Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Survival of the Fittest or Altruistic Suicide?

Like engineers carefully blowing up a bridge, cells have intricate, programmed suicide mechanisms. The signal is sent and an apparatus of destruction is activated. But suicide hardly fits the evolutionary narrative. Wasn’t this all about survival, reproductive advantages and leaving more offspring? Why would a cell evolve intricate and complex suicide machinery?

The answer is that suicide at the cellular level doesn’t kill the whole organism. Such self destruction serves a range of purposes, from guiding development to keeping cancer at bay. In short, cell death in a multicellular organism can be a good thing.

But if cell suicide in multicellular organisms passes the evolutionary test, what about recent findings of suicide in unicellular organisms? New genome data from the Great Barrier Reef demosponge (Amphimedon queenslandica) reveals high levels of unexpected complexity, for this lowly sponge has an impressive complement of genes. As one evolutionist put it, “This flies in the face of what we think of early metazoan evolution.”

Another evolutionist asked perhaps an even more telling question. “What I want to know now,” he asked, “is what were all these genes doing prior to the advent of sponge?”

That’s a good question because some of those genes are for programmed suicide. What this sponge genome apparently tells us is that programmed cell death would have to have arisen in single-cell organisms. Suicide at the cellular level did kill the whole organism—and that doesn’t make evolutionary sense.

With evolution what we must believe is that programmed cell death did not arise in multicellular species, but in unicellular species. In other words, an intricate, highly complex, set of tools and signals somehow arose and, rather than leading to enhanced survival as evolution calls for, they led to destruction. Evolutionists will need yet another one of their just-so stories to rationalize this.

116 comments:

  1. Hunter:

    But if cell suicide in multicellular organisms passes the evolutionary test, what about recent findings of suicide in unicellular organisms?

    What findings? From your link:

    "Cell suicide predated cell homicide," says Carlo Maley, an oncologist at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This suggests that the single-celled colonial organisms that gave rise to our ancestors had already evolved mechanisms to kill themselves, which multicellular creatures later exploited as a cancer defence.

    I don’t see findings there; I see a speculation.

    Hunter:

    With evolution what we must believe is that programmed cell death did not arise in multicellular species, but in unicellular species.

    Maybe we should wait for the findings.

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  2. “What I want to know now,” he asked, “is what were all these genes doing prior to the advent of sponge?”
    How sad that he is not Zachriel or any of the many other people in your comments for whom the answers are always obvious, correct, and obviously-correct.

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  3. What David said, but I'll add in response to this comment of Cornelius:

    "Suicide at the cellular level did kill the whole organism—and that doesn’t make evolutionary sense."

    Not so fast. We also see whole-organism suicide in social insects. A stinging worker bee commits suicide for the benefit of the nest. This makes evolutionary sense if the number of siblings she saves by her act is larger than 1/r, where r is her genetic relatedness to her siblings. Roughly speaking, r is the probability that a sibling has a copy of the gene that causes suicide. Thus a "suicide gene" has a net advantage if a suicidal act saves the lives of at least one individual with the same gene.

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  4. Exactly how do the proper cells know when to commit suicide at the proper time in this following video at the 7:45 min. mark?:

    Fearfully and Wonderfully Made – Glimpses At Development In The Womb
    http://www.metacafe.com/watch/4249713

    And just where is the observational evidence of all the failed experiments of evolution trying the myriad of other unsuccessful patterns of cell suicide for beneficial body-plan morphogenesis?

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  5. Altrusitic apoptosis occurs in single-celled organisms, such as yeast, during mating, aging, or when stressed, and can be shown to have an evolutionary benefit. The process is homologous to that in multicellular organisms.

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  6. "A stinging worker bee commits suicide for the benefit of the nest."

    No a bee only dies if it stings a mammel or bird. If it stings another bee, it's fine. This isn't an example of an altruistic mechanism that evolved for the benefit of the nest, it's just a highly specific defense mechanism.

    "Although it is widely believed that a worker honey bee can sting only once, this is a partial misconception: although the stinger is in fact barbed so that it lodges in the victim's skin, tearing loose from the bee's abdomen and leading to its death in minutes, this only happens if the skin of the victim is sufficiently thick, such as a mammal's. The bee's sting is speculated to have evolved for inter-bee combat between members of different hives, and the barbs serve to improve penetration of the chitinous plates of another insect's exoskeleton. When bees sting elastic-skinned mammals, the barbs become a hazard to the bees as described above."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_sting

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  7. Dr Hunter said, "Another evolutionist asked perhaps an even more telling question. 'What I want to know now,” he asked, “is what were all these genes doing prior to the advent of sponge?'"

    ===============

    Notice the quote says GENES (plural). Top-down design of integrated systems best explains what we observe in nature. Altruism in the sponge looks like it was a planned benefit to the survival of the species.

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  8. Neal Tedford said...

    Notice the quote says GENES (plural). Top-down design of integrated systems best explains what we observe in nature. Altruism in the sponge looks like it was a planned benefit to the survival of the species.


    Tell us Neal: what observation would not look like top-down design?

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  9. ScootleRoyal,

    Good point. Although nest defense is risky, stinging is probably not a good example of "altruistic suicide".

    A better example of altruistic suicide in social insects: sick individuals removing themselves from the nest.

    For example, in Rueppell et al (2010), J. Evol. Biol. 23, pp. 1538-1546:

    "Abstract: Social insect colonies represent distinct units of selection. Most individuals evolve by kin selection and forgo individual reproduction. Instead, they display altruistic food sharing, nest maintenance and self-sacrificial colony defence. Recently, altruistic self-removal of diseased worker ants from their colony was described as another important kin-selected behaviour. Here, we report corroborating experimental evidence from honey bee foragers and theoretical analyses. We challenged honey bee foragers with prolonged CO2 narcosis or by feeding with the cytostatic drug hydroxyurea. Both treatments resulted in increased mortality but also caused the surviving foragers to abandon their social function and remove themselves from their colony, resulting in altruistic suicide. A simple model suggests that altruistic self-removal by sick social insect workers to prevent disease transmission is expected under most biologically plausible conditions. The combined theoretical and empirical support for altruistic self-removal suggests that it may be another important kin-selected behaviour and a potentially widespread mechanism of social immunity."

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  10. Unicellular apoptosis fits nicely into Mike Gene's Front-Loaded Evolution.

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  11. Worker bee suicide is a non-surprising result of kin selection, as the workers are sterile anyway. But interestingly we see suicide "for the children" in Pacific coast salmon after spawning as well.

    There is no sense in being immortal unless you have achieved much immunity from predation at the adult stage. So we see the greatest longevity in massive trees and inedible scrubs, island tortoises and bivalves of the polar seas. For these salmon, probably better to breed once and control the circumstances of your death so as to benefit the fry. It's an exhausting journey, and next time up the river, you'd likely be bear food anyway.

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  12. Bilbo: Unicellular apoptosis fits nicely into Mike Gene's Front-Loaded Evolution.

    We would expect that the structures involved in programmed cell death in metazoa should have functional antecedents in more primitive organisms. There can be evolutionary advantages to altruism, even in single-celled organisms. Nearby cells are probably closely related. If resources are limited, or if an old cell hasn't reproduced (possibly due to a defect), then its death can help its close kin.

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  13. Just as in any area of biology where creationists are late to the party, bringing up insignificant points that have been settled, so this one too. Apoptosis in Dictyostelium is a very widely studied topic. IISc Bangalore and CCMB Hyderabad have put in more than 1000 person years of work in this area. CCMB Hyderabad studies extreme extremophiles that survive in both extreme cold and extreme heat. In unicellular sponge precursors apoptosis helped multicellular colonies in a number of different ways. The simplest one being the development of channels inside the multicellular mass that created air sacs and permitted water eddies increasing buoyancy. What created apoptosis in unicellulars is also an active area of research, and there are about 15 different research groups across the world active in this area. As usual creationists bring a peashooter to a potato gun party!

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  14. Thorton said, "Tell us Neal: what observation would not look like top-down design?"

    Usually something very basic or something very helter-skelter in appearance. NOTHING observed in living systems (even unicellular life) would qualify, since they are very complex integrated systems. Unless one has some intuition of where their going with a design you will not end up with much. In this regard evolutionists are not only overlooking the elephant in the kitchen, but the whole kitchen!

    Failing to understand the integrated nature of living systems and top-down design is perhaps the most fundamental fallacy of evolutionary thinking. Evolutionists confuse bottom up building and ignore the necessity of top down design.

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  15. Neal Tedford said...

    Thorton said, "Tell us Neal: what observation would not look like top-down design?"

    Usually something very basic or something very helter-skelter in appearance. NOTHING observed in living systems (even unicellular life) would qualify, since they are very complex integrated systems.


    So your criteria once again is the subjective and worthless "looks designed to me".

    How about the eyes in blind cave fish? How about the wings still found under the carapace of flightless beetles?

    Why don't they qualify as "helter-skelter in appearance"?

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  16. Neal, evolutionary biology is about the integrated study of biology and it spans all of biology. To quote Dr. Amitabh Joshi at JNCASR, Bangalore,

    Evolutionary biology, taken in the broadest sense, is today a vast field encompassing many different areas, and utilizing many different methodologies. Unlike many areas in sub-organismal biology, evolutionary biology rests upon a very well developed and mathematically sophisticated substratum of theory... This feature makes it different from many other areas in biology in that it permits a kind of rigorous feedback between theory and experiment, reminiscent more of the "hard science" picture of physics than of what most people think about when they consider biology.

    All this,

    Usually something very basic or something very helter-skelter in appearance. NOTHING observed in living systems (even unicellular life) would qualify, since they are very complex integrated systems.

    This psychobable, pseudotheory run amok. [Very basic, helter-skelter] etc are terms with no operational definition at all and useless to the scientist.

    In fact designed systems are as a rule simpler than systems created by "natural" forces such as climatic forces. A rock is way more complex than Mount Rushmore. In fact, dash it, the rubble generated everyday at the Crazy Horse sculpture site has more complexity than the emerging Crazy Horse sculpture.

    Trilok Gurtu the percussion genius describes how he worked on a symphony in which he anchored the percussion,

    I remember playing a symphony with John [McLaughlin]. They gave me 200 pages of notation. I was puzzled. I then worked on it on the basis of our system of calculation and brought it down to a single page. Finally I did not carry even that page to the stage.

    Neal, simply abandon this obsession with the passive voice and go active, and you will find ID Creationism is vacuous.

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  17. Neal:

    Usually something very basic or something very helter-skelter in appearance. NOTHING observed in living systems (even unicellular life) would qualify, since they are very complex integrated systems. Unless one has some intuition of where their going with a design you will not end up with much. In this regard evolutionists are not only overlooking the elephant in the kitchen, but the whole kitchen!

    First, human designs can also start from the bottom up, and be very "helter skelter" in appearance.

    Second, ID proposes a being with a very advanced set of capabilities. It's entirely possible that such a being could design a system that looks entirely random to us, so "top-down", "bottom-up", or "helter-skelter" are totally meaningless observations in this context.

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  18. "Looks designed to me" is not a bad starting point... you make it sound like there is something wrong with making such reasoned observations. The evolutionist, as Francis Crick said, must keep telling themselves that what they see is not designed. On what basis?

    Blind fish? One word: Degeneration. Losing functionality (Blind fish) and a couple mutations leading to some tweaking of existing structures (e coli nylon digestion) is very far from the claims of common descent.

    Macroevolution claims are always supported by weak microevolutionary claims. Yes? If not, give me one solid support that does not rely on reading tea leaves or just-so stories?

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  19. Neal Tedford:

    "Looks designed to me" is not a bad starting point... you make it sound like there is something wrong with making such reasoned observation.

    It's not a reasoned observation. It's a presumption.

    Living things don't look designed to me. Argue against that.

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  20. Neal Tedford -


    Blind fish? One word: Degeneration. Losing functionality (Blind fish) and a couple mutations leading to some tweaking of existing structures (e coli nylon digestion) is very far from the claims of common descent.


    Classic mistake.

    The genes for making eyes in blind cave fish have not degenerated - they are being actively SUPRESSED. That is, these fish have developed MORE genes which actively stop the eye-making genes from expressing themselves. If such repressive genes are removed, the fish develops perfectly functioning eyes. The eye sequence in blind cave fish is not less complex than in their sighted ancestors - it is MORE complex.

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  21. Neal Tedford said...

    "Looks designed to me" is not a bad starting point... you make it sound like there is something wrong with making such reasoned observations


    As I already pointed out, it's worthless as science because it's subjective. Fact is over 99.9% of all evolutionary biologists think life doesn't look designed. But they don't use that subjective reason for accepting evolution. They accept ToE because of the positive evidence in the genetic and fossil records, and reject ID for its complete lack of positive evidence.

    Blind fish? One word: Degeneration. Losing functionality (Blind fish) and a couple mutations leading to some tweaking of existing structures (e coli nylon digestion) is very far from the claims of common descent.

    LOL! So your omnipotent designer was so incompetent he put unneeded but perfectly functioning eyes in the cave fish to start with but then they evolved to be of no use? Same for the wings on flightless beetles? Why doesn't that same logic apply to the hind limbs on cetaceans? Or to the front limbs, which evolved with just some tweaking of existing structures (legs) to fins?

    The more you try to make ad hoc excuses for observed biological phenomena the more stupid you sound. "Making up crap as you go" is always a Creationist's best tool.

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  22. Actually, Ritchie, ID Creationists simply play fast and loose. When we scientists talk about expression, they will demur and insist that it is not genes but networks or systems (with much hand waving - their stock in trade) and then when we point out that it is systems that biologists study, they will tell you that it is a trivial system or that the change is degeneration and not a new function! When we tell them, arrey baba nothing has degenerated it is more complex than the earlier expression, they will tell you that it is still a fish/dog/cat etc., This is ridiculous and risible! At least Old-Creos issued a list of discredited objections that evolution deniers must not raise such as 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, "Evolution is a Theory" etc., neo-Creos like the DI "expert" Luskin are peddling the same shopworn talking points.

    Today's thread on apoptosis seems to be petering out in record time. As usual creos are finding that the topic has a long history in biology and is very well understood. Darn, today's paper in Nature on sponge apoptosis was written by a post-doc at MIT - Mansi Srivastava - so the latest ideas are at least as old as her research ~6-8 years!

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  23. jbeck said...

    Actually, Ritchie, ID Creationists simply play fast and loose. When we scientists talk about expression, they will demur and insist that it is not genes but networks or systems (with much hand waving - their stock in trade) and then when we point out that it is systems that biologists study, they will tell you that it is a trivial system or that the change is degeneration and not a new function!


    Don't forget that if it's not "degeneration", then it's "common design" for all the empirically observed homologous traits or vestigial features.

    It's Excuses-R-Us, creto style.

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  24. jbeck:

    ===
    Just as in any area of biology where creationists are late to the party, bringing up insignificant points that have been settled, so this one too.
    ===

    Why is it insignificant?


    ===
    Apoptosis in Dictyostelium is a very widely studied topic.
    ===

    The fact that evolutionists have extensively studied apoptosis in single cell organisms does not mean the evolution of apoptosis in single cell organisms is compelling.


    ===
    IISc Bangalore and CCMB Hyderabad have put in more than 1000 person years of work in this area. CCMB Hyderabad studies extreme extremophiles that survive in both extreme cold and extreme heat.
    ===

    Why is this significant?


    ===
    In unicellular sponge precursors apoptosis helped multicellular colonies in a number of different ways. The simplest one being the development of channels inside the multicellular mass that created air sacs and permitted water eddies increasing buoyancy.
    ===

    How did the apoptosis activate in the right individuals to create these channels? The answer, of course, is that mechanisms were in place for this to happen. So they just happened to arise somehow, and then must have been selected for at the colony level.


    ===
    What created apoptosis in unicellulars is also an active area of research, and there are about 15 different research groups across the world active in this area. As usual creationists bring a peashooter to a potato gun party!
    ===

    The fact that evolutionists are working on how such designs could have evolved means very little. These research groups are evolutionary. They believe evolution is true, and work from there. As Ernst Mayr said when confronted with problems, We are comforted by the fact evolution occurred. The conclusion that evolution might not have occurred is simply not an option, no matter what are the findings.

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  25. CH,

    Insignificant - because you are raising questions that were answered a long ago.

    The fact that evolutionists have extensively studied apoptosis in single cell organisms does not mean the evolution of apoptosis in single cell organisms is compelling.

    Cornelius, you've gotta decide, if evolution of apoptosis in unicellulars isn't compelling why are you writing about it? Or are your points significant now but not compelling?

    Why is this significant? I suggest you write to CCMB and IISc, Dr. Nanjundiah's lab is a good place to start.

    How did apoptosis activate in the "right individuals"? You have it backwards. The individuals that developed apoptosis became the "right ones"! The answer isn't that the "mechanisms were in place". How did apoptosis "switch on" is one level deeper and there are other groups of scientists working on that for some time now. I talked to a few scientists today, but you, I am sure would know many more than I do. I am sure you can find out more by asking around.

    Cornelius the only "evolutionists working on how designs could have evolved" are such as assorted members of creationist organizations DI, AiG etc.

    Evolutionist = a person who believes that evolution is ideology

    "working on how design could have evolved"[?] = "it looks designed so it is designed" = "I say it is designed so it is designed" = and so on...

    The conclusion that evolution might not have occurred is an option Cornelius. Only that it is not the option that scientists exercise. Anyone who insists evolution has not occurred must

    -first of all advance hypotheses on what occurred instead
    -then advance hypotheses on each one of these alternatives

    That shouldn't be difficult at all. In fact I am willing to exempt the proposer from the second obligation. Granted, for the sake of argument (or an NSF grant application) we will go with your belief that evolution has not occurred.

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  26. jbeck:

    ===
    Insignificant - because you are raising questions that were answered a long ago.
    ===

    No, they have not been answered scientifically. The only answers we have are speculation about genes and mechanisms arising and then undergoing selection.

    ===
    Cornelius, you've gotta decide, if evolution of apoptosis in unicellulars isn't compelling why are you writing about it? Or are your points significant now but not compelling?
    ===

    I'm writing about because evolutionists claim their idea is a *fact*, inspite of a plethora of false predictions, such as this one.

    ===
    Why is this significant? I suggest you write to CCMB and IISc, Dr. Nanjundiah's lab is a good place to start.
    ===

    So you made a comment, I asked what you meant, and you won't give an answer.

    ===
    How did apoptosis activate in the "right individuals"? You have it backwards. The individuals that developed apoptosis became the "right ones"! The answer isn't that the "mechanisms were in place".
    ===

    You are not making sense. If there weren't mechanisms in place to signal the apoptosis pathway, then how did those individuals execute programmed cell death?


    ===
    How did apoptosis "switch on" is one level deeper and there are other groups of scientists working on that for some time now. I talked to a few scientists today, but you, I am sure would know many more than I do. I am sure you can find out more by asking around.
    ===

    Ah, yes, just ask around. Start with an absurd idea and then duck and weave when questions are asked. In fact, I have asked around. I have read the textbooks, searched the journals, queried the experts. No, there is no secret knowledge hidden in the laboratories. There are only canards and misdirections like yours.

    ===
    Cornelius the only "evolutionists working on how designs could have evolved" are such as assorted members of creationist organizations DI, AiG etc.

    Evolutionist = a person who believes that evolution is ideology

    "working on how design could have evolved"[?] = "it looks designed so it is designed" = "I say it is designed so it is designed" = and so on...
    ===

    Again, you are making no sense.


    ===
    The conclusion that evolution might not have occurred is an option Cornelius. Only that it is not the option that scientists exercise.
    ===

    Yes, and Republicans are all about making peace, they just don't happen to exercise the option.

    ===
    Anyone who insists evolution has not occurred must [...]
    ===

    And now for the usual evolutionary strawmen arguments ...

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  27. It is worth noting that a theory that claims that all life descended from a common ancestor gives such weak examples of support such as blind cave fish and a highly speculative view of whale evolution.

    The bottom line is that the same old tired examples of microevolution confirms that the theory is an empty superstition on par with failed concept of Spontaneous Generation.

    One just keeps peeling back the layers of assumptions and speculations to find what is really known for sure and all you end up with are weak examples of microevolution.

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  28. Neal "liar for Jesus" Tedford said...

    It is worth noting that a theory that claims that all life descended from a common ancestor gives such weak examples of support such as blind cave fish and a highly speculative view of whale evolution


    LOL! Tedford, the IDiot's idiot, does his usual daily drive-by blustering.

    Should I post that data on ERVs again Tedford, or maybe the paper on the canid phylogenetic data? You know, the ones you cowardly ran screaming from every time they were presented in the past?

    Maybe you could finally show us that genetic data which proves we're all descended from Noah you bragged about having.

    Or, you could just keep being the empty blowhard.

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  29. Cornelius,
    Anyone who insists evolution has not occurred must...

    This is not a strawman argument or any other sort of argument. I am asking you to offer hypotheses.

    Apoptosis has been studied for >150 years. You will need more than a mere,

    "I don't believe it, so it is not so," to take on the topic. There's a reason why Zachriel or I don't waste our time picking out evidence etc., because of the sheer mass of knowledge out there. There was a time when Dembski, Behe, Wells etc used to offer arguments like you do, of the "It can't be so etc." variety. And they fared very poorly in open debates. And then scientists, tired of shooting fish in a barrel (I have watched Miller reduce Behe to a fidgety mess) decided to return to more serious work, like training potential Nobel Laureates - Ken Miller has already produced one!

    And not really Cornelius. The theories that go into evolution are scientific, it is your objections that aren't. There is nothing in your objection that lends itself to scientific inquiry. Could you write up a grant application based on your objections? You started off on a vague assertion that apoptosis in unicellulars runs counter to evolutionary theory. I told you how it doesn't. You made it seem as if this is some isolated instance of research, I told you that this is a v. widely studied topic (studied for >150 years) - an exciting area of research and referred you to labs where you can find more info. So you must ask yourself whether you really want to inquire or simply object. Now if you were to write to scientists in the field and with their consent share your correspondence here, we may have something to discuss.

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  30. Neal Tedford: The bottom line is that the same old tired examples of microevolution confirms that the theory is an empty superstition on par with failed concept of Spontaneous Generation.

    You must have forgot already. The nested hierarchy is an important area of evidence.

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  31. If we could find a good reason why a designer would design life so that they would be arrainged in a nested hierarchy, then that would remove it would no longer be proof for evolution.

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  32. natschuster: If we could find a good reason why a designer would design life so that they would be arrainged in a nested hierarchy, then that would remove it would no longer be proof for evolution.

    When we consider the nested hierarchy of morphology, genetics, embryonic development, biogeography and fossils in time, then Common Descent is strongly supported regardless of mechanism. You might argue that the designer worked by manipulating common descent, but it doesn't change the known historical transitions.

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  33. natschuster -

    No, that would just be speculation.

    Though it is, actually, a rather revealing comment on the ID mindset - assume everything is designed (after all, it LOOKS designed, doesn't it? Of course it does...) and then invent possible explanations as to why a designer might have made the world this way.

    Do you even need me to point out to you that this is not science?

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  34. Thorton,

    ERV's are not slamdunk support for evolution any more than so-called junk DNA was. Evolutionists are working off assumptions again and not considering contradictions and problems with their view of ERV's and evolution. I'm willing to predict that the whole ERV support for evolution will eventually disappear.

    Here's one excellent link for those wanting to investigate the rest of the story regarding ERV's and pseudogenes, etc....

    http://www.detectingdesign.com/pseudogenes.html#Endogenous

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  35. Neal Tedford: http://www.detectingdesign.com/pseudogenes.html#Endogenous

    Ah, a link to Sean Pitman. That reminds us of a poem.

    Beware a war of words ere you err.

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  36. Neal Tedford said...

    Thorton,

    ERV's are not slamdunk support for evolution any more than so-called junk DNA was. Evolutionists are working off assumptions again and not considering contradictions and problems with their view of ERV's and evolution. I'm willing to predict that the whole ERV support for evolution will eventually disappear.

    Here's one excellent link for those wanting to investigate the rest of the story regarding ERV's and pseudogenes, etc....


    Another big LOL! The scientifically illiterate pastor gives a link to a whole page full of PRATT list anti-science hand waves from a YEC medical doctor, declares victory over ToE.

    Tedford, you're too funny!

    Now tell us again about the omnipotent intelligent designer who put good eyes in a fish that lives in total darkness. The OID who put non-functioning wings under the elytra (wing case) of flightless beetles.

    Tell us about the genetic evidence that we're all descended from Noah.

    Better yet, tell us why microevolutionary adaptions can't accumulate to form macroevolutionary ones.

    C'mon Tedford, don't be shy! Share your vast Biblical scientific knowledge with us!

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  37. Thorton, genetic evidence is consistent with the Biblical record of Noah being the ancestor of all men in that mitochondrial DNA analysis shows more ancient dates for the common ancestor of all women than Y-chromosome analysis for the common ancestor of all men. The findings are consistent with the biblical record... the common female ancestor of all women is Eve while the common male ancestor of all men is Noah. Noah's sons' wives would have had greater genetic differences than his sons. Does the genetic analysis prove that Noah was our ancestor? No, but it is consistent as I just described.

    Regarding why microevolutionary adaptions can't accumulate to form macroevolutionary ones, here is my explanation again:

    The theory of common descent rests on this critical assumption because the weak microevolutionary examples that are repeatedly sited need a good dose of help.

    The limitation does not appear to be a fence like barrier, when mutations are involved in the genetic changes. It becomes a matter of increasing improbabilities for mutations to keep adding up to produce a net benefit. What is actually observed in real life with e-coli digestion and single cell anemia what is expected.

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  38. Neal Tedford said...

    Thorton, genetic evidence is consistent with the Biblical record of Noah being the ancestor of all men in that mitochondrial DNA analysis shows more ancient dates for the common ancestor of all women than Y-chromosome analysis for the common ancestor of all men. The findings are consistent with the biblical record... the common female ancestor of all women is Eve while the common male ancestor of all men is Noah. Noah's sons' wives would have had greater genetic differences than his sons. Does the genetic analysis prove that Noah was our ancestor? No, but it is consistent as I just described.


    Bull. Show me this genetic evidence. Provide a link to the appropriate genomic studies. Your idiotic assertions aren't worth a bucket of spit.

    BTW idiot, I *hope* for your sake you're not referring to the genetic evidence for "mitochondrial eve." The M.E. evidence shows the female most recent common ancestor (MRCA) to everyone alive today who can be traced entirely via the female line, not the only female ancestor of everyone. There were several hundred thousand other women alive at the time of M.E. If you're too stupid to understand the difference ask nicely and I'll try to explain it to you. Also, the most recent genetic analysis puts the matrilineal MRCA at 150,000-200,000 years ago. Similar X-chromosome analysis put the male MRCA at approx. 480,000 years ago.

    You want to look even more ignorant? I'd be happy to oblige.

    Regarding why microevolutionary adaptions can't accumulate to form macroevolutionary ones, here is my explanation again:

    The theory of common descent rests on this critical assumption because the weak microevolutionary examples that are repeatedly sited need a good dose of help.

    The limitation does not appear to be a fence like barrier, when mutations are involved in the genetic changes. It becomes a matter of increasing improbabilities for mutations to keep adding up to produce a net benefit. What is actually observed in real life with e-coli digestion and single cell anemia what is expected.


    More bull. Show me the specific probability calculations along with scientific justification for any assumptions you make.

    Don't your arms get tired from all that hand waving?

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  39. Ritchie + Zach:

    Evolution is also speculation. I'm not assuming it was designed. I'm suggested that there might be a design explanation, as well as an evolutionary one.

    The point is explaining the nested hierarchy. Common descent is one explanation. The other might be a designer using modularity because it is good design practice.

    When archaeologists look at chipped flint they classify it according to the culture that designed it, e.g. Aurignacian, Moustrichian, etc. based on certain criterion. This is perfectly scientific. Same thing with pottery shards.

    ReplyDelete
  40. For those interested, here is a recent study on mitochondrial dating and human evolution.

    Correcting for Purifying Selection: An Improved Human Mitochondrial Molecular Clock
    Soares et al
    American Journal of Human Genetics. 2009 June 12; 84(6): 740–759.

    "Abstract: There is currently no calibration available for the whole human mtDNA genome, incorporating both coding and control regions. Furthermore, as several authors have pointed out recently, linear molecular clocks that incorporate selectable characters are in any case problematic. We here confirm a modest effect of purifying selection on the mtDNA coding region and propose an improved molecular clock for dating human mtDNA, based on a worldwide phylogeny of > 2000 complete mtDNA genomes and calibrating against recent evidence for the divergence time of humans and chimpanzees. We focus on a time-dependent mutation rate based on the entire mtDNA genome and supported by a neutral clock based on synonymous mutations alone. We show that the corrected rate is further corroborated by archaeological dating for the settlement of the Canary Islands and Remote Oceania and also, given certain phylogeographic assumptions, by the timing of the first modern human settlement of Europe and resettlement after the Last Glacial Maximum. The corrected rate yields an age of modern human expansion in the Americas at ∼15 kya that—unlike the uncorrected clock—matches the archaeological evidence, but continues to indicate an out-of-Africa dispersal at around 55–70 kya, 5–20 ky before any clear archaeological record, suggesting the need for archaeological research efforts focusing on this time window. We also present improved rates for the mtDNA control region, and the first comprehensive estimates of positional mutation rates for human mtDNA, which are essential for defining mutation models in phylogenetic analyses."

    As seen in Figure 6, the evidence puts "mitochondrial eve", the matrilineal MRCA at approx. 192,000 years ago.

    ReplyDelete
  41. jbeck:

    ===
    Cornelius,
    Anyone who insists evolution has not occurred must...

    This is not a strawman argument or any other sort of argument.
    ===

    Yes it is a strawman argument. I don't insist evolution has not occurred.


    ===
    Apoptosis has been studied for >150 years. You will need more than a mere,

    "I don't believe it, so it is not so," to take on the topic.
    ===

    You are conflating apoptosis and its origin.



    ===
    There's a reason why Zachriel or I don't waste our time picking out evidence etc., because of the sheer mass of knowledge out there. There was a time when Dembski, Behe, Wells etc used to offer arguments like you do, of the "It can't be so etc." variety. And they fared very poorly in open debates. And then scientists, tired of shooting fish in a barrel (I have watched Miller reduce Behe to a fidgety mess) decided to return to more serious work, like training potential Nobel Laureates - Ken Miller has already produced one!
    ===

    So Miller was correct all along that God wouldn't have designed the mosquito?



    ===
    And not really Cornelius. The theories that go into evolution are scientific, it is your objections that aren't. There is nothing in your objection that lends itself to scientific inquiry. Could you write up a grant application based on your objections?
    ===

    This is the "intellectual necessity" argument for evolution, which is not scientific.


    ===
    You started off on a vague assertion that apoptosis in unicellulars runs counter to evolutionary theory. I told you how it doesn't.
    ===

    You can always add yet another epicycle to your theory. Those sufficiently motivated can explain any unexpected finding with theory modification. Your explanation--that apoptosis automagically caused channels and air sacs in the colony that just happened to happen--is of course insufficient. Apoptosis doesn't do that, you need a control system to message the right individuals to make this happen. Also, your "explanation" doesn't explain how the high degree-of-freedom apoptosis system and its control system arose in the first place, so that they could be selected. And, as I pointed out, selection of the latter would have to occur at the colony level, so initially you would have to have apoptosis in place without the control system, or just as unlikely they would have to have arisen at the same time.


    ===
    You made it seem as if this is some isolated instance of research,
    ===

    I'm sorry for that impression.


    ===
    I told you that this is a v. widely studied topic (studied for >150 years) - an exciting area of research
    ===

    Yes.


    ===
    and referred you to labs where you can find more info. So you must ask yourself whether you really want to inquire or simply object. Now if you were to write to scientists in the field and with their consent share your correspondence here, we may have something to discuss.
    ===

    I certainly do communicate with evolutionists, and it is sometimes helpful to hear what they have to say beyond what is in their papers. But, no, you'd be mistaken to think there is some "smoking gun" evidence for the unlikely evolutionary hypotheses.

    ReplyDelete
  42. Neal Tedford -


    Thorton, genetic evidence is consistent with the Biblical record of Noah being the ancestor of all men in that mitochondrial DNA analysis shows more ancient dates for the common ancestor of all women than Y-chromosome analysis for the common ancestor of all men. The findings are consistent with the biblical record... the common female ancestor of all women is Eve while the common male ancestor of all men is Noah. Noah's sons' wives would have had greater genetic differences than his sons. Does the genetic analysis prove that Noah was our ancestor? No, but it is consistent as I just described.


    Indeed it seems you are talking about Mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosome Adam. Please understand these are just names. The reference to the Biblical Adam and Eve is nothing more than poetic.

    Who was Mitochondrial Eve? Well, every gene in your body came from either your mother or your father, who got it from either one of their parents, and so on. For various reason I won't go into, over long time periods these are hard to trace back, but for other reasons I won't go into the sex cells are by far the easiest to trace - that is, the x chromosome and the y chromosome. Everyone carries at least one x chromosome, so we can work backwards and get a rough estimate of when our nearest y chromosome common ancestor lived - the woman we call Mitochondrial Eve. The same is true of y chromosome Adam (obviously except that only men carry a y chromosome).

    The important points to note here:

    1, Mitochondrial Eve is merely the last out of a long line of mitochondrial common ancestors. Mitochondrial Eve had a mother, a grandmother, etc, who also carried the x chromosome common to every human alive today.

    2, Mitochondrial Eve is a shifting title, not a reference to a specific individual. If tomorrow some gentically outlying tribe was to be wiped out, then the title could be thrown forward several thousand years to a different individual.

    3, Mitochondrial Eve is merely our most recent common ancestor for our x chromosome. She is not the most recent common ancestor of all humanity. If we traced back the most recent common ancestor for different chromosomes, we would find different indiviuals holding those titles.

    All of which are not in the slightest bit consistent with your laughably naive interpretation of Mitochondrial Eve and y chromosome Adam and the Biblical Eve and Noah.

    ReplyDelete
  43. natchuster -


    Evolution is also speculation.


    If it was, it would be a hypothesis. Hypotheses only become theories when they have passed a certain standard of evidence. The theory of evolution is a theory. What does that tell you?


    When archaeologists look at chipped flint they classify it according to the culture that designed it, e.g. Aurignacian, Moustrichian, etc. based on certain criterion. This is perfectly scientific. Same thing with pottery shards.


    Yes. It is scientific. It can be explained using natural laws. ID can't.

    ReplyDelete
  44. Typing too fast typos:

    "Similar X-chromosome analysis put the male MRCA at approx. 480,000 years ago."

    should read

    "Similar Y-chromosome analysis put the male MRCA at approx. 80,000 years ago."

    Apologies for any confusion.

    ReplyDelete
  45. natschuster: The point is explaining the nested hierarchy. Common descent is one explanation. The other might be a designer using modularity because it is good design practice.

    Even if you were to ignore all the other evidence supporting Common Descent (including the fossil succession), modularity is the very reason why Common Design is not a good explanation. Human designers borrow features (modules) across lineages. When one maker comes out with disk brakes, others quickly copy the design. This is not what we see in biology. Common Descent is strongly supported, so the best you can do is claim that the process was manipulated, à la 2001.

    We could engage that conversation, but what happens is that IDers backslide into denying the evidence for Common Descent.

    ReplyDelete
  46. Ritchie: Mitochondrial Eve is merely our most recent common ancestor for our x chromosome. She is not the most recent common ancestor of all humanity. If we traced back the most recent common ancestor for different chromosomes, we would find different indiviuals holding those titles.

    That's an important point that was lost in popular news accounts of Mitochondrial Eve.

    ReplyDelete
  47. "Ritchie: Mitochondrial Eve is merely our most recent common ancestor for our x chromosome. She is not the most recent common ancestor of all humanity. If we traced back the most recent common ancestor for different chromosomes, we would find different indiviuals holding those titles.

    That's an important point that was lost in popular news accounts of Mitochondrial Eve."

    That means we have 46 different common ancestors.
    What does common means then?

    ReplyDelete
  48. Zachriel said...

    Ritchie: Mitochondrial Eve is merely our most recent common ancestor for our x chromosome. She is not the most recent common ancestor of all humanity. If we traced back the most recent common ancestor for different chromosomes, we would find different indiviuals holding those titles.

    That's an important point that was lost in popular news accounts of Mitochondrial Eve.


    That's sad but true of many exciting scientific finds when they get reported in the popular news. Most TV/radio/print writers aren't scientifically knowledgeable, so we inevitably get the "GEE WOW" spin factor added at the expense of the scientific details. Just look at how many times we get the headline "Scientists find missing link!!"

    In this case, all the Fundy Creto mouthbreathers saw was "scientific evidence" and "Eve". Without bothering to learn or understand what was really being presented, they ran with it. That's why we get knuckleheads like Tedford making this idiotic claim.

    ReplyDelete
  49. Blas said...

    That means we have 46 different common ancestors.
    What does common means then?


    Common descent means we share common ancestors at the species level. Populations that gave rise to other populations.

    "Mitochondrial Eve" is describing our lineage within our own species, at the individual level.

    Those are two quite different concepts.

    ReplyDelete
  50. Ritchie: "Mitochondrial Eve is merely our most recent common ancestor for our x chromosome."

    The word "Mitochondrial" suggests it's the MRCA for our mitochondria, not X chromosome (that would be X-Eve). X also recombines, so it doesn't even make sense to talk about a MRCA for X. Or am I missing something?

    ReplyDelete
  51. Ritchie said:

    "Mitochondrial Eve is merely our most recent common ancestor for our x chromosome. She is not the most recent common ancestor of all humanity. If we traced back the most recent common ancestor for different chromosomes, we would find different indiviuals holding those titles."

    .............

    Zachriel said:

    "That's an important point that was lost in popular news accounts of Mitochondrial Eve."

    =======================

    So okay , perhaps then you mean a creature more like a mitochondrial "Lucy" ???

    Hmmmmmmmm

    =======================

    Zachriel said:

    "We could engage that conversation, but what happens is that IDers backslide into denying the evidence for Common Descent."

    ======================

    I am often at odds with most of the clergy that are left existing today. For years most of my advocates or enemies for the most part have been Churches and Church doctrines and debates about their pagan their origins. I find it repugnent when they excuse and justify the filth of what their disturbed history, actions and lying have resulted for humankind.

    But your side does exactly the very same thing when it comes to data and evidence. In that way the Atheistic/Evolutionists movement is totally identical to the position of Christendom.

    Take as an example something you championed along with thousands of others back in 2005, mitochondrial "Lucy". The supposed mother of all and anything African. The Media's Darwinian love affair was huge as predicted, but then sometime later we found out the truth about what went on behind the scenes (which is likewise predictable) with regards that latest Evo-Eve.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRjEKb3KLiI&feature=player_embedded

    Now suddenly yesterday it is being reported worldwide that the very stone tools "Lucy" and her family used have now been found. I wonder what power saw "Lucy" and gang used ???

    ReplyDelete
  52. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Eocene said...

    Take as an example something you championed along with thousands of others back in 2005, mitochondrial "Lucy". The supposed mother of all and anything African.


    Where do you get this stupidity? From another brain-dead Creto site?

    Please show anywhere in the scientific literature the use of the term "mitochondrial Lucy" or the claim that this one individual was the supposed mother of all and anything African.

    BTW, when are you going to explain the magic genetic barrier that prevent macroevolution? You seemed to have turned tail and run from that discussion on the other thread.

    ReplyDelete
  54. blas -

    "What does common mean then?"

    it means 'shared by every known living person'. Which, of course, changes.

    If there was a nuclear war and humanity was destroyed except for one tiny island tribe somewhere, then you would probably only have to go back a few handfuls of generations to find Mitochondrial Eve - the most recent ancestor who shares the x chromosome #of all living people#.

    Does that make sense to you?

    ReplyDelete
  55. troy -

    Another way of putting it is to look at your family tree. To find Mitochondrial Eve (which we do indeed calculate through the mitochondria in the x chromosome) we will only consider everyone's mothers. We trace your mother, and her mother, and her mother, etc, and find the most recent one shared by everyone.

    But there are other ways of going up your family tree. we could, for example, trace your mother's father's mother's father. After all, you have two parents, four grandparents, eight greatgrandparents, etc. Mitochondrial Eve is found on everyone's exclusively maternal line. Follow any other line and you will reach different most recent common ancestors.

    ReplyDelete
  56. Ritchie: it means 'shared by every known living person'. Which, of course, changes.

    If there was a nuclear war and humanity was destroyed except for one tiny island tribe somewhere, then you would probably only have to go back a few handfuls of generations to find Mitochondrial Eve - the most recent ancestor who shares the x chromosome #of all living people#.

    Does that make sense to you?


    I think you skipped over Troy's post above. Mitochondrial Eve is the ancestor from whom we get our mitochondrial DNA, not the X chromosome. Unlike mitochondrial DNA and (nearly the entirety of) the Y, but like the autosomes (non-sex chromosomes), the X undergoes recombination during meiosis. It does not coalesce back to a single ancestor. Instead of a few dozens of MRCAs, we have at least thousands associated with individual genes.

    ReplyDelete
  57. Ritchie: Another way of putting it is to look at your family tree. To find Mitochondrial Eve (which we do indeed calculate through the mitochondria in the x chromosome) we will only consider everyone's mothers.

    Mitochondria are not on the X chromosome. They are organelles outside of the cell nucleus that have their own DNA separate from nuclear DNA.

    ReplyDelete
  58. Eocene -

    I can't follow the link, but Lucy was never hailed as an individual as any kind of common ancestor. She was a member of a species which, in all probability, was ancestral to modetn humans. But that is all. And she is.

    You are simply confused.

    ReplyDelete
  59. "If there was a nuclear war and humanity was destroyed except for one tiny island tribe somewhere, then you would probably only have to go back a few handfuls of generations to find Mitochondrial Eve - the most recent ancestor who shares the x chromosome #of all living people#.

    Does that make sense to you? "

    Ok, but then that small population will bw the common ancestor for all the cromosomes, we are not having a different common ancestor for each one as Zach said.

    ReplyDelete
  60. Blas: Ok, but then that small population will bw the common ancestor for all the cromosomes, we are not having a different common ancestor for each one as Zach said.

    Sorry for the confusion. Our comment concerned overlooking the fact that Mitochondrial Eve is not the sole ancestor of all modern humans, but only of their mitochondria.

    Mitochondrial DNA is not on a chromosome but in an organelle that is passed maternally with the egg to the child. Everyone has their mother's mitochondria, and their mother's mother's mitochondria.

    Chromosomes recombine, so there is no clear nested hierarchy. The exception is (most of) the y-chromosome, which can therefore be used to trace paternity.

    Genes can form phylogenies, though, but different genes lead to different common ancestors. You may have Mitochondria Eve's mitochondria, but you may also have her neighbor's gene for eye-color.

    ReplyDelete
  61. John and Zach -

    You are right. This is the problem with doing this from memory.

    My point was that we can find MRCAs who pre-date Mitochondrial Eve by following lineages of various genes! Mitochondrial Eve is not in any way a 'first person'..


    blas -

    The point here is that the title of Mitochondrial Eve shifts. It is entirely dependant on the known and living people at the time. It is not fixed on some 'original woman'.

    ReplyDelete
  62. Ritche: My point was that we can find MRCAs who pre-date Mitochondrial Eve by following lineages of various genes!

    And that is a point worth making. Some genes (notably the ABO blood group gene) would coalesce to a more ancient ancestor. Others would coalesce to a more recent ancestor than mt-Eve.

    ReplyDelete
  63. Ritchie -

    I can't follow the link, but Lucy was never hailed as an individual as any kind of common ancestor. She was a member of a species which, in all probability, was ancestral to modetn humans. But that is all. And she is.

    You are simply confused.

    ========================

    No I'm could be further from confused and I can smell a fraud when I see it. Lucy was NOT a human ancestor. It was a complete fabricated hoax by world reknowned clown billing himself as a Genius on the matter.

    Here's the archived transcript from PBS.org with the title, "Nova: In Search of Human Origins Part I" [translation] = "Evolution of Lucy by Power Saw"

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2106hum1.html

    Can you imagine IF someone who believes in Biblical Creation did this con job just in reverse what all the righteous indignation would be ??? The media would scream bloody murder for months if not years and all forums would bring the dirty subject up time and again and continually give new life to it. But let an EVO do it and it gets burried and hushed, only to resurface a few days ago to show they've found the very tools this power saw manufactured Ape cousin and her family used to kill and cut up their food at the family Bar-B-Q.

    It's amazing how in the face of massive amounts of falsifications against your church's religious dogma (fogma), how that very special mysterious beneficial evolutionary "Blind Faith Gene" just kicks in and takes over. Guess it's sort of a survival gene eh ???

    ReplyDelete
  64. Thorton

    "Please show anywhere in the scientific literature the use of the term "mitochondrial Lucy" or the claim that this one individual was the supposed mother of all and anything African."

    ===================

    Well THORNY, let me ask you a better question. Being that you have a penchant for anything cartoony, Why in all the Illustrated evolutionary charts from the very beginning (19th century to present) are Africans always without fail depicted as a transitional between that apeman thing and the studly looking white Aryan European male located as being on top of the evolutionary dung heap of life ??? Why isn't an African, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, etc never depicted in any of those illustrated graphs as representing evolutionary evolved modern man ??? Why is it always a white European male ???

    I'm sure you'll make something up on the fly!!!

    LOL

    ReplyDelete
  65. Eocene,

    "Why isn't an African, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, etc never depicted in any of those illustrated graphs as representing evolutionary evolved modern man ??? Why is it always a white European male ???"

    Good question. I think it goes back to Darwin and the ignorance of his era that he helped to perpetuate. Darwin actually thought that Africans were less evolved than Europeans, being somewhere between gorillas and the Europeans. The whole concept of "races" comes from this ignorance. Fortunately, scientific progress often proceeds forward inspite of evolutionary dogma.

    ReplyDelete
  66. Eocene: Why in all the Illustrated evolutionary charts from the very beginning (19th century to present) are Africans always without fail depicted as a transitional between that apeman thing and the studly looking white Aryan European male located as being on top of the evolutionary dung heap of life ??? Why isn't an African, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican, etc never depicted in any of those illustrated graphs as representing evolutionary evolved modern man ??? Why is it always a white European male ???

    1. Those graphs were produced many, many years ago by illustrators rather than scientists (although scientists 50 years ago likely approved). Scientists haven't viewed evolution as a "ladder of progress" for many decades, but rather as a branching bush represented by a cladogram or evolutionary tree. The old linear cartoons persist in the public only. If you see a new production, you can be assured it did not come from the work of a mainstream evolutionary biologist or anthropologist.

    2. The presence of Europeans in these early diagrams does not necessarily imply ethnocentrism or racism: the first well known populations of Homo sapiens in the fossil record were the Cro Magnon people of France, and it is often these people who were depicted at the "end of the line" (although sometimes it is a modern human).

    3. When and where the diagrams featuring Europeans were used in formal scientific education, it has generally been European (or European-American) illustrators drawing for a European (or U.S. or Canadian) audience. You would expect the cartoons coming from other regions to portray individuals with facial features characteristic of the majority of the population in their own region as well.

    In modern cladograms, cartoons of species are sometimes included, and lately illustrations of females seem to be about as common as males. Inclusion of a human face yields potential pitfalls either way. If a European author uses a face with European features, some could construe this as racism or ethnocentrism; however if you were to put in a face with features characteristic of another continent, that could be misconstrued by nonscientists as an implication that the "other races" are derived from animals, but "our people" sit by the throne of God, divorced from and above nature.

    In most instances, cartoons are not used in this manner, and that may be for the best.

    ReplyDelete
  67. Eocene said...

    Thorton: "Please show anywhere in the scientific literature the use of the term "mitochondrial Lucy" or the claim that this one individual was the supposed mother of all and anything African."

    ===================

    Ritchie: "I can't follow the link, but Lucy was never hailed as an individual as any kind of common ancestor. She was a member of a species which, in all probability, was ancestral to modetn humans. But that is all. And she is.

    You are simply confused."

    ========================

    No I'm could be further from confused and I can smell a fraud when I see it. Lucy was NOT a human ancestor. It was a complete fabricated hoax by world reknowned clown billing himself as a Genius on the matter.


    (snip more of Eocene's evasive blithering)

    LOL! You actually thought that science had classified the Australopithecus afarensis known as "Lucy" as the only single individual responsible for giving rise to modern humans???

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

    That's as bad as the idiot Tedford thinking the genetic evidence for "mitochondrial Eve" meant there was only one woman alive at that time.

    Watching you IDC clowns come up with these amazing displays of scientific ignorance day after day (like your Monsanto 'genetic barrier' that prevents macroevolution) is why we science professionals come here. The LULZ are worth the price of admission!

    ReplyDelete
  68. Neal Tedford

    "Good question. I think it goes back to Darwin and the ignorance of his era that he helped to perpetuate. Darwin actually thought that Africans were less evolved than Europeans, being somewhere between gorillas and the Europeans. The whole concept of "races" comes from this ignorance. Fortunately, scientific progress often proceeds forward inspite of evolutionary dogma."
    =====================

    Actually, not long ago there was a sort of tribute to the unholy man himself (Charlie Darwin) and his beloved "Beagle". While Charlie was in Argentina , he for the first time encountered a tribe of what he called hostile savages. The comment in the documentary then brought to light Charlie's personal gut feelings with regards his encounter with these so-called savages. He reasoned that if there really was a God, then he couldn't possibly be responsible for vicious animal-like savages he encountered and the superior Europeans such as himself. (notice the metaphysical reasoning) Charlie was a citizen of Great Britain who were busy competing with other nations in Imperialist Empire building and the need to justify doing so. When you read the writtings of Charlie, Huxley, and other compadres back then, it becomes quite clear that the whole dogma being debated today was started for no other reason than to scientifically and socially justify the mistreatment and domination of other races back at that time. Sadly millions of innocent people have paid a high price for not having the politically/Socially correct colour skin and non European facial features.

    ReplyDelete
  69. John said:

    1. "Those graphs were produced many, many years ago by illustrators rather than scientists (although scientists 50 years ago likely approved). Scientists haven't viewed evolution as a "ladder of progress" for many decades, but rather as a branching bush represented by a cladogram or evolutionary tree. The old linear cartoons persist in the public only. If you see a new production, you can be assured it did not come from the work of a mainstream evolutionary biologist or anthropologist."
    =================

    Interesting

    This man, Dr Lee Berger, just a few months back in this year presented his version of Apeman - African example.

    http://www.maropeng.co.za/index.php/news/entry/lee_berger_the_man_behind_the_sediba_fossils/

    Then there is the beautifully illustrated graph they gave here.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1263488/Missing-link-evolutionary-chain-resolved-new-species-discovered-cradle-humanity.html

    I'd say times really haven't changed all that much. Even James Watson (DNA Double Helix fame) has expressed the European Evolutionary mindset and still long running thinking of the species inferior Africans as compared to Euros in his political rant back in I believe the end of 2007.

    ReplyDelete
  70. THORTON blurted:

    "LOL! You actually thought that science had classified the Australopithecus afarensis known as "Lucy" as the only single individual responsible for giving rise to modern humans???

    BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

    That's as bad as the idiot Tedford thinking the genetic evidence for "mitochondrial Eve" meant there was only one woman alive at that time."
    ===================

    You know, the beauty of a response like this just speaks for itself and there is no need of reply. The post wreaks of the degenerative intellectualism which has taken over many parts of our modern world. Anyone see the news lately of how much better things are ???

    This picture speaks a thousand blurrs. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  71. Eocene said...

    You know, the beauty of a response like this just speaks for itself and there is no need of reply. The post wreaks of the degenerative intellectualism which has taken over many parts of our modern world. Anyone see the news lately of how much better things are ???


    LOL yet again! The whole IDC view of science was aptly summed up by Pastor Ray Mummert, commenting on the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial:

    "We’ve been attacked by the educated, intelligent segment of the culture.”

    ReplyDelete
  72. Eocene,

    "The comment in the documentary then brought to light Charlie's personal gut feelings with regards his encounter with these so-called savages".

    Darwin also makes that same point in his book, "The Descent of Man." He drew wrong conclusions about the mental abilities of his "savages". It is a case in point on how his observations led to wrong conclusions. But he was very good at selling these wrong conclusions to a naive world.

    ReplyDelete
  73. Neal Tedford said...

    Eocene,

    "The comment in the documentary then brought to light Charlie's personal gut feelings with regards his encounter with these so-called savages".

    Darwin also makes that same point in his book, "The Descent of Man." He drew wrong conclusions about the mental abilities of his "savages". It is a case in point on how his observations led to wrong conclusions. But he was very good at selling these wrong conclusions to a naive world.


    Do you think someone should point out to these fools that Darwin himself has been dead for almost 130 years and that science has progressed just a bit since then?

    Since they get their "science" from a 2000 year old book, I suppose it's no surprise they can't understand that scientific knowledge doesn't stand still.

    ReplyDelete
  74. Neal Tedford: Darwin also makes that same point in his book, "The Descent of Man." He drew wrong conclusions about the mental abilities of his "savages".

    Racism and European white supremacy long predate Darwin.

    ReplyDelete
  75. Eocene -

    For one thing, what on Earth leads you to the ridiculous conclusion that Lucy was a hoax? The fact that you want her to be?

    For another, it still seems you are confused as to what Lucy represents. She was a member of a species which almost certainly gave rise eventually to modern homo sapiens (or, at the outside, was an extremely close cousin to one). No-one is claiming her as an MRCA.

    Also, as to this racism implicit in the work of early evolutionists, well that may be true. But what you are missing is that such views do not stem logically from evolutionary theory. Even liberal Victorian views held notions which would today seem shockingly racist, including the superiority of white people. Unfounded as it was, it was simply a given at the time, and chiefly wielded to justify colonialism. Darwin did not pioneer these views - they had been held for centuries.

    Moreover, we do not need to revere the prejudices of great scientific minds. Darwin came up with a theory that has passed a century and a half of critical examination with flying colours and that is all we need to know. Beyond that, Darwin could have been the most appalling man imaginable. I'm not saying he was, but his personal ethics do not detract from the fact that he devised a theory which WORKS and that is all that matters.

    Nor is this racism implicit in the theory of evolution. If anything, the theory of evolution shows us that all human races are cousins - and exremely close cousins at that. Few species have as little genetic diversity as homo sapiens do. Humans are, comparatively, a strikingly genetically uniform species - a fact we discovered thanks to the theory of evolution.

    ReplyDelete
  76. Zachriel said:

    "Racism and European white supremacy long predate Darwin."
    ====================

    But with Charles Darwin's new world philosophy/idealogy it gained that justification edge (salved the conscience or hardened it) with Darwinian Principles which gave it a sort of perverted breath of life legitimacy. From that point the racism only expanded into new territory it had never gone before right down to our present sad state of affairs.

    Now to be fair, I do also blame religion/Churches for their role and support of some of the more hideous aspects of Darwinian racial dominance justifications like Aparteid, Australian Aboriginal Genocide, etc. Fortunately they will be dealt with shortly.

    ReplyDelete
  77. THORTON ranted:

    "Do you think someone should point out to these fools that Darwin himself has been dead for almost 130 years and that science has progressed just a bit since then?"
    =======================

    Then the question has to be asked, why do Atheists continually grave rob this guy's corpse and parade it around forall to see ???

    Why is this guy who had no knowledge of the information we have today, why are his writings quoted all over the earth as some sort of scriptural reference work ???

    Why do science articles explore and relate amazing findings that have ZERO to do with evolution, yet the E-Word is given slight honorable mention at the end of an article for appeasing the "Thought Police" ???

    Why are many scientists (who aren't necessarily trying to prove evolution) in their research paperwork obligated and pressured to give this honorable mention to the false god like so much incence burning before and alter to this man's image ???

    Speaking of image, why do many Atheists groom themselves in the image of this man as if he were a god ???

    Example = Danny Dennet:

    http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_3UXl0oMYPLs/SXZHIRt_oKI/AAAAAAAAAFw/j6kmhIdEQTI/s1600-h/ATHEIST+LOGIC.jpg

    ReplyDelete
  78. Eocene: This man, Dr Lee Berger, just a few months back in this year presented his version of Apeman - African example.http://www.maropeng.co.za/index.php/news/entry/lee_berger_the_man_behind_the_sediba_fossils/

    Eocene, there was nothing remotely racist in this link. Africa is the center of origin for both our genus and our species. That is a fact. That does not mean that living African populations are any less evolved than those whose ancestors spread to other parts of the globe.

    Then there is the beautifully illustrated graph they gave here.

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1263488/Missing-link-evolutionary-chain-resolved-new-species-discovered-cradle-humanity.html


    This is a newspaper's graphic. This was not the work of Berger. This is the March of Progress, which does not represent our modern understanding of evolution.

    I'd say times really haven't changed all that much. Even James Watson (DNA Double Helix fame) has expressed the European Evolutionary mindset and still long running thinking of the species inferior Africans as compared to Euros in his political rant back in I believe the end of 2007.

    James Watson is a person who made racist remarks and who also happened to be a co-discoverer of DNA structure. That does not make evolutionary biology a racist discipline.

    Similarly, we would not want to say that consumer electronics is a racist field of employment just because William Shockley contributed to the development of the transistor.

    ReplyDelete
  79. John:

    "This is a newspaper's graphic. This was not the work of Berger. This is the March of Progress, which does not represent our modern understanding of evolution."
    ===================

    Interesting, so you're saying this outrageously offensive and racist illustrative graph had nothing to do with Dr Lee Berger. Fine! Now show where Dr Lee Berger displayed righteous indignation against the Dailymail and other media outlets for using this same pic. Show me where other well socially informed intellects worldwide likewise showed righteous indignation and made a huge issue of this blatant racist picture showing Africans below whites in the evolutionary dung heap.

    ==========================
    John said:

    "James Watson is a person who made racist remarks and who also happened to be a co-discoverer of DNA structure. That does not make evolutionary biology a racist discipline."
    ==========================

    True, but by the same token when many outrageous religious leading idiots do and say stupid things, it likewise doesn't reflect on everyone religious who just happen to believe in the biblical creation account. For example, tho many here (Cornelius' blog) may well be young earth creationists (YECs) , I am not, but would it be fair to say that most Atheists here probably put me in the same catagory as them ???

    ReplyDelete
  80. Eocene: Interesting, so you're saying this outrageously offensive and racist illustrative graph had nothing to do with Dr Lee Berger. Fine! Now show where Dr Lee Berger displayed righteous indignation against the Dailymail and other media outlets for using this same pic. Show me where other well socially informed intellects worldwide likewise showed righteous indignation and made a huge issue of this blatant racist picture showing Africans below whites in the evolutionary dung heap.

    In today's world of human trafficking, genital mutilation, and continued genocidal efforts, this hackneyed and trite type of illustration isn't worth getting steamed over.

    Again this was a European newspaper. Europeans 2 million years ago had African ancestors. The same is true for all the peoples of the world. Our ancestors are not a "dung heap." They were primitive with respect to us (us being all living humans), but that's all that primitive means scientifically, it means ancestral.

    For an ancient organism to be wholly primitive with respect to another means that the former is a direct ancestor of the latter. Considering that many contemporary lineages went extinct, the view of an ancient species as "primitive" is a mark of success - its modified descendants survive today.

    ReplyDelete
  81. Eocene: Why is this guy who had no knowledge of the information we have today, why are his writings quoted all over the earth as some sort of scriptural reference work ???

    Unlike Galileo, his contributions to science still find themselves under attack from those with religious motives. He's become a "martyr" for science and the liberation of human thought from religious dogma.

    ReplyDelete
  82. Eocene said...

    John:

    "This is a newspaper's graphic. This was not the work of Berger. This is the March of Progress, which does not represent our modern understanding of evolution."
    ===================

    Interesting, so you're saying this outrageously offensive and racist illustrative graph had nothing to do with Dr Lee Berger. Fine! Now show where Dr Lee Berger displayed righteous indignation against the Dailymail and other media outlets for using this same pic. Show me where other well socially informed intellects worldwide likewise showed righteous indignation and made a huge issue of this blatant racist picture showing Africans below whites in the evolutionary dung heap.


    "outrageously offensive and racist"? You're an even bigger idiot than I thought.

    Do keep up with the faux outrage though. It's remarkably amusing watching you make a fool of yourself. Again.

    ReplyDelete
  83. "Racism and European white supremacy long predate Darwin."

    Darwin gave it a fatalistic scientific justification. Darwins' scientific conclusions about Africans based on his observations were just plain wrong.

    If early evolutionists were wrong about living and breathing Africans based on their theory, what gives them any credibility to look at skeleton fragments of "Lucy" and make a correct interpretation? Would you hire a contractor to build your house who doesn't know how to fix a leaky faucet?

    ReplyDelete
  84. Galileo's issues were more complex than simply blaming "religion" for hindering his work. It is a favorite fairy tale that is simple to repeat but spins the truth.

    ReplyDelete
  85. Neal Tedford said...

    If early evolutionists were wrong about living and breathing Africans based on their theory, what gives them any credibility to look at skeleton fragments of "Lucy" and make a correct interpretation? Would you hire a contractor to build your house who doesn't know how to fix a leaky faucet?


    Would you hire a pastor to preach about evolutionary biology who thinks genetic evidence for "mitochondrial Eve" shows there was only one woman alive 6000 years ago?

    ReplyDelete
  86. John said:

    "Unlike Galileo, his contributions to science still find themselves under attack from those with religious motives."
    ======================

    I've always found it fascinating that no other scientist in history has to be defended by Bulldogs and Pitbulls. His contribution had nothing to do with truth about the natural world. The underlying motive is and always will be issues with accountability and definition shell games of what is and isn't morality.

    Another wrong, you haven't researched enough to understand that there were more than just religious scientists like Galileo who made vital contributions to science. In another thread I clearly spelled out false pagan religious superstitions that were foretold to take place after the death of the Apostles and sure enough they all came true. I specifically gave all the atheists here pointed Biblical Hebrew and Greek words and asked them to research their original meanings when they were first penned centuries ago and that it would falsify many doctrines that are regularly promoted by Christendom. It would have clearly vindicated many atheist's beliefs against such God dishonoring beliefs such as hellfire, immortality of the soul, etc.

    But interestingly enough, not one anomymous posting genius here acknowledge my info and did research on William Tynedale, William Whiston, Sir Isaac Newton, Thomas Aikenhead, and many more who risked their lives for doing a scholastic research into actual word/terms and their original meanings and exposed the Churches for lying all those centuries. Not one atheist here did this and the reason is still simply issues of accountability and resentment of morality.

    =====================

    John said:
    "He's become a "martyr" for science and the liberation of human thought from religious dogma."
    =====================

    The man (Charlie) is no martyr for truth and justice. As a matter of historical fact, his teachings and works have been used to impliment the most horrific ideas mankind has ever known or experienced. I first and foremost blame the churches who should have known better for not doing their job and giving full support to various world governments that have drafted Darwinian "Survival of the Fittest" principles and thought into their many rules and regulations for which many innocent have been hurt terribly. Charlie Darwin simply offered another flawed religious worldview and idealogy viewpoint to replace an already flawed way the churches ran things with their iron fist. The religion his teachings gave birth to are presently bringing our natural world down to it's knees. Life as we know it is disintegrating before our very eyes and rather than point out particulars, all I need do is point to all major news networks and have you watch 24/7.

    ReplyDelete
  87. Neal Tedford: Galileo's issues were more complex than simply blaming "religion" for hindering his work. It is a favorite fairy tale that is simple to repeat but spins the truth.

    Eocene: Another wrong, you haven't researched enough to understand that there were more than just religious scientists like Galileo who made vital contributions to science. In another thread I clearly spelled out false pagan religious superstitions that were foretold to take place after the death of the Apostles and sure enough they all came true.


    It's a matter of record that the church opposed Galileo's acceptance of heliocentrism, just as many in the church have historically opposed evolution. It is a matter of record that there is an organized religiously-motivated movement to suppress evolutionary acceptance, and that there is no similar large-scale church-approved movement against a heliocentric Solar System.

    ReplyDelete
  88. The man (Charlie) is no martyr for truth and justice. As a matter of historical fact, his teachings and works have been used to impliment the most horrific ideas mankind has ever known or experienced.

    The development of 20th century physics led to nuclear weaponry. That does not invalidate or vilify phsics as a field of study. Do you really think that genocidal despots needed (their twisted views of) science to proceed with their aims? If so, you must be ignorant of world history prior to 1859.

    ReplyDelete
  89. Eocene said...

    The man (Charlie) is no martyr for truth and justice. As a matter of historical fact, his teachings and works have been used to impliment the most horrific ideas mankind has ever known or experienced.


    I suppose you think because the Nazis used poison gas in their chambers that all we know about chemistry is a lie. And the Allies used planes to bomb Dresden and Hiroshima, so all we know about aeronautics and heavier-than-air flight is a big evil fraud.

    Do you ever read your own stupidity before you post?

    Charlie Darwin simply offered another flawed religious worldview and idealogy viewpoint to replace an already flawed way the churches ran things with their iron fist. The religion his teachings gave birth to are presently bringing our natural world down to it's knees. Life as we know it is disintegrating before our very eyes and rather than point out particulars, all I need do is point to all major news networks and have you watch 24/7.

    Yeah, our use of evolutionary biology in fields like medicine and agriculture sure has wrecked our lives. Not like the "good old days" of the pre-Darwin 18th century when the average life expectancy was less than 40 years, child mortality was 40%, and you could get the church to burn your neighbor at the stake just by accusing her of being a witch. I'm sure you IDiots would love to go back there.

    ReplyDelete
  90. John said, "It's a matter of record that the church opposed Galileo's acceptance of heliocentrism, just as many in the church have historically opposed evolution."


    "The church" being narrowly defined as the Pope of that time and some Roman Catholic leadership (and also a bunch of Aristotelian scientists).

    Let's be clear, Galileo believed in the authority of the Bible and was not irreligious.

    The truth is that it was not Galileo, with the hard science view, against subborn Bible thumping religionists... It was a conflict between Copernican science and Aristotelian science.

    The church had adopted Aristoles view that dominated for centuries in academia and society in general. It was dominated by Greek philosophy and other things rather than Biblical scripture. Church reformers of the day wanted the church to return to its Biblical foundation. The most committed Christians of the day even opposed "the church" of that era! If anything Galileo didn't agree with how they used a couple scriptures to try to support Aristoles science. Galileo even argued his point using the book of Job!

    Today you can find religious people in every position on the evolution vs creation debate.

    The bottom line is that Evolution is a theory with many skeptics today simply because it lacks sufficient evidence to support its grand claims of common descent. A theory that makes the huge claim that it has the answer for how all life got here better be able to stand up more evidence than weak examples of microevolution and speculative claims concerning the fossil record.

    The supportive examples of evolution on this blog are about the best evolutionists can do to prove their point. It doesn't get any better than this. There is no one in a lab somewhere that is holding treasures of great evidence for evolution. What we see here is pretty much all there is folks.

    ReplyDelete
  91. Neal Tedford said...

    The supportive examples of evolution on this blog are about the best evolutionists can do to prove their point. It doesn't get any better than this. There is no one in a lab somewhere that is holding treasures of great evidence for evolution. What we see here is pretty much all there is folks.


    If you really think the 0.0000000001% of the evidence for common descent you're seen on this crappy backwater blog is all there is, you're an even bigger idiot that Eocene. Are you guys having a 'race to the bottom' of the stupid pit?

    Have you ever considered taking a college course in the subject? Even two weeks of an introductory freshman class would be more than you can get here in a decade. If you want to get really detailed info, you can get an undergraduate degree in biology, then a Masters or Phd in any of a hundred specialized specialized areas. You could study your whole life and never see all or even most of the evidence.

    But you won't. You're happy as a clam being as ignorant as dirt, and not having the cognitive dissonance between your religious origin fantasies and physical reality.

    ReplyDelete
  92. Eocene -

    How peculiar that you apparently blame 9/11 on the theory of evolution when the blame quite clearly lies with those whose believe in an almighty being whose will trumps any human law or morality.

    9/11 was a religiously motivated event.

    ReplyDelete
  93. Neal tedford -

    Claim what you like about the theory of evolution, but it is supported by the vast majority of scientists. ID is by far the minority view, and it consists almost exclusively of the religiously motivated.

    ReplyDelete
  94. More arguments from authority

    ReplyDelete
  95. Neal Tedford said...

    More arguments from authority


    Not authority Tedford, authorities - the 99.9+ % of science professionals who have spent their whole careers studying the evolutionary sciences and who can and do back up their conclusions with positive empirical evidence.

    That sure trumps your blustering empty arguments from woeful ignorance and religious fundamentalism.

    ReplyDelete
  96. Ritchie said: -

    "How peculiar that you apparently blame 9/11 on the theory of evolution when the blame quite clearly lies with those whose believe in an almighty being whose will trumps any human law or morality."
    ======================

    How funny you bring up an event I never touched on, but since you did, then let's discuss community responsibility more fully. Yes 9/11 had vicious hideous religious motivation, but there is a whole pattern of religious history with regards mankind Churches of going to bed with politicians and supporting whatever Nationist cause they create. Let's stick with the majority of Christendom. From the very beginning starting with the Catholic Church and their Holy Roman Empire they were more interested in power, wealth, social prestige, etc. The Bible was the least of their concerns. Had they obeyed it, they would never have gotten involved in politics in the first place. They would have taken to heart their ever so cherished Lord and Savior Jesus Christ's command to keep separate from the world, but that was the very last thing they did.

    Protestants came along and separated themselves for mostly political reasons, though it always was under the guise of religious purity, but again nothing could have been further from the truth since they held dearly the same spiritual contaminating pagan religious customs/doctrines the Catholics incorporated into their version of a power house of religious Empire which dominated everything.

    Now let's look at your side. It's hardly something "pure as the driven snow" now is it ??? The history of Atheistic use of Darwinian principles and beliefs (Even Richard Dawkins refuses to live in a country dominated by these) have caused the murder of countless millions in the 20th century. Nazism/Facism/Communism with it's atheistic iron fisted grip and demand of worship of the state has not faired any better than the other church going ones. Like any Catholic, Baptist, Pentecostal, Lutheran, Mormon, etc, an atheist will ALSO KILL another atheist if the country under which he resides and has pride in demands it. With Nazi Germany attention is always aimed at German hatred and murder of the Jews, but people forget that in WWI, German Jews fought proudly along side other Germans for their beloved Fatherland and they had no problem killing other Jews who weren't German. WWII would have been the same had not the Nazi Party idealogy singled them out. So it goes with your average atheist.

    You have no moral high ground to stand on there Ritchie. Ever see the Beatles movie, "Yellow submarine" ??? Remember that flying glove ??? Everywhere it flew and went it pointed it's index finger targeting everything in it's path. But notice it always had 3 fingers continually pointing backwards ??? Again, your side is EQUALLY as DIRTY as the Church sides.
    =========================================

    Ritchie said:

    "Claim what you like about the theory of evolution, but it is supported by the vast majority of scientists. ID is by far the minority view, and it consists almost exclusively of the religiously motivated."
    ==========================

    Ritchie, Evolutionists and many Atheists are also religious motivated, otherwise you and the local gang wouldn't be here prosyletizing trying to save everyone from the false belief.

    *wink*

    ReplyDelete
  97. THORTON blurted out:

    "Yeah, our use of evolutionary biology in fields like medicine and agriculture sure has wrecked our lives. Not like the "good old days" of the pre-Darwin 18th century when the average life expectancy was less than 40 years, child mortality was 40%, and you could get the church to burn your neighbor at the stake just by accusing her of being a witch. I'm sure you IDiots would love to go back there."
    =========================

    Wow, this is some of your most humorous publishings. Agriculture and Medicine have benefitted from Evolutionary Biology ??? LOL

    You actually want a discussion about the virtues of companies like Monsanto and Big Pharma again Thorny ???? Have you meditated and observed the screwed up condition of our physical planet lately Thorton ??? Have you seen all the present International News items extolling the virtues of mankind's inept custodialship of our planet's natural resources ???

    So-Called Evolutionary biology has done absolutely nothing. All that's been done are nothing more than observations of brilliantly put together natural mechanisms and how the goal driven machinery works to recycle and maintain various living ecosystems. These mechanisms have merely been hijacked by attaching evolutionary words/terms/lables on them without proof that they actually are. That is exactly what Cornelius's discussions are without fail always about.

    I can relate from first hand experience from working with the U.S. forest Service that respecting the natural world couldn't be further from the truth because of politics and their been a making money arm for the USA government. That's not to say there aren't those within it who don't care, there are. But they are ONLY a handful of conscientious individuals anymore.

    Nice try at pretending to have moral high ground

    ReplyDelete
  98. Neal Tedford -

    Lol! Sometimes it is perfectly reasonable to listen to authorities!

    When 99.999% of scientific community is saying one thing, while the other 0.001%, backed up by scores of completely scientifically illiterate masses, is sayi.g something else, then no, the competeing opinions do not carry equal weight.

    I could claim that there is no such thing as gravity and that we are tied to the earth by invisible pixies pushing us down. And when presented with the vast amount of evidence for gravity and the entire scientific community arguing against me, I could wave my hand and scoff 'argument from authority'! That wouldn't make my opinion as valid as theirs.

    Bottom line - if you're disagreeing with the experts, then that's usually a hint that you're the one on the wrong track.

    ReplyDelete
  99. Neal Tedford: John said, "It's a matter of record that the church opposed Galileo's acceptance of heliocentrism, just as many in the church have historically opposed evolution."

    "The church" being narrowly defined as the Pope of that time and some Roman Catholic leadership (and also a bunch of Aristotelian scientists).


    If you lived in Galileo's Italy, home of one of the branch offices of the Inquisition (what a show!), Rome was THE church.

    Let's be clear, Galileo believed in the authority of the Bible and was not irreligious.

    The truth is that it was not Galileo, with the hard science view, against subborn Bible thumping religionists... It was a conflict between Copernican science and Aristotelian science.

    The church had adopted Aristoles view that dominated for centuries in academia and society in general. It was dominated by Greek philosophy and other things rather than Biblical scripture. Church reformers of the day wanted the church to return to its Biblical foundation. The most committed Christians of the day even opposed "the church" of that era! If anything Galileo didn't agree with how they used a couple scriptures to try to support Aristoles science. Galileo even argued his point using the book of Job!


    It doesn't matter that Galileo was pious, or that the Church got their wisdom from Aristotle or St. Peter. The Church had no business presenting itself as an authority on the natural world. Galileo did not adopt a heliocentric view based on the book of Job, he did so based on the writings of Copernicus, his observations (including Galilean moons orbiting Jupiter) and inferences based on those observations. You can't use science as defense against the Church, you would have to use scripture. Galileo argued that the Bible was useful primarily as a spiritual guide to heaven rather than as a science text.

    ReplyDelete
  100. Eocene -

    You are right - you didn't mention 9/11. Sorry, I must have scan read your post and got that idea for some reason.

    Unfortunately for you, that seems to be as far as you get with being right. Atheism leads to no particular political ideology. You yourself seem to lump the crimes of Fascism and Communism - two diametrically opposed political systems - at atheism's door. The reality is, of course, that atheism does not necessarily lead to either. So how you can blame atheism for such crimes beats me. The atrocities committed in Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia or Mao's China have far more to do with the fact that they were run by dictatorial regiemes led by tyrants who would slaughter anyone who stood in their way.

    Has atheism itself ever led one person to kill another? Frankly I can't really picture it somehow. Why would not believing in any gods lead you to want to kill? By contrast, killing infidels and heretics is (or at least was) common currency among the religious. Religion itself has the capacity to sanction murder in a way that atheism just doesn't.

    It is also a bizarre claim that atheists and evolutionists are religiously motivated. Speaking as someone who is both, I am here because I oppose the spread of scientific illiteracy that such people as Cornelius Hunter take up like a holy cause. It is fundamentally irresponsible to feed our children backward bronze age myth rather than enlightened scientific understanding, which is certainly what the VAST majority of those who oppose evolution would have us do. Does that make me religiously motivated? Surely it makes me motivated by reason.

    And as for your claim that evolutionary biology has done absolutely nothing, well that is beyond laughably ignorant. For all practical purposes, modern biology IS evolutionary biology. We owe entire fields of science to evolutionary biology including genetics, and modern medicine. The theory of evolution helps us to understsnd how viruses spread and adapt, how to maximuse crop yields, how to conserve endangered species and much more. It has even led to evolutionary algoriths, which can create designs which trump human engineering in efficiency, can predict stock market fluctuations, etc. And that is to say nothing of our increase in understanding of the history of life on Earth. I appreciate YOUR understanding may not have been much increased. Frankly you are making that rather painfully obvious with your graphic displays of ignorance. But that is just a comment on you, not humanity in general.

    ReplyDelete
  101. Well this is the only part of your diatribe worth addressing and just barely.

    Ritchie ASSUMED:

    "And as for your claim that evolutionary biology has done absolutely nothing, well that is beyond laughably ignorant. For all practical purposes, modern biology IS evolutionary biology. We owe entire fields of science to evolutionary biology including genetics, and modern medicine. The theory of evolution helps us to understsnd how viruses spread and adapt, how to maximuse crop yields, how to conserve endangered species and much more. It has even led to evolutionary algoriths, which can create designs which trump human engineering in efficiency, can predict stock market fluctuations, etc. And that is to say nothing of our increase in understanding of the history of life on Earth. I appreciate YOUR understanding may not have been much increased. Frankly you are making that rather painfully obvious with your graphic displays of ignorance. But that is just a comment on you, not humanity in general.
    ==========================

    Once again it is blind faith that is the underlying motive for such hijacking of observed FACTS.

    Evolutionists insist that the brilliant informational systems and machinery which drive and sustain life though looking as if intelligently designed are never-the-less Evolutionary.

    Evolutionary philosophy as defined by the good Reverend Richard Dawkins is blind, pointless, undirected, indifferent, certainly not goal oriented, just a bundle of copying error mistakes which just so happen to turn out to be lucky comprimises. NEVER are these brilliant nano machinery systems ever explained how they evolved in the first place. They just did and you're an idiot if you don't blindly accept this without question from the ego-driven Phd that says so.

    How in the world could any scientist create an experiment that works from an experimental system that runs off random errors only hoping to get something right ??? You cannot hijack brilliant informational systems and the nano-machines they drive and simply attach Evolutionary LABLES to them without showing how such things evolved. So copying designs in nature and replicating these in everyday use doesn't count as a wonder of evolutionary biology.

    Once again, genius, look at our planet and tell me why Science is inept at finding answers to saving it ??? Tell me why it's main consentration is on money making activity for the Big-Business Pimps that hire the scientific prositutes under the rewards of fame, glitter and glory. Science is a selfish power and wealth driven machine and that is about as close as you're going to get to the true Darwinian/Dawkinian evolutionary principles used in science.

    And I love the hijacking of the original term "Genetic Algorithm" to the politically correct version of "Evolutionary Algorithms". All Genetic Algorithms, without exception, are examples of Intelligent Design. And the more cleverly designed they are, the more useful the results that they produce, which translates to better understanding on the part of scientists. Only the Evo-Religiously motivated see no more value than mere hijacking of a goal oriented program creating piece of machinery and claiming it as their own without any FACTUAL impirical proof of how it itself evolved in the first place. Guess that's why Abiogenesis is always a Taboo-Voo-Doo subject.

    If you truthfully want to use true evolutionary biological philosophical ideas to drive a scientific experiment based only on pure unadulterated evolutionary Darwinian beliefs, then jumble around multiple watch parts inside an accordian, pump it and see if a watch turns out.

    And you sir are as religious as an evo-jihadist as they come.

    ReplyDelete
  102. Eocene said...

    You actually want a discussion about the virtues of companies like Monsanto and Big Pharma again Thorny ????


    Would that be the same Monsanto that invented the magic 'genetic barrier' you claim prevents macroevolution from occurring? The Monsanto 'genetic barrier' you were too cowardly to discuss when questioned on what Monsanto actually did?

    That Monsanto?

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  103. How in the world could any scientist create an experiment that works from an experimental system that runs off random errors only hoping to get something right ???

    That's funny, since the NASA Evolvable Systems Group does it all the time. They've even flown the resulting designs on space missions. But I'm sure you know more about it than NASA scientists do.

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  104. Eocene -

    "Once again it is blind faith which is the underlying motive for such hijacking of observed FACTS."

    No, not blind faith, it is hypothetico-deductive reasoning. Which is how science works. Don't you understand this at all?

    "Once again, genius, look at our planet and tell me why Science is inept at finding answers to save it."

    For one thing, it is not. Science is by FAR the most reliable and accurate tool for understanding the world around us and thus finding answers for the issues that face us. What alternative would you suggest? Divine revelation?

    And for another, you forget your own argument. Is it that the theory of evolution is not science, or that science itself is inept and impotent? You seem to have a great mistrust of the whole world outside your tiny comfort zone of understanding.

    "All genetic algorithms without exception are examples if Ingelligent Design."

    Only because we have to write the programmes which the computers use. Beyond that they are left to run themselves. The designs are not tweaked by people. They, in a non-biological sense, progress through evolutionary means which mirrors natural selection very closely.

    "Guess that's why Abiogenesis is always a Taboo-Voodoo subject."

    What? No it isn't. It is an exciting and rapidly developing field of scientific study.

    And your watch analogy fails to represent the process of evolution for many reasons. Do you really need me to point them out?

    "And you sir are as religous as an evo-jihadist as they come."

    Lol! What is an evo-jihadist? Are you just making up scary-sounding insults? How cute.

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  105. Well there is only one thing that remotely begs to be addressed.

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

    Ritchie stated:

    "For one thing, it is not. Science is by FAR the most reliable and accurate tool for understanding the world around us and thus finding answers for the issues that face us."
    ======================

    Do you ever watch all these daily world news reports about the catastrophic events now taking place for which this world's leadership (Religious, Scientific =Big Biz, & Political) bare the brunt of blame for things going wrong with our planet ???

    No I didn't think so. You're too busy surfing the Net getting your scientific education and slanted understanding from infidels.org.

    ReplyDelete
  106. Thorton Asserted as FACT:

    "That's funny, since the NASA Evolvable Systems Group does it all the time. They've even flown the resulting designs on space missions. But I'm sure you know more about it than NASA scientists do."
    ==============

    Get a clue Thorny. They developed their Algorithms program using intelligent design with real human intelligence. They hijacked the observation of brilliant mechanisms at work and assumed evolution based on a bigoted and biased official mandate. The lable/title attaching ploy is only there because Evolution is an official idealogical mandate which colours and directs what research course they take. Why do you think they waste vast amounts money on proving the existance of life on the planet Vulcan, when our planet is barely able to survive ??? It's called religion and idealogy.

    This is the same debate and arguement that has been rusting for over a year here on Cornelius' blog comments section. Goal directed nformational systems directing and driving machinary for a purposed outcome is hijacked by philosophers for the purpose of promoting their church and nothing more. The are no evolutionary algorithms for koolaid cupcake religious belief, No!, Genetic algorithms for adaptation to environmental stress and beneficial traits within an ordered kinds/types/species, Yes!

    Nice try tho.

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  107. Eocene -

    "Well there is only one thing that remotely begs to be addressed."

    By which yoy mean you don't have a response to my other points. Not that you will face up to that of course...

    "Don't you ever watch the daily news reports..."

    It is not the hammer's fault if the carpenter does a bad job. Science is a tool, nothing more. I'm not saying the world is a perfect place but it is entirely inappropriate to just blame 'science'.

    What do you do, I wonder, when you get sick? Nothing? Turn to witchdoctors and prayer? Or do you rely on medicines and all the advantages modern medical science has to offer, while all the while hypocritically pouring scorn on the very procedures which are helping you?

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  108. Ritchie ASSUMED:

    "By which yoy mean you don't have a response to my other points. Not that you will face up to that of course..."
    ======================

    No Ritchie, it's because it's the same tired old blather that's been hashed and rehashed over and over before here. Nothing New.

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

    Ritchie made EXCUSES:

    "It is not the hammer's fault if the carpenter does a bad job. Science is a tool, nothing more. I'm not saying the world is a perfect place but it is entirely inappropriate to just blame 'science'."
    ===================

    Righto Ritchie, science is ONLY a tool. Unfortunately the majority of those claiming to be Journeymen are nothing more than apprentices who refused to follow the rules and go ahead and do things their own way. Kinda like stubborn rebelious children who have to learn things from the school of hard knocks. Unfortunately when science screws up, it's the innocent who suffer and not the clod who blew the whole thing in the first place.

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

    Ritchie snarked:

    "What do you do, I wonder, when you get sick? Nothing? Turn to witchdoctors and prayer? Or do you rely on medicines and all the advantages modern medical science has to offer, while all the while hypocritically pouring scorn on the very procedures which are helping you? "
    =====================

    Funny, when I was a kid I was fascinated by the Native American's use of the surrounding available plants for medicinal purposes and I was intrigued by it. From there I took up Botany and scientific discovery of various alkaloids these plants manufacture and their benefits, not only to humans, but did you know also to each other ??? Are you even remotely aware that all different forest ecosystems around the planet are interconnected by a mycorrhizal underground grid which not only trnsports and shares water ( H2O ) from specific plants close to it's source to surrounding neighbours, but also most all species of plants manufacture numerous elements that other plants don't make but need and all plants share these elements with their nieghbours through this same mycorrhizal grid system ??? No of course you didn't know that and neither do most scientists. You don't find much research out there with only but a few scientists working for non-profit foundational research groups.

    Again, most SCIENCE = BIG-BIZ is a power and wealth driven animal and PROFIT$$$ are what drive most science, not any moral obligation they feel towards their fellow man. Proof is that most medicine invented by Big-Pharma is nothing more than trying to synthesize already existing elements manufactured by plants/nature, but there isn't as much profit in it. Monsanto is trying to change that.

    Yet another failing of Marxian Science (defintion = lack of any moral obligation or responsibility for their actions) is that they pursue medical research from a "Fix-it-Pill" profit oriented symtom treating perspective as opposed to dealing with the cause. So let's treat the consequences of peoples actions not the cause.

    Example, find a fix-it-pill for aids. don't touch on changing behavioral issues because that's judgemental and bigoted.

    Treat with a "Fix-It-Pill" Sclerosis of the liver, lung cancer, emphazema, etc, but don't teach moderation because that's judgemental or even abstinance of substances because that is judgemental, bigoted and ruins people's freedom to pursue a good time.

    Now as for my personal pursuit of medical help ??? Yes I go to doctors like I did two months ago with a knee operation. But when it comes to my personal healthcare, I opt for what I know in real (not VooDoo) Herbal research. There are many things in the southwestern deserts of the USA which work wonders with cancer erradication as opposed to the usual money making radiation. But then again that's my personal choice based on real personal research and experience.

    ReplyDelete
  109. Eocene -


    No Ritchie, it's because it's the same tired old blather...


    I do not claim to be making entirely original points. Just ones you don't seem to be able to answer. Ignore whatever points you wish, but your silence speaks volumes.


    Unfortunately the majority of those claiming to be Journeymen are nothing more than apprentices who refused to follow the rules


    Science only advances thanks to new scientists testing new ideas and hypotheses. If everyone just sat down and learnt the current scientific knowledge and did not strike out with their own ideas or research, there would be no scientific progress.


    You don't find much research out there with only but a few scientists working for non-profit foundational research groups.


    ??? What? Every month there are scientific journals published chock full of new research and work done 'out there'. If you think there isn't any then that attests only to your own obliviousness.


    Again, most SCIENCE = BIG-BIZ is a power and wealth driven animal and PROFIT$$$ are what drive most science, not any moral obligation they feel towards their fellow man.


    The butcher and baker work for profit, not out of some altruistic desire to provide people with food. Yes, much scientific work is funded rather than performed by volunteers, but so what? You can no more accuse science of being bad because it is not done out of altruism than you can accuse a baker's bread of being bad because it was not made out of altruism.


    most medicine invented by Big-Pharma is nothing more than trying to synthesize already existing elements manufactured by plants/nature,


    Let's imagine strawberries help cure Condition X. That would be because they contain a chemical (let's call it Chemical C) which cures/eleviates Condition X. Now, you cannot just precribe someone with Condition X a course of strawberries - strawberries are not completely identical. For one thing, some are bigger than others, so some will contain more Chemical C than others. Perhaps strawberries contain more Chemical C depending on their ripeness. Also, perhaps some of the other chemicals strawberries contain are poisonous to those suffering with Condition X. The bottom line is that two courses of strawberries will contain rather different amounts of Chemical C. Perhaps the patient will not get enough to cure their condition. Or perhaps they will overdose on it.

    What is needed for an effective medicine is to identify Chemical C, and to produce it in isolation in controlled doses. Which is exactly what medical drugs are.

    This is not some scandalous secret - it is exactly how medicines are supposed to work!


    find a fix-it-pill for aids. don't touch on changing behavioral issues because that's judgemental and bigoted.


    Medical doctors are constantly making the public aware of sexually transmitted diseases, and recommend the use of condoms as sexual protection. That is as far as the role of a resposible doctor should go.


    when it comes to my personal healthcare, I opt for what I know in real (not VooDoo) Herbal research.


    How do you discriminate between real and 'VooDoo' herbal research, exactly?

    ReplyDelete
  110. Eocene said...

    Thorton Asserted as FACT:

    "That's funny, since the NASA Evolvable Systems Group does it all the time. They've even flown the resulting designs on space missions. But I'm sure you know more about it than NASA scientists do."
    ==============

    Get a clue Thorny. They developed their Algorithms program using intelligent design with real human intelligence.


    No, they didn't create the algorithms. They wrote a program that duplicated the processes found in nature, but at a much faster rate. And the results seen are exactly what the natural processes produce - increased complexity, "irreducibly complex" systems, optimization of the fitness in a given environment, symbiotic relationships, predator/prey "arms races" etc. All those things the IDiots claim can't happen by natural processes did happen by natural processes.

    The ridiculous "men created the computer program, so the process being modeled must be intelligently designed too" is every bit as stupid as saying since men design lawn sprinklers, rainclouds must be intelligently designed.

    Why do you think they waste vast amounts money on proving the existance of life on the planet Vulcan, when our planet is barely able to survive ???

    Science is searching for life on planet Vulcan?? This is Eocene's brain on drugs.

    ReplyDelete
  111. Thorton mused:

    "Science is searching for life on planet Vulcan?? This is Eocene's brain on drugs. "
    =======================

    Thorton

    Where in the world do you think Hollywood gets some of it's best material in the first place ??? In the whole history of the world, the best storytelling, fable making and myth creation has come from modern day self appointed geniuses. They're the modern day Shamans standing on a rock telling a mystic tale that has all the faithful mesmerized like ignorant gullible tribesman around a campfire and all accepting it as a etched in stone truth based, not on any facts personally experienced by them, but on faith that the witchdoctor (scientist) knows what he's talking about. To make the tale more believable the Shaman (scientist) employs the shaking of rattles (Shaking the Darwinian scriptural texts in their faces), tossing that magic dust into the campfire creating an explosion of fire and smoke (use of bioinformatic animations and catoons that make anything seem possible) which creates a shock and awe effect in the listeners.

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

    Thorton faith insisted:

    "No, they didn't create the algorithms. They wrote a program that duplicated the processes found in nature, but at a much faster rate."
    =======================

    Absolutely untrue Thorton. DNA when we discuss the processes of what it is, how it functions, and what it accomplishes is always extremely slowed down for our benefit and understanding. In the real world DNA works far more faster than supercomputer speeds, more efficiently and without a single traffic jam more than any ego hailed computer model NASA or any other Science gang could ever hope to replicate and that's assuming they know everything about DNA's incredible functions in the first place (they don't). As stated in other subjects here in Cornelius' blog, DNA also has super sophisticated error correction mechanisms and cell suicide kill switches, something a billion Microsoft error pathes could never hope to accomplish. DNA can also run simulations with ability not to repeat the previous already tried programming which is hardly random mutation in which eventually something LUCKY pops out as if by magic. We've also discovered information on the "Code within a Code" which came out earlier this year. They have ONLY slightly scratched the surface (despite what their egos allow them to believe, i.e. Junk DNA, Vestigial organs, etc) of what information is contained in DNA and how it is guided. Instead we get mere speculations, assertions, assumptions in such discussion room venues such as this one and admittely from it's from both sides.

    On another note, we don't completely understand every single function of how DNA works including these algorithms. This year numerous articles have shed light on how far more the complexity and sophistication of DNA really has than we ever imagined possible. At best NASA developed a program, using the intelligence of scientists for creating a system of possible scenarios creation, all of which were also rigged for a possitive outcome for which
    ever applicational goals NASA wanted. From what I saw in one documentary, they only get close to a possible beneficial program or model and even then it only gives the scientists a close idea of what direction to take and the scientist him/herself has to once again use his/her intelligence to clean it up into a workable solution. Seriously, I sat here early this year watched this expert explain how they used it and it's not exactly perfecto as the hype and fanfaire promote it. But it is nevertheless a tool and every tool with a purposed goal driven functon that we know of was invented by an intelligent mind. The only thing NASA did to associate any of this with evolution by simply a mere act of giving it a TITLE "Evolutionary Algorithm" as mandated by their already biased official rules which are not allowed to be broken. *wink*

    ReplyDelete
  112. Eocene said...

    Thorton mused:

    "Science is searching for life on planet Vulcan?? This is Eocene's brain on drugs. "
    =======================

    Thorton

    Where in the world do you think Hollywood gets some of it's best material in the first place ??? In the whole history of the world, the best storytelling, fable making and myth creation has come from modern day self appointed geniuses.


    So that's where you get your "science" from. Self appointed geniuses like Dembski, Behe, Ham and Hovind. That explains a lot of your blithering.

    Thorton faith insisted:

    "No, they didn't create the algorithms. They wrote a program that duplicated the processes found in nature, but at a much faster rate."
    =======================

    Absolutely untrue Thorton. DNA when we discuss the processes of what it is, how it functions, and what it accomplishes is always extremely slowed down for our benefit and understanding.


    Genetic algorithms don't work by duplicating the specific functions of DNA. They use the larger overall feedback process of changes filtered by selection. And they work.

    You need to take some more drugs. The ones you're on aren't helping you.

    ReplyDelete
  113. Eocene is apparently one of those idiots who think it's impossible in principle to model anything as a process without "intelligent" intervention, since there's always a human somewhere down the line who created the model, or who programmed a computer to create the model. I wonder if he also adheres to the famous GilDodgen-philosophy-of-simulation, which holds that in order to properly simulate mutation and natural selection, one has to mutate the hardware on which the simulations run. As if properly simulating an earthquake requires violently shaking the computer. Sadly, this is the kind of idiocy we're up against here.

    ReplyDelete
  114. Troy snarked:

    "Eocene is apparently one of those idiots who think it's impossible in principle to model anything as a process without "intelligent" intervention, since there's always a human somewhere down the line who created the model, or who programmed a computer to create the model. I wonder if he also adheres to the famous. Sadly, this is the kind of idiocy we're up against here.

    ========================

    Here you go Troy, this is a sort of hands on real world simulation if you like. (No computers whatsoever) It's about Miller's mythical primitive Earth experiment meant to simulate how the building blocks of life magically came about. I've asked this question to others, but thus far they refuse to answer.

    In the Miller-Urey experiments of the primitive Earth scenario, water contained certain elements Miller thought represented the prebiotic sea. CO2, Methane, etc represented the primitive atmosphere of the Earth and of course the electric arc represented Thunder Storms or Volcanoes which gave the spark of life. So every componant represented something. Now what would you say the presence of the scientist/s conducting the experiemnt represents ??? Now there are only two answers.

    1) blind, pointless , pitiless indifference with undirected forces with no purpose or intent.

    2) An intelligent Designer

    Now the rules don't allow for goalpost movement or changing definitions to fit the dogma. However, let's say I add a 3rd answer.

    3) Aliens (Extraterrestrial sources) Panspermia

    If you select the 3rd answer, then you need to answer yet another question.

    If life's beginnings come from an extraterrestrial source (aliens, microbes hitching a ride on a comet or meteor, whatever) , then on what valid bases do you have for not including God (who would be an extraterrestrial source)???

    ReplyDelete
  115. Eocene:

    "Now what would you say the presence of the scientist/s conducting the experiemnt represents ??? Now there are only two answers.

    1) blind, pointless , pitiless indifference with undirected forces with no purpose or intent.

    2) An intelligent Designer"

    The scientists are obviously the intelligent designers of the experiment. But, equally obviously, that doesn't imply that the kind of chemical reactions that occurred during the experiment can only happen due to the presence of intelligent designers. You must also believe then than when I torch a piece of wood, it implies that forest fires are intelligently designed.

    You're a nutcase.

    ReplyDelete
  116. Troy

    "You're a nutcase. "
    =====================

    Interesting, now you want to use the old favourite fall back when you don't like the answers - definitions shells games.

    Have fun in life Troy

    ReplyDelete