The Official Perfection KOs Creationism Thread Part Four: The Genesis of Ire!

[warpus]

There is no point in trying to convince classical_hero that he is wrong; He's already made up his mind.

He comes into this thread not as somebody with an open mind, but rather as somebody who already has his mind made up - he will dismiss any sort of evidence presented and attempt to argue against it one by one - instead of looking at the big picture and actually questioning his beliefs. He is unable to do that; it is the basis of his faith.

A scientist always leaves possibilities open. Somebody like classical_hero doesn't, so it is futile to attempt to convince him. He thinks he is right, no matter what.

 

[Janitor_X]

Imperfect or not don't make the difference between created and evolved. My favorite example of this is the story of the puddle of water. Now this puddle of water became aware one day, aware of itself and its surroundings. The puddle was aware that it was held in a hole that just happened to be the perfect size for it and it decided that the hole musta been made just for it and that it couldn't have been no accident. The puddle could easily have been an accident, but a person coulda come along with their garden hose and filled the hole on purpose, and even before that dug the hole. The hole just as easily could have been a natural occurance and the rain mighta put the water on the ground what filled the hole creating the puddle... The puddle aint got no way of knowin just like we aint got no way of knowin... yet.

 

[Perfection]

You want to see the how the real Embryos look like then have a look here. The top row is the errant drawing of Haeckel with the Photos by Dr Richardson.

You can't honestly demonstrate the invalidity of evo-devo similarities by arguing against 100 year old drawings.

 

[carlosMM]

There is no point in trying to convince classical_hero that he is wrong; He's already made up his mind.

He comes into this thread not as somebody with an open mind, but rather as somebody who already has his mind made up - he will dismiss any sort of evidence presented and attempt to argue against it one by one - instead of looking at the big picture and actually questioning his beliefs. He is unable to do that; it is the basis of his faith.

A scientist always leaves possibilities open. Somebody like classical_hero doesn't, so it is futile to attempt to convince him. He thinks he is right, no matter what.

All true. But it does not matter, since my purpose here is to show HOW wrong his kind are to those who have NOT made up their minds, but are attracted by the appeal of the 'God is great' crowd.

so, c_h, answers please! Bring us some proper proof for you claim that Ambuloceutes was a pure land creature. Evidence that is believable and sufficient to a comparative anatomy expert

 

[Souron]

Question aint meaningless just on account of science not yet being able to answer it. They can say (and probably do) that we aint really able ta see anything from before the big bang as we can't see anything from before then as all of the light from our known universe didn't even exist yet. No matter how far we could find a way to "see" into the past it would technically all end at the point of that there singularity. Science has a higher standard ta live up to than does religion. Religion has the luxury of being able to shrug and say that's just how it always was, god just was always there. If science takes this approach then it is reduced to just another belief system leavin cracks that creationism can seep into. Not really knowing how the big bang came about being the biggest crack of all. God coulda worked the whole thing out in seven days and changed the laws of physics along the way and we just mistakenly interpret the clues based on the present laws. Then based on our mistaken readin of the clues we determine that the earth couldn't have been put together in seven days on account of how old some things then appear to be. Who's ta say that there weren't a bunch of mirror earths created by god sharing different histories and we aint nothin more of a hodgepodge mixture of all of those hitories? Heck, each of 'em coulda been created inside of a bubble of accelerated time and then crammed into our universe altogether in a period of seven days according to our universe. There wouldn't be no reason to mention the others in our bible because we'd only experience the one resulting from all of em. Somethin that's supposed ta be omnipotent like god really makes it hard ta corner all of the possibilities. Ya just aint never gonna really be able to prove such things without all the mysteries solved. We are a long way off from that, but maybe someday science will make god go away once and for all, or maybe it will even bring him home.

First, current standard theory does say that there is no such thing as before the big bang. It says that In the biginning the univerce was very dence and hot. Then it started to expand and cool. There was no time before then that it was in a different state; the univerce has always been cooling and expanding. Nothing caused it to do so, it just did from the very beginning.

Second, science makes assumptions. One of the most basic assumptions of science is that the laws of nature are the same every where and when. This seems like a sencible assumption, but there is no proof to back it up. It could be wrong, but science will assume it's right anyway. So in this way science is fallible. If there is such a thing as a miricle, then you had better take it by faith, because science isn't going to prove it for you. Therefore, even someone who does not questions the meathod's and results of science, can still disbelieve them infavor of his relgion. And it this way science will never absolve religion.

Third, not being able to fully explain something in science should not open the
door for a religios answer to take it's place, because religion has not proof behind it. A relious answer should only be used for moral guidence, not for trying to explain the physics of the world. It would be inconsistant to say that science explains the world from the time of the big bang, but the holy book of the isrealiets explains what happened just before that.

You* could at least argue that the world was created 6000 years ago, but that the laws of physics have changed, so the world seems older. That's fine, because then you're not argueing with scientific evidence -- you are argueing with the scientific meathod.

*I don't mean you specifically.

 

[Souron]

Classical_hero, question, do you consider Creationism or ID to be a valid scientific theory? I'm just curious.

Obviously I don't, largely because it seems to be almost entirely based on the assumption that the bible is true.

 

[Fifty]

There is no point in trying to convince classical_hero that he is wrong; He's already made up his mind.

He comes into this thread not as somebody with an open mind, but rather as somebody who already has his mind made up - he will dismiss any sort of evidence presented and attempt to argue against it one by one - instead of looking at the big picture and actually questioning his beliefs. He is unable to do that; it is the basis of his faith.

A scientist always leaves possibilities open. Somebody like classical_hero doesn't, so it is futile to attempt to convince him. He thinks he is right, no matter what.

I agree with carlos. It is painfully and abundantly obvious to ANYONE who has taken even a cursory glance at this thread that creationists are completely incapable of anything resembling scientific debate, they just randomly drive-by-post new links to creationist websites without defending their views or answering criticisms or questions. This is very illustrative of creationism in general and is important for those who are "on the fence" to see.

I have a question for C_H: You have participated in the KO Creationism threads for awhile, do you honestly and truly believe that you are "winning" these debates?

 

[Janitor_X]

I agree with carlos. It is painfully and abundantly obvious to ANYONE who has taken even a cursory glance at this thread that creationists are completely incapable of anything resembling scientific debate, they just randomly drive-by-post new links to creationist websites without defending their views or answering criticisms or questions. This is very illustrative of creationism in general and is important for those who are "on the fence" to see.

I have a question for C_H: You have participated in the KO Creationism threads for awhile, do you honestly and truly believe that you are "winning" these debates?

I know this here wasn't specifically directed at me but I thought I was doin alright in statin my points with logic and what not. The problem with yall anti-god folk is that ya take all these rules that matter and light gotta abide by and then expect that god should have ta abide by those rules too. By the very nature of god he aint gotta, as all things is possible with him *POSSIBLE*, not guaranteed. It aint possible for a man to know the mind of god, so when we wonder "why would god blah blah..." it really don't mean nothin at all.

So before ya twist these here "on the fence" folks' heads to follow yer narrow viewpoint where there's no room for creationism. Let it be said that most of this science stuff is little more than theory at this point which could at any time with any new discovery be rendered obsolete. Yer takin your own silly view of creationsism and then knockin it down. It's like yer makin a haystack and puttin gods picture on it and settin it afire ta show the world that yer able to burn him up. But that haystack aint really god, it's your version of him. YOur version of him was made to fail, made to follow such strict rules that it becomes a silly and laughable impossibility.

Anything that a pro-creationist says that falls out of the range of what you think these folks are supposed to believe about creationism proves to you that they're not getting creationism the same way as you do! They get blasted for not following the strict guidlines that you decided god oughtta adhere to. If they saw it as you do (already impossible) then they'd be arguing that it wasn't real. I used my imagination ta show how even within yer guidelines god coulda created all that is around us. Now seen as how god has an imagination much better than mine I'm sure he had an even better method. God is like an invisible, unstoppable force. It's impossible to disprove the existence of anything including fairies, santa claus, elves and unicorns and god for that matter. No matter how mcuh debate there is about this here evolution there's always going to be the possibility that god or the easter bunny caused it.

 

[Perfection]

Janitor_X, for new posts would you please use more standard English. Reading your posts as they are now are rather difficult.

I know this here wasn't specifically directed at me but I thought I was doin alright in statin my points with logic and what not. The problem with yall anti-god folk is that ya take all these rules that matter and light gotta abide by and then expect that god should have ta abide by those rules too. By the very nature of god he aint gotta, as all things is possible with him *POSSIBLE*, not guaranteed. It aint possible for a man to know the mind of god, so when we wonder "why would god blah blah..." it really don't mean nothin at all.

This thread as given by my outlines in the opening post is clearly about the scientific merit of antievolutionary creationism. As such we are going to discuss it within a scientific framework.

So before ya twist these here "on the fence" folks' heads to follow yer narrow viewpoint where there's no room for creationism. Let it be said that most of this science stuff is little more than theory at this point which could at any time with any new discovery be rendered obsolete.

Evolution is a massively evidenced well supported principle of the biological sciences. It displays amazing robustness and predictive power. Given this, I find evidence invalidating it to be a practical impossibility.

Yer takin your own silly view of creationsism and then knockin it down. It's like yer makin a haystack and puttin gods picture on it and settin it afire ta show the world that yer able to burn him up. But that haystack aint really god, it's your version of him. YOur version of him was made to fail, made to follow such strict rules that it becomes a silly and laughable impossibility.

This thread is not about debating the existance of God (although the assumption of God is not allowed), folks like Eran of Arcadia who accept evolution by natural selection and religion can feel safe that I do not debate thier beliefs in this thread.

Anything that a pro-creationist says that falls out of the range of what you think these folks are supposed to believe about creationism proves to you that they're not getting creationism the same way as you do! They get blasted for not following the strict guidlines that you decided god oughtta adhere to. If they saw it as you do (already impossible) then they'd be arguing that it wasn't real. I used my imagination ta show how even within yer guidelines god coulda created all that is around us. Now seen as how god has an imagination much better than mine I'm sure he had an even better method. God is like an invisible, unstoppable force. It's impossible to disprove the existence of anything including fairies, santa claus, elves and unicorns and god for that matter. No matter how mcuh debate there is about this here evolution there's always going to be the possibility that god or the easter bunny caused it.

Well certainly one can come up with absurd scenarios that give god creative power. This thread is about how creationism and evolutionary can be treated scientificly.

 

[Perfection]

Genesis 3:42

And God spake before Adam and He said, "you're a monkey with opposable thumbs."

 

[Dr Tiny]

From Creation on the Web article:-
# The chimp/human difference is actually 4%—much greater than the ‘only 1%’ commonly claimed in the past.

After having a look at the article the 4% figure includes coding and noncoding regions of the genomes, the oft cited 1-2% differences are IIRC based on coding regions that are present in both species. Coding regions only account for a small part of the genome and tend to mutate slower than noncoding regions. How important noncoding regions are to a species and speciation events is unknown.

# 29% of the protein-coding genes are the same; leaving ~70% that are different.

How is different defined here, are they saying the protein-encoding genes share 29% sequence identity? or only 29% of genes are the same? If coding identity ie 29% of amino acids are the same, then a protein can still have the same function. If 29% of genes then that is an obvious contradiction to the first statement.

# There are genes present in humans that are completely missing in chimps.

And vice versa, but so what of course there will be genes present in one but not the other. Chimps and humans are different species that live in different niches, they won't need all the same genes. Therefore after humans and chimps diverged some genes are lost and some are gained in both species. It is energetically unfavoroable for a species to maintain genes that offer no benefit to its survival, from the simple cost of replicating it in everycell in the body, to making proteins it doesn't need or even having a structure that offers no benefit.

# The differences include 35 million single letter ‘substitutions’; 40–45 million ‘insertions’ and a similar number of ‘deletions’. This adds up to some 120 million letters, which is 4% of the ~3 billion total number.
# The differences represent at least 40 million separate mutation events, which is impossible for evolution even with an evolutionary timeframe of 300,000 generations (133 preserved mutations per generation, which means a vastly greater number, which is impossible without causing ‘error catastrophe’—extinction!).

These two points seem to go together. As I said to the first point, the majority of the changes will be in non-coding regions and will be unlikely to have an impact on phenotype which means no 'error catastrophe'-extinction.

Edit - yes my spelling is pretty bad

 

[El_Machinae]

Dr. Tiny, thanks for going through that.
I was stunned when it was posted. I realised the level of education making the arguments (on that website) was a great deal lower than I had assumed. They're talking about DNA differences between proteins, but fail to mention the level of homology in those proteins, for example.

As well, it doesn't matter if it's 4% or 1%, it's pretty damn close. I know that when I first heard the 96% statistic, I was pretty amazed. I was even more amazed when I heard about the mRNA transcription differences in the brains (something like only 30% of the mRNA in the brains was homologous, though I'm remembering a lecture from a couple years ago).

To any Creationist: has the appendix been explained by your theory? Does your theory make a prediction about whether there would be an appendix present in a putative newly-discovered primate?

 

[carlosMM]

El_M: please make a link in your favorites to your post - you will have to ask those questions a few more times in order to get an answer from a creationist.

 

[Dr Tiny]

This is a very good article on the evolution of different eye types. It was published this year in Science.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/313/5795/1914

 

[warpus]

Let it be said that most of this science stuff is little more than theory at this point which could at any time with any new discovery be rendered obsolete. Yer takin your own silly view of creationsism and then knockin it down.

First of all, you obviously do not understand the meaning of the term "Scientific theory".

Secondly, ID is not even a scientific theory, so there is nothing to knock down. But we're forced to, because some people think that ID is a valid scientific theory.

 

[Janitor_X]

Janitor_X, for new posts would you please use more standard English. Reading your posts as they are now are rather difficult.

This thread as given by my outlines in the opening post is clearly about the scientific merit of antievolutionary creationism. As such we are going to discuss it within a scientific framework.

Evolution is a massively evidenced well supported principle of the biological sciences. It displays amazing robustness and predictive power. Given this, I find evidence invalidating it to be a practical impossibility.

This thread is not about debating the existance of God (although the assumption of God is not allowed), folks like Eran of Arcadia who accept evolution by natural selection and religion can feel safe that I do not debate thier beliefs in this thread.


Well certainly one can come up with absurd scenarios that give god creative power. This thread is about how creationism and evolutionary can be treated scientificly.

Seems ta me I aint the only one with hard ta read posts. Aint nothin absurd about god goin outside of science ta do his work, it's the very nature of the beast. I aint never quite said what I believe in either, just makin the point that evolution bein a true scientific method wouldn't negate or in any way make it less likely that creationism wasn't just as real.

For evolution to be widely accepted sound science it oughtta do like other sciences and make predictions that come ta pass (outside of what has already been) they oughta be able to predict something like the next completely new species that will emerge and be able ta show us before it's here the genetic makeup of it. The problem is that they can't as the details is all too sketchy yet, making it nothing but another belief system for now.

Works for me, so ya guys can win, could creationism have happened if god had ta follow scientific rules, nopes. Just the way it was set up to be decided, congrats folks. And ya got yer wish as well, ya won't be seein none of my "difficult ta read" posts on this here forum.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

Okay, another hit-and-run. But if you come back (likely) I will say this: the theory of evolution makes no claim abot the existance of God. Both His (Her/Its/Their) existance, and non-existance, are possible. However, Creationism not only requires that God exist, but that He have certain attributes.

 

[Perfection]

Seems ta me I aint the only one with hard ta read posts.

Are you implying that my posts are difficult to read? If so please explain how. I'd like to make my posts as readable as possible.

I just wanted to make you aware of the difficulties (especially given that many posters aren't native English speakers).

Aint nothin absurd about god goin outside of science ta do his work, it's the very nature of the beast.

We're not discussing the philosophical capabilities of god. We're discussing the merits of creationism and of evolution from a scientific perspective. God most certainly could have created everything last thursday and implanted our memories of everything earlier. The problem with believing this idea is that we don't gain actual knowledge about the world and we can't use it to make predictions or to explore commonalies.

I aint never quite said what I believe in either, just makin the point that evolution bein a true scientific method wouldn't negate or in any way make it less likely that creationism wasn't just as real.

I don't particularly go with the whole "true" and "false" dichotomy when it comes to epistemology. We have observed phenomena and theories that explain them. Some theories provide better explinations then others. Evolution provides a much better explination the creationism.

I have to attend a couple of classes, I'll adress your additional points in a few hours.

 

[ironduck]

I don't think it's so much hit-and-run as it's a breakdown of communication..

 

[Perfection]

For evolution to be widely accepted sound science it oughtta do like other sciences and make predictions that come ta pass (outside of what has already been) they oughta be able to predict something like the next completely new species that will emerge and be able ta show us before it's here the genetic makeup of it. The problem is that they can't as the details is all too sketchy yet, making it nothing but another belief system for now.

There are two major problems with your thinking here:
1. Predicting the long-term course of evolution is extraordinarily difficult not because of some sketchiness as a theory but rather the complexity of the mechanism. Asking them to do that is sort of like asking a weatherman if it will rain in New York City April 17th 2008. There are too many variables and unknowns that make it impractical to tell. Mutations are unpredictable and so is the ecological impact of these mutations. This is aggravated by environmental change. Such a prediction is untenable.
2. Evolutionary biology has made predictions that came to fruition:
It predicted the emergance of more tranistional fossils
It predicted the discovery of a means of inheritance as well as a means of changing genes without recombination (mutations)
It predicted the emergence of more vestigial structures, embryological homologies, and a correspondance between DNA and chemical activity
It predicted that the branched nature of taxonomy would remain branched and not intertwined
It predicted the existance of beneficial mutations
And it's natural selection mechanism has been proven valid in lab tests over and over.

Works for me, so ya guys can win, could creationism have happened if god had ta follow scientific rules, nopes. Just the way it was set up to be decided, congrats folks. And ya got yer wish as well, ya won't be seein none of my "difficult ta read" posts on this here forum.

Please do continue to post here! I'd rather have difficult to read posts then no posts!