake and at worst a prejudice. It is entirely an open question whether all appearance of design in biology is only an appearance. Proponents of intelligent design argue that signs of actual intelligence are present in biological systems and lie beyond the reach of natural selection.

3. Biology’s Information Problem
How do we account for the complex information-rich patterns in biological systems? Where did they originate?

In a widely cited speech, Nobel laureate David Baltimore remarked, “Modern biology is a science of information.” Manfred Eigen, Bernd Olaf-Küppers, John Maynard Smith, and many other biologists have likewise identified information as biology’s central problem. For matter to be alive, it must be suitably structured. A living organism is not a mere lump of matter. Life is special, and what makes life special is the arrangement of its matter into very specific forms. In other words, what makes life special is information. Where did the information necessary for life come from? This question cannot be avoided. Life has not always existed. There was a time in the history of the universe when all matter was lifeless. And then life appeared—on earth and perhaps elsewhere. Biology’s information problem is therefore to determine whether (and if so how) purely natural forces are able to bridge the gulf between the organic and inorganic worlds as well as the gulfs between different levels of complexity within the organic world. Conversely, biology’s information problem is to determine whether (and if so how) design is needed to complement purely natural forces in the origin and subsequent development of life.

4. Molecular Machines
Do any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans? How do we account for such structures?

In December 2003, the biology journal BioEssays published a special issue on “molecular machines.” In the introductory essay to that issue, Adam Wilkins, the editor of BioEssays, remarked, “The articles included in this issue demonstrate some striking parallels between artifactual and biological/molecular machines. In the first place, molecular machines, like man-made machines, perform highly specific functions. Second, the macromolecular machine complexes feature multiple parts that interact in distinct and precise ways, with defined inputs and outputs. Third, many of these machines have parts that can be used in other molecular machines (at least, with slight modification), comparable to the interchangeable parts of artificial machines. Finally, and not least, they have the cardinal attribute of machines: they all convert energy into some form of ‘work’.”

How, then, do biologists explain the origin of such structures? They don’t. In 2001, cell biologist Franklin Harold published The Way of the Cell with Oxford University Press. In it he remarked: “There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”

5. Irreducible Complexity
What are irreducibly complex systems? Do such systems exist in biology? If so, are those systems evidence for design? If not, why not?

Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity raises acute difficulties for Darwinism. Irreducible complexity is a “package-deal” feature of many biological systems. Package deals are all-or-nothing deals. You can have the whole package or you can have none of it, but you can’t pick and choose pieces of it. In biology, especially at the molecular level, there exist molecular machines (see last question) that cannot be simplified without losing the machine’s function. In other words, take away parts and you can’t recover the machine’s function. One such irreducibly complex molecular machine that has become the mascot of the intelligent design movement is the bacterial flagellum. This is a tiny motor-driven propeller on the backs of certain bacteria. It is a marvel of nano-engineering, spinning at tens of thousands of rpm. Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard calls it “the most efficient machine in the universe.” It is irreducibly complex.

How do evolutionary theorists propose to account for such systems? They have no detailed, testable, step-by-step proposals for how irreducibly complex systems like this might have arisen. All evolutionary theorists have been able to do is note that because systems like the flagellum are irreducibly complex, they must have arisen via a gradual series of simpler systems that served functions different from the machine in question (the functions need to be different because to simplify an irreducibly complex system is to destroy its function). But merely appealing to such a gradual series of simpler systems doesn’t tell us how, or even whether, irreducibly complex systems evolved, much less by Darwinian or other materialist means. The burden on evolution’s defenders is to demonstrate that at least one irreducibly complex molecular machine found in nature really can be formed by some specific, fully articulated series of gradual steps. So far, evolutionary theorists have nothing like this. Wishful speculations is the best they’ve come up with.

6. Reusable Parts
Human designers reuse designs that work well. Life forms also repeat the use of certain structures (the camera eye, for example). Is this evidence for common descent, evolutionary convergence, common design, or a combination of these?

Within evolutionary biology, there are only two ways to explain similar biological structures. The first is to attribute them to common descent. Thus two organisms share a structure because they inherited it from a common evolutionary ancestor.

The other option is to attribute similar structures to convergence. Thus two organisms share a structure because it evolved more than once (separate evolutionary pathways “converged” on it). By adopting an engineering approach to biological structure, intelligent design explains similar structures in terms of common design. Note that this is not to preclude that a repeated structure arose via an evolutionary process. But in that case it would be a guided evolutionary process and not a blind, purposeless evolutionary process as in Darwinism. Common design, perhaps expressed through evolutionary convergence, accounts for the repetitions of many biological structures (like the camera eye in humans and squids) far better than common descent or blind evolutionary convergence.

7. Reverse Engineering
In trying to understand biological systems, molecular biologists often need to “reverse engineer” them. Is this evidence that the systems were engineered to begin with?

In regular engineering one begins with a plan to construct a machine that serves a given function and then builds the machine according to plan. In reverse engineering, by contrast, one starts with a finished machine and tries to determine what its purpose is and how it was constructed. Scott Minnich, a University of Idaho molecular biologist and prominent proponent of intelligent design, will often remark in his public lectures that the only way for biologists to understand the workings of the cell is to approach its various systems as a reverse engineer. Thus the molecular biologist may take a functioning system in the cell, perturb it, see how the cell behaves differently to infer the system’s function. Alternatively, the molecular biologist may interfere at various points in the system’s self-assembly to determine how the system is constructed. In all such cases, the molecular biologist acts as an engineer making intelligent interventions and not as a gambler throwing dice. If we need the science of engineering to understand biological systems, then it is a good bet that the systems are themselves designed.

8. Predictions
Do intelligent design theory and neo-Darwinian theory make different predictions? Take, for instance, junk DNA. For which of the two theories would the idea that large stretches of DNA are junk be more plausible?

Neo-Darwinian theory views any two organisms as having evolved from a common evolutionary ancestor and explains the evolution of any organism as the outcome of a blind, purposeless process. As a consequence, evolution is likely to exhibit many false starts, dead-ends, and remnants that serve no purpose (called “vestigial structures”). Intelligent design can accommodate such historical contingencies because it recognizes the operation of natural processes at odds with design (much as a rusted automobile is the effect both of design and natural forces—in this case, mechanical engineering and weathering).

Nonetheless, intelligent design argues that there are features of biological systems that lie beyond the reach of Darwinian and other material mechanisms. Moreover, unlike Darwinism, which sees organisms as cobbled together by a trial-and-error process (i.e., natural selection acting on random variations), intelligent design sees real design in organism and thus keeps looking for design even when evolutionary theorists throw in the towel and invoke vestigiality. Interestingly, most of the structures regarded as vestigial in humans a hundred years ago are now known to have a function (for instance, the appendix plays a role in the immune system). Similarly, molecular biologists are now finding uses for stretches of DNA previous referred to as “junk.” John Bodnar, for instance, has found “non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes [that] encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development.”

9. Following the Evidence
What evidence would convince you that intelligent design is true and neo-Darwinism is false? If no such evidence exists or indeed can exist, how can neo-Darwinism be a testable scientific theory?

The evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane was once asked what would convince him that evolution was false. He replied that finding a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian rocks would do quite nicely. Such a fossil would, by standard geological dating, be out of sequence by several hundreds of millions of years. Certainly such a finding, if rigorously confirmed, would overturn the current understanding of the history of life. But would it really overturn neo-Darwinism or confirm intelligent design? It would not. Haldane’s rabbit is easily enough explained as an evolutionary convergence. Moreover, for the materialist biologist, no evidence whatsoever could confirm intelligent design.

So long as some unknown or unexplored Darwinian evolutionary pathway might have led to the formation of some biological structure or organism, it is to be preferred over an intelligent design explanation. And since the unknown and unexplored allow for an infinity of loopholes, the committed materialist regards Darwinian and other materialist explanations of life’s origin and subsequent development as always trumping intelligent design, regardless of the evidence. Note that intelligent design does not stack the deck this way. In particular, unlike Darwinism, intelligent design is refutable. To refute intelligent design, it is enough to display specific, fully articulated Darwinian pathways for the complex systems that, according to intelligent design, lie beyond the reach of the Darwinian mechanism (systems like the bacterial flagellum in question 5). Though Darwinists mistakenly charge intelligent design with being untestable, it’s their theory that in fact is untestable.

10. Identifying the Designer
Can we determine whether an object is designed without identifying or knowing anything about its designer? For instance, can we identify an object as an ancient artifact without knowing anything about the civilization that produced it?

As the science that studies signs of intelligence, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such. A sign, after all, is not the thing signified. Intelligent design does not try to get into the mind of a designer or speculate about the characteristics of a designer. Its focus is not on the identity of a designer (the thing signified) but on the artifacts due to a designer (the sign). A designer’s identity and characteristics are, to be sure, interesting questions, and one may be able to infer something about what a designer is like from the designed objects that a designer produces. But the identity and characteristics of a designer lie outside the scope of intelligent design. That’s as it should be. The fact is that we infer design repeatedly and reliably without knowing anything about the underlying designer. Some biologists, beforethey permit intelligent design into biology, require getting into the mind of the designer and knowing what sorts of biological systems we should expect from the designer. But, as Stanford philosopher of biology Elliott Sober admits, “To infer watchmaker from watch, you needn’t know exactly what the watchmaker had in mind; indeed, you don’t even have to know that the watch is a device for measuring time. Archaeologists sometimes unearth tools of unknown function, but still reasonably draw the inference that these things are, in fact, tools.”

Phillip Johnson has written an insightful book titled The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning and Public Debate. In that book he shows that truth is best served not by having all the answers but by knowing the right questions, especially the tough questions suppressed by the intellectual elite of our society. In particular, truth demands that we ask the tough questions about Darwin and evolution. As Richard Halvorson has aptly remarked, “We must refuse to bow to our culture’s false idols. Science will not benefit from canonizing Darwin or making evolution an article of secular faith. We must reject intellectual excommunication as a valid form of dealing with criticism: the most important question for any society to ask is the one that is forbidden.” Intelligent design doesn’t have all the answers. But it is asking the right questions—questions forbidden by the Darwinian establishment. For a more thorough examination of the questions posed here, as well as many others, consult my new book The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design (InterVarsity, 2004).


Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Design

Creationist are not stupid people as your side tries to make us out to be.

 

[Dr.Drock]

"Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin&#8217;s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces. "

I'm going to need proof that this professor teaches in such a way.

And this is a link to the questions that CB already answered and proved this math/philosophy type to be wrong on science.

William B. Provine

There's professor Provine's page, says nothing like that. You can even email him if you like if you have questions.

Department Overview

There's the department overview that he's a part of, says nothing like trying to make people into atheists.

Provine is an atheist, but i'm doubting he takes a poll before and after the class of number of atheists and judges the success of a his class on those results.





I think I'd find some new bloggers, mainly ones who are educated in science.

 

[cbirch2]

This is to any of the Neo darwinist. I would like to see later tater answer these questions first but she has been avoiding my questions so i don't think she will attempt it.

If you can't answer these questions do not insult me.

1. If some aspect of nature was intelligently designed, how do we know ?

2. The search for SETI is a scientific research program that searches for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should not biologists do the same,and search for signs of intelligence in biological systems ? Why or why not ?

3. How can we account for complex information rich patterns in biological systems ? where did they have their beginning ?

4. Does any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans ? How do we acconut for these structures ?

5. What are irreducibly complex systems ? Do these systems exist in biology ? If they do,are these systems evidence for design ? If no,why not ?

6. Human designers and life forms repeat the use of certain structures,the camera eye for an example.would this be evidence for common descent, evolutionary convergence, common design,or a combination of these ?

7. while trying to understand biological systems,molecular biologists need to "reverse engineer" them.would this be evidence that the systems were engineered in the first place ?

8.Does the neo darwininist theory and the intelligent design theory make different predictions ? example , junk DNA. which theorywould the idea that large stretches of DNA are junk be more plausible ?

9. Is there evidence that would convince you that intelligent design is true and neo is false ? If none exist or can exist, how can neo darwinism be a testable scientific theory ?

10. Can we detect design without knowing anything about it's designer ? can we identify an object as an ancient artifact without knowing anything about the civilization that produced it ?

Well i will be waithing to see your answers.

1. We can't. So most logical people would not make the assumption that it is unless presented with evidence.

2. What kind of intelligent life are you going to search for in biological systems? We're not going to find little ant cars. Intelligence across species is directly linked to brain structure. Intelligence DOES exist in biological systems. Animals have brains extremely similar to ours, we simply have a much more developed cerebral cortex.

3. What do you define as information rich? Any three nucleotides will form a codon that will create an amino acid in the presence of enzymes like RNA polymerase. That is information. That can, and does, form spontaneously. A nitrogen base is a simple compound, and that is the base unit of information your talking about here.

4. No structures in the cell no not resemble machines made by humans? What does that have to do with anything? Organelles in a cell resemble very simply lipid membranes that work either through an enzyme catalyst, some protein, or some form of stored energy like ATP. Lipid membranes form naturally. The basic theory about the origin of eukaryotic cells is that one prokaryotic cell enveloped a much smaller one, just like a cell does when it gathers "food". Thats the origin of the mitochondria.

5. Irreducibly complex systems are systems that are rendered useless when any single part is removed. According to intelligent design idiots, this means that complex systems could not have evolved from less complex ones because they would be missing a part and therefore be non functional. These systems do exist in biology, but they're no evidence against evolution. Thats like saying your car won't start when you remove the transmission, therefore the internal combustion engine is not built upon the same general technology of the steam engine. Just because i can't cut out my heart and still live, doesn't mean organisms didnt/dont exist without hearts.

6. I would say thats evidence for common descent. You would say that its evidence for common design. If the argument were that simple and that obvious aristotle would have come up with evolution. Evolution is built on much more solid foundations than the simple fact that we all have eyes.

7. No, they don't. You should actually read more scientific journals, you would be surprised. The creation of RNA from non-RNA is very possible. The creation of RNA that codes for specific proteins is possible. The creation of RNA that codes for proteins that create a cyclical reaction is possible. Therefore your argument is wrong in every sense of the word. Its not just wrong, its a lie.

"Researchers synthesized the basic ingredients of RNA, a molecule from which the simplest self-replicating structures are made. Until now, they couldn’t explain how these ingredients might have formed."

“Ribonucleotides are simply an expression of the fundamental principles of organic chemistry,” said Sutherland. “They’re doing it unwittingly. The instructions for them to do it are inherent in the structure of the precursor materials. And if they can self-assemble so easily, perhaps they shouldn’t be viewed as complicated.”

--Wired.com

8. I would say junk DNA would fit in with evolution way better. If human DNA is an amalgam of 3.8 billions years of genetic variation then you would expect random and junk DNA sequences. On the other hand, why would God create junk DNA sequences? That doesn't make sense to me.

9. If you could provide any proof of intelligent design of course i would take it into account. You could never provide proof, thats your problem, not my willingness to believe it. Evolution makes several predictions. So far all of them true. The only one not conclusively provable is speciation. Thats not evidence against or for evolution however. Because evolution doesn't predict speciation would happen so fast. You can't claim lack of sufficient speciation in 5000 years is evidence that evolution is wrong if evolution doesn't even claim it could happen in 5000 years.

10. Are you equating archeology with intelligent design? Seriously? We find pots and tools and such scattered around human skeletons. The correct analogy would be scattered organism fossils and carcasses around the skeleton of a god. When you fools find that, then your have a valid analogy.

Your still at the same old stuff. You copy pasta from creationist websites with a bunch of points that don't make sense and are totally irrelevant. It shows a total lack of knowledge about anything. Its funny when you keep talking about DNA and genetic information when you clearly dont even know the basics of how information is stored in DNA. You would be laughed out of every science lecture in the country.

Thanks for your answers This was not a test it was to show the intelligence involved with life. Gotcha!

Dr. Bill Dembski


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Bill Dembski, one of the organizers of the Mere Creation conference, has a Ph.D. in mathematics and philosophy, and an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary. As a visiting scholar at Notre Dame, Dembski is investigating the foundations of design.



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Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces.
In the foreword to my book The Design Revolution, Chuck Colson writes: “For years— far too many years—Darwinian evolution, the prevailing orthodoxy in the academy, faced no meaningful challenges. Those who believed in any other theory of biological origins were dismissed as religious cranks or fools. This is now beginning to change.”

Indeed, it is changing. With the rise of the intelligent design movement, the image of a defensive, beleaguered, overwhelmed student desperately trying to shore up religious faith against the onslaughts of an invincible Darwinian establishment is finally giving way. Instead, we now have the image of a confident, clued-in, empowered student shaking up the very professors, like Will Provine, who used to teach atheism for fun and profit. The profit may still be there, but the fun is now gone.

The reason the fun is gone is that more and more students are informing themselves about intelligent design and learning to ask the right questions that deflate Darwinism and its atheistic pretensions. According to arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins, Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Not any more. Intelligent design is showing that system after biological system is beyond the reach of blind purposeless material processes like the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection.

What is intelligent design? Intelligent design is the science that studies signs of intelligence. So defined, intelligent design seems innocuous enough, and includes such fields as archeology, cryptography, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). Is a chunk of rock really an arrowhead? Is a random looking screed really an encrypted message? Is a radio transmission from distant space really a meaningful communication? Such questions are uncontroversial so long as they focus on signs of intelligence from designing agents that could conceivably have evolved by Darwinian means.

But what about signs of intelligence that cannot reasonably have originated from Darwinian or other materialistic processes? According to Darwinism, intelligence is not a basic creative force within nature but an evolutionary byproduct. In other words, Darwinism regards all intelligence as the product of evolution. In contrast, any intelligence responsible for biological systems could not be an evolved intelligence but must exist prior to the systems for which it is responsible. This explains why intelligent design is so controversial: it claims to discover signs of intelligence in biological systems for which the underlying intelligence is not, and indeed cannot be, an evolved intelligence. Thus, while not directly proving that God exists, intelligent design is far more friendly to theism than Darwinism.

Intelligent design puts the ball back in Darwinism’s court. It’s not just that students need no longer feel intimidated by Darwinist bullying. Rather, it’s that students are now in a position to challenge the Darwinian establishment head on. Darwinism is like a submarine—allow just one pinhole leak, and it implodes. The pinhole leak here is design. What’s more, students now have the tools to probe this leak. To do so effectively, however, they need to know the right questions to ask their biology teachers. What follows are ten such questions, along with some pointers to be aware of when asking them:

1. Design Detection
If nature, or some aspect of it, is intelligently designed, how can we tell?

For design to be a fruitful concept in the natural sciences, scientists have to be< sure they can reliably determine whether something is designed. For instance, Johannes Kepler thought the craters on the moon were intelligently designed by moon dwellers. We now know that the craters were formed by blind material processes (like meteor impacts). This worry of falsely attributing something to design only to have it overturned later has hindered design from entering the scientific mainstream.

Proponents of intelligent design argue that they now have formulated a precise criterion that reliably infers intelligence while also avoiding Kepler’s mistake— the criterion of “specified complexity.” An event exhibits specified complexity if it is contingent in the sense of being one of several live possibilities; if it is complex in the sense of allowing many alternatives and therefore not being easily repeatable by chance; and if it is specified in the sense of exhibiting an independently given pattern. For instance, a repetitive sequence is specified without being complex. A random sequence is complex without being specified. A functional sequence, like DNA that codes for proteins, is both complex and specified, and therefore designed.

2. Generalizing SETI
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a scientific research program that searches for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should biologists likewise search for signs of intelligence in biological systems? Why or why not?

Biologists don’t have a problem with SETI. As far as they’re concerned, looking for signs of intelligence from distant space is a perfectly legitimate scientific enterprise. Nevertheless, many biologists regard it as illegitimate to look for signs of intelligence in biological systems. In their view, any such signs of intelligence are fundamentally misleading because the Darwinian mechanism of natural selection is supposed to be able to mimic the effects of intelligence apart from actual intelligence. As Richard Dawkins puts it, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” Yes, biological systems appear to be designed. But in fact they are not designed, and to look for signs of actual intelligence will only lead biologists astray. Better to look not for signs of intelligence but for how natural selection explains certain apparent signs of intelligence. This is the received wisdom in the biological community. This received wisdom is at best a mistake and at worst a prejudice. It is entirely an open question whether all appearance of design in biology is only an appearance. Proponents of intelligent design argue that signs of actual intelligence are present in biological systems and lie beyond the reach of natural selection.

3. Biology’s Information Problem
How do we account for the complex information-rich patterns in biological systems? Where did they originate?

In a widely cited speech, Nobel laureate David Baltimore remarked, “Modern biology is a science of information.” Manfred Eigen, Bernd Olaf-Küppers, John Maynard Smith, and many other biologists have likewise identified information as biology’s central problem. For matter to be alive, it must be suitably structured. A living organism is not a mere lump of matter. Life is special, and what makes life special is the arrangement of its matter into very specific forms. In other words, what makes life special is information. Where did the information necessary for life come from? This question cannot be avoided. Life has not always existed. There was a time in the history of the universe when all matter was lifeless. And then life appeared—on earth and perhaps elsewhere. Biology’s information problem is therefore to determine whether (and if so how) purely natural forces are able to bridge the gulf between the organic and inorganic worlds as well as the gulfs between different levels of complexity within the organic world. Conversely, biology’s information problem is to determine whether (and if so how) design is needed to complement purely natural forces in the origin and subsequent development of life.

4. Molecular Machines
Do any structures in the cell resemble machines designed by humans? How do we account for such structures?

In December 2003, the biology journal BioEssays published a special issue on “molecular machines.” In the introductory essay to that issue, Adam Wilkins, the editor of BioEssays, remarked, “The articles included in this issue demonstrate some striking parallels between artifactual and biological/molecular machines. In the first place, molecular machines, like man-made machines, perform highly specific functions. Second, the macromolecular machine complexes feature multiple parts that interact in distinct and precise ways, with defined inputs and outputs. Third, many of these machines have parts that can be used in other molecular machines (at least, with slight modification), comparable to the interchangeable parts of artificial machines. Finally, and not least, they have the cardinal attribute of machines: they all convert energy into some form of ‘work’.”

How, then, do biologists explain the origin of such structures? They don’t. In 2001, cell biologist Franklin Harold published The Way of the Cell with Oxford University Press. In it he remarked: “There are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.”

5. Irreducible Complexity
What are irreducibly complex systems? Do such systems exist in biology? If so, are those systems evidence for design? If not, why not?

Michael Behe’s concept of irreducible complexity raises acute difficulties for Darwinism. Irreducible complexity is a “package-deal” feature of many biological systems. Package deals are all-or-nothing deals. You can have the whole package or you can have none of it, but you can’t pick and choose pieces of it. In biology, especially at the molecular level, there exist molecular machines (see last question) that cannot be simplified without losing the machine’s function. In other words, take away parts and you can’t recover the machine’s function. One such irreducibly complex molecular machine that has become the mascot of the intelligent design movement is the bacterial flagellum. This is a tiny motor-driven propeller on the backs of certain bacteria. It is a marvel of nano-engineering, spinning at tens of thousands of rpm. Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard calls it “the most efficient machine in the universe.” It is irreducibly complex.

How do evolutionary theorists propose to account for such systems? They have no detailed, testable, step-by-step proposals for how irreducibly complex systems like this might have arisen. All evolutionary theorists have been able to do is note that because systems like the flagellum are irreducibly complex, they must have arisen via a gradual series of simpler systems that served functions different from the machine in question (the functions need to be different because to simplify an irreducibly complex system is to destroy its function). But merely appealing to such a gradual series of simpler systems doesn’t tell us how, or even whether, irreducibly complex systems evolved, much less by Darwinian or other materialist means. The burden on evolution’s defenders is to demonstrate that at least one irreducibly complex molecular machine found in nature really can be formed by some specific, fully articulated series of gradual steps. So far, evolutionary theorists have nothing like this. Wishful speculations is the best they’ve come up with.

6. Reusable Parts
Human designers reuse designs that work well. Life forms also repeat the use of certain structures (the camera eye, for example). Is this evidence for common descent, evolutionary convergence, common design, or a combination of these?

Within evolutionary biology, there are only two ways to explain similar biological structures. The first is to attribute them to common descent. Thus two organisms share a structure because they inherited it from a common evolutionary ancestor.

The other option is to attribute similar structures to convergence. Thus two organisms share a structure because it evolved more than once (separate evolutionary pathways “converged” on it). By adopting an engineering approach to biological structure, intelligent design explains similar structures in terms of common design. Note that this is not to preclude that a repeated structure arose via an evolutionary process. But in that case it would be a guided evolutionary process and not a blind, purposeless evolutionary process as in Darwinism. Common design, perhaps expressed through evolutionary convergence, accounts for the repetitions of many biological structures (like the camera eye in humans and squids) far better than common descent or blind evolutionary convergence.

7. Reverse Engineering
In trying to understand biological systems, molecular biologists often need to “reverse engineer” them. Is this evidence that the systems were engineered to begin with?

In regular engineering one begins with a plan to construct a machine that serves a given function and then builds the machine according to plan. In reverse engineering, by contrast, one starts with a finished machine and tries to determine what its purpose is and how it was constructed. Scott Minnich, a University of Idaho molecular biologist and prominent proponent of intelligent design, will often remark in his public lectures that the only way for biologists to understand the workings of the cell is to approach its various systems as a reverse engineer. Thus the molecular biologist may take a functioning system in the cell, perturb it, see how the cell behaves differently to infer the system’s function. Alternatively, the molecular biologist may interfere at various points in the system’s self-assembly to determine how the system is constructed. In all such cases, the molecular biologist acts as an engineer making intelligent interventions and not as a gambler throwing dice. If we need the science of engineering to understand biological systems, then it is a good bet that the systems are themselves designed.

8. Predictions
Do intelligent design theory and neo-Darwinian theory make different predictions? Take, for instance, junk DNA. For which of the two theories would the idea that large stretches of DNA are junk be more plausible?

Neo-Darwinian theory views any two organisms as having evolved from a common evolutionary ancestor and explains the evolution of any organism as the outcome of a blind, purposeless process. As a consequence, evolution is likely to exhibit many false starts, dead-ends, and remnants that serve no purpose (called “vestigial structures”). Intelligent design can accommodate such historical contingencies because it recognizes the operation of natural processes at odds with design (much as a rusted automobile is the effect both of design and natural forces—in this case, mechanical engineering and weathering).

Nonetheless, intelligent design argues that there are features of biological systems that lie beyond the reach of Darwinian and other material mechanisms. Moreover, unlike Darwinism, which sees organisms as cobbled together by a trial-and-error process (i.e., natural selection acting on random variations), intelligent design sees real design in organism and thus keeps looking for design even when evolutionary theorists throw in the towel and invoke vestigiality. Interestingly, most of the structures regarded as vestigial in humans a hundred years ago are now known to have a function (for instance, the appendix plays a role in the immune system). Similarly, molecular biologists are now finding uses for stretches of DNA previous referred to as “junk.” John Bodnar, for instance, has found “non-coding DNA in eukaryotic genomes [that] encodes a language which programs organismal growth and development.”

9. Following the Evidence
What evidence would convince you that intelligent design is true and neo-Darwinism is false? If no such evidence exists or indeed can exist, how can neo-Darwinism be a testable scientific theory?

The evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane was once asked what would convince him that evolution was false. He replied that finding a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian rocks would do quite nicely. Such a fossil would, by standard geological dating, be out of sequence by several hundreds of millions of years. Certainly such a finding, if rigorously confirmed, would overturn the current understanding of the history of life. But would it really overturn neo-Darwinism or confirm intelligent design? It would not. Haldane’s rabbit is easily enough explained as an evolutionary convergence. Moreover, for the materialist biologist, no evidence whatsoever could confirm intelligent design.

So long as some unknown or unexplored Darwinian evolutionary pathway might have led to the formation of some biological structure or organism, it is to be preferred over an intelligent design explanation. And since the unknown and unexplored allow for an infinity of loopholes, the committed materialist regards Darwinian and other materialist explanations of life’s origin and subsequent development as always trumping intelligent design, regardless of the evidence. Note that intelligent design does not stack the deck this way. In particular, unlike Darwinism, intelligent design is refutable. To refute intelligent design, it is enough to display specific, fully articulated Darwinian pathways for the complex systems that, according to intelligent design, lie beyond the reach of the Darwinian mechanism (systems like the bacterial flagellum in question 5). Though Darwinists mistakenly charge intelligent design with being untestable, it’s their theory that in fact is untestable.

10. Identifying the Designer
Can we determine whether an object is designed without identifying or knowing anything about its designer? For instance, can we identify an object as an ancient artifact without knowing anything about the civilization that produced it?

As the science that studies signs of intelligence, intelligent design investigates the effects of intelligence and not intelligence as such. A sign, after all, is not the thing signified. Intelligent design does not try to get into the mind of a designer or speculate about the characteristics of a designer. Its focus is not on the identity of a designer (the thing signified) but on the artifacts due to a designer (the sign). A designer’s identity and characteristics are, to be sure, interesting questions, and one may be able to infer something about what a designer is like from the designed objects that a designer produces. But the identity and characteristics of a designer lie outside the scope of intelligent design. That’s as it should be. The fact is that we infer design repeatedly and reliably without knowing anything about the underlying designer. Some biologists, beforethey permit intelligent design into biology, require getting into the mind of the designer and knowing what sorts of biological systems we should expect from the designer. But, as Stanford philosopher of biology Elliott Sober admits, “To infer watchmaker from watch, you needn’t know exactly what the watchmaker had in mind; indeed, you don’t even have to know that the watch is a device for measuring time. Archaeologists sometimes unearth tools of unknown function, but still reasonably draw the inference that these things are, in fact, tools.”

Phillip Johnson has written an insightful book titled The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning and Public Debate. In that book he shows that truth is best served not by having all the answers but by knowing the right questions, especially the tough questions suppressed by the intellectual elite of our society. In particular, truth demands that we ask the tough questions about Darwin and evolution. As Richard Halvorson has aptly remarked, “We must refuse to bow to our culture’s false idols. Science will not benefit from canonizing Darwin or making evolution an article of secular faith. We must reject intellectual excommunication as a valid form of dealing with criticism: the most important question for any society to ask is the one that is forbidden.” Intelligent design doesn’t have all the answers. But it is asking the right questions—questions forbidden by the Darwinian establishment. For a more thorough examination of the questions posed here, as well as many others, consult my new book The Design Revolution: Answering the Toughest Questions about Intelligent Design (InterVarsity, 2004).


Ten Questions to Ask Your Biology Teacher About Design

Creationist are not stupid people as your side tries to make us out to be.

Yes you are. that entire post was totally useless. you didnt even address any of my answers to those questions. What an idiot.

 

[Youwerecreated]

"Professor Will Provine teaches a course for incoming freshman at Cornell University. In it, he contends that Darwin’s theory of evolution makes it impossible to believe in the existence of a benevolent God, much less in the God of Christianity. Provine informs his students that by the end of the course any belief they have in God will be shattered. In fact, he gauges the success of the course by the number of new atheists it produces. "

I'm going to need proof that this professor teaches in such a way.

And this is a link to the questions that CB already answered and proved this math/philosophy type to be wrong on science.

William B. Provine

There's professor Provine's page, says nothing like that. You can even email him if you like if you have questions.

Department Overview

There's the department overview that he's a part of, says nothing like trying to make people into atheists.

Provine is an atheist, but i'm doubting he takes a poll before and after the class of number of atheists and judges the success of a his class on those results.





I think I'd find some new bloggers, mainly ones who are educated in science.

What math are you talking about Doc ?