The Official Perfection KOs Creationism Thread Part Three: The Return of the KOing!

[Smidlee]

Smidlee, First off, it's KO, not OK (It's a boxing term) [/quote} I meant to hit the K before the O. I'm still awful at typing.

Abiogenesis does not have all the answers nor do any abiogenesis scientists claim it does. What research has shown that there is no contradiction between physics and chemistry and biology and that there are plausible mechanisms that allow for the formation of life through abiogenic chemical and physical processes. Given that the alternatives require asserting the existance of processes that are seen nowhere else in scienc, the abiogenic theories remain the only scientific ideas.

Yet this is the same as using "God of the gaps" argument. you are trying to fill the gaps with "future science" so "science will find the answer". The porblem with this is often the exact oppiside happens. As our knowledge increases and science answers one question but opens up a even great mystery. Didcovery of DNA did provide answers but it created even bigger gaps.
Thus Abiogenesis would have been a lot easier to believe in the Dark Ages than it is today. Knowledge didn't close the gap but made the gaps a lot bigger.

The problem is then you remove all the explinations that common descent provides. If two creatures don't have the same common descent then why do they have almost identical or identical tRNA codings? By asserting this you remove evolutions explaining power while providng nothign to replace it. Since the whole point of science is to explain things with theoritical models you act against science.

Common design fit the evidence just as easy if not more. Also I see "common Language" also fits the evidence. Thus we are see the "language of life" spoken by the creator. As with all languages there are a lot of similiarities. Of course that's adding to science but Darwinist are guilty of doing the same thing.

P.S please note there are some parts the evolution explain well in nature. There are some pretty amazing thing found in nature. Ex; A caterpillar turn into a butterfly. Here is an example of two different body plans created by the same DNA.

You don't have to disprove all psuedoscientific ideas for somethign to be scientifc. You can play the what if game all you want and so sure Creationism might be logically possible but since it lacks explanitory power it has no scientific bearing.

I feel the exact same with Evolution (NS+RM) when it comes to origins. With our knowledge today evolution lack the power and engine to produce all the creatures we see around us. Darwin theory was more stronger in his day than in ours. It's because of today's knowledge Darwinism is just too simply to explain complexies found in living things.

When it comes to origins, IMHO science has been extremely overrated. Thus you got those who by faith believes nature created itself and Those who believe a creator (designer) outside of nature (or atleast outside of Earth).

 

[Samson]

Thus Abiogenesis would have been a lot easier to believe in the Dark Ages than it is today. Knowledge didn't close the gap but made the gaps a lot bigger.
Common design fit the evidence just as easy if not more. Also I see "common Language" also fits the evidence. Thus we are see the "language of life" spoken by the creator. As with all languages there are a lot of similiarities. Of course that's adding to science but Darwinist are guilty of doing the same thing.

I really do not think it does fit so well. Yes I can see how a designer could use the same sort of methidology when designing different things, but why is there a closer genetic makeup between animals that are likely to have a close evolutionary relationship but fill different ecological niques (old world mamals) that ones that are geographically seperate but fill similar ecolocical niques (comparing old world to australian mamals)?

P.S please note there are some parts the evolution explain well in nature. There are some pretty amazing thing found in nature. Ex; A caterpillar turn into a butterfly. Here is an example of two different body plans created by the same DNA.

I am assuming you meant to put a "does not" between evolution and explain. Can you explain why you think evolution does not explain this well?

I feel the exact same with Evolution (NS+RM) when it comes to origins. With our knowledge today evolution lack the power and engine to produce all the creatures we see around us. Darwin theory was more stronger in his day than in ours. It's because of today's knowledge Darwinism is just too simply to explain complexies found in living things.

No it does / is not. We may not be able to give exact answers, but it explain our finding far better than any other explanation than the "god created the world with dinosaur fosils" argument.

When it comes to origins, IMHO science has been extremely overrated. Thus you got those who by faith believes nature created itself and Those who believe a creator (designer) outside of nature (or atleast outside of Earth).

What rating are you taslking about. It does not explain everything, but it is a good working model. Would you like to quote this "overrating" that you claim.

 

[ironduck]

I can't figure out what you are saying Smidlee. Could you present your own beliefs? And what would you like to discuss?

 

[warpus]

Obviously an atheist only option is to accept evolution so there's not much point in debating them.

It's not the only option. But seeing as how The Theory of Evolution is the only theory which fits the facts so well, I don't really see any viable alternatives.

 

[warpus]

Yet this is the same as using "God of the gaps" argument. you are trying to fill the gaps with "future science" so "science will find the answer". The porblem with this is often the exact oppiside happens. As our knowledge increases and science answers one question but opens up a even great mystery. Didcovery of DNA did provide answers but it created even bigger gaps.

It's not the same. It's simply the theory that fits the given data & observational evidence the best, which is why it's accepted as the "most likely thing to have happened"

Since there are no competing theories for the creation of life that fit the data better, we'll stick with abiogenesis, until a better theory comes along.

 

[El_Machinae]

TLC:

You mentioned awhile ago about plankton being too dense in the fossil record to occur at one time (or something like that). i.e., they couldn't have been killed in the Flood.

Any chance you could point me at a proper write-up of that position?

 

[Sophie 378]

Many creationists say that "information" is "lost" and cannot be "gained" through evolution, often classifying it into "microevolution" and "macroevolution". Some recent research puts yet another nail in the coffin of that idea: how to get two genes for the price of one, and how to get two genes from one gene.

Geneticists successfully reverse gene evolution

Researchers recreate an ancient mouse gene from two of its modern descendants

You have probably heard of evolution in action - but how about evolution in reverse?

Many of the genes in our bodies have descended from ancient genes that have mutated and changed their function. Petr Tvrdik and Mario Capecchi of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, have now managed to demonstrate this in mice by recreating an ancient gene from two of its modern descendants.

Half a billion years ago, the size of our ancestor's genome quadrupled. With four copies of every gene knocking about, genes either had to make themselves useful, or be swiftly dumped. The quadrupling meant that 13 Hox genes, which control the development of body shape, became 52. The ones that didn't mutate to do something useful were lost, so today mammals have 39 Hox genes.

Tvrdik and Capecchi focused on two that were originally duplicates but have evolved to perform different functions. Hoxa1 controls brain stem development in the early embryo, while Hoxb1 directs nerve growth in an area of the brain that controls facial expression.

The two genes make the same protein, but at different places in the brain, and at different times. In other words, it is the regulatrory region of the gene that differs between Hoxa1 and Hoxb1, not the protein-coding region.

To reconstruct the ancestral Hox1 gene, Tvrdik and Capecchi attached the regulatory sequence from Hoxb1 - which turns the gene on later in fetal development - to the Hoxa1 gene. That way, one gene did the job of two. Mice with the new Hox1 gene, but with their Hoxa1 and Hoxb1 genes knocked out, developed normally (Developmental cell, DOI:10.1016/j.devcel.2006.06.016). "We constructed a gene that is fairly similar to the ancestral Hox1 gene present in the vertebrate lineage half a billion years ago," says Tvrdik.

New Scientist: This week
12 August 2006
Rowan Hooper
Magazine issue 2564
Source

So...
Normally, vertebrates have two copies of a particular gene - Hoxa1 and Hoxb1. The only difference between the two is in the regulatory region, which controls when and where the genes are activated. They make the exact same protein (ie have identical coding regions), yet in different times and places. KOing either will produce an abnormal brain.

This research finds that if you copy-and-paste the regulatory region for Hoxb1 next to the Hoxa1 gene (which includes the Hoxa1 regulatory region), then the protein will be produced where-and-when Hoxa1 wants it, AND where-and-when Hoxb1 wants it. So, one gene with both controls has done the job of two genes with two controls. This produces a normal brain.

Bear in mind that the normal situation is two genes with two controls: this research was speculating on the structure of the ancestral Hox1 gene. They found that you can get the effect of Hoxa1 and Hoxb1 with just one, but with the controls for both. Presumably, the original Hox1 evolved into two genes (remember they make the same protein, one that controls early brain development) that have two different functions.

Spoiler the confused :

If you're confused by the label "Hox", just think of it as Howard. He helps assemble a particular bit of the brain, by giving it a whack with his hammer at point X at 10am, and point Y at 2pm. However, if he has two kids, Alfred and Ben, each of them with an identical hammer, one of whom hits point X at 10am and the other who hits point Y at 2pm; those kids have the same effect together as their dad alone. Their dad alone has the same effect as the two kids together. By giving someone new a hammer, Alfred's instructions and Ben's instructions, they can have the same effect as if you told Alfred and Ben to go home but had the new guy instead.

 

[Smidlee]

It's not the only option. But seeing as how The Theory of Evolution is the only theory which fits the facts so well, I don't really see any viable alternatives.

Of course this is base on opinion. I would agree in Darwin's day unto 60 years ago TOE was probably best theory that fit the facts but IMO times has changed. (Now TOE is becoming nothing but science dogma preached by those who has the most to lose if their theory is wrong)
Once people saw a difference between a living cell and a man made machines like a watch but as our knowledge increase we are find more and more that living cell has so much in common with man-made machines and computer programs that these difference are disappearing. Thus the cell cries out loud "design" and this cry is getting louder.

(also a year ago scientist found a way to stop bacteria from mutating .. thus "stop evolution" as if mutation itself was part of some programmed feature. Hopefully more research will be done to stop mutations which could help cure something like AIDS)

There still much to learn, for example where's the blueprint of body plans?

 

[El_Machinae]

You're stating that because the universe appears to be more and more materialistic, the more we look at it, the more it looks like it was designed?

 

[warpus]

Of course this is base on opinion. I would agree in Darwin's day unto 60 years ago TOE was probably best theory that fit the facts but IMO times has changed. (Now TOE is becoming nothing but science dogma preached by those who has the most to lose if their theory is wrong)
Once people saw a difference between a living cell and a man made machines like a watch but as our knowledge increase we are find more and more that living cell has so much in common with man-made machines and computer programs that these difference are disappearing. Thus the cell cries out loud "design" and this cry is getting louder.

Yes, and it's mostly coming from a small minority of fundamentalist Christians in the United States.

Show me another scientific theory that fits the facts better than the Theory of Evolution and I will consider it.

There is no world-wide conspiracy. You are either ignorant, delusional, or both.

 

[Smidlee]

There is no world-wide conspiracy. You are either ignorant, delusional, or both.

I never said anything about a world-wide conspiracy nor do I believe there is one. Any new or better theory in any field of science takes time to be accepted world-wide which hasn't nothing to do with conspiracy. It's just human nature to resist change and to hold on to tradition.

I may be ignorant or delusional but I could as well be right and sane too. The problem with trying to deterimine who's insane and who's not is every person has those part of their personality which is overdeveloped and underdeveloped. In another words everyone has their hang-ups.

 

[Perfection]

Yet this is the same as using "God of the gaps" argument. you are trying to fill the gaps with "future science" so "science will find the answer".

Not really, my framework does not rely on future science. It relies on the fact that present science has explained a massive amount without needing to rely on God and nothing that is dependant on God. This is a coherant pattern in science, I think it's reasonable to assume that the pattern is indictive of the fact that there is no god actively engaged in shaping the universe through nonphysical means

The porblem with this is often the exact oppiside happens. As our knowledge increases and science answers one question but opens up a even great mystery. Didcovery of DNA did provide answers but it created even bigger gaps.

Thus Abiogenesis would have been a lot easier to believe in the Dark Ages than it is today. Knowledge didn't close the gap but made the gaps a lot bigger.

No, it made many more smaller gaps.

Common design fit the evidence just as easy if not more. Also I see "common Language" also fits the evidence. Thus we are see the "language of life" spoken by the creator. As with all languages there are a lot of similiarities.

But you have no explination of why there is a common language, other then God made a common language. Darwinests explain that we have a common genetic language because the radical alteration of them would render a cell functionless.

Of course that's adding to science but Darwinist are guilty of doing the same thing.

It's not science, it lacks rigor.

P.S please note there are some parts the evolution explain well in nature. There are some pretty amazing thing found in nature. Ex; A caterpillar turn into a butterfly. Here is an example of two different body plans created by the same DNA.

Evolution is the principle explination of all biodiversity.

I feel the exact same with Evolution (NS+RM) when it comes to origins. With our knowledge today evolution lack the power and engine to produce all the creatures we see around us. Darwin theory was more stronger in his day than in ours. It's because of today's knowledge Darwinism is just too simply to explain complexies found in living things.

Where does it fail? Give me a concrete example.

When it comes to origins, IMHO science has been extremely overrated. Thus you got those who by faith believes nature created itself and Those who believe a creator (designer) outside of nature (or atleast outside of Earth).

It's not faith. It's a logical conclusion given the data.

 

[carlosMM]

And additionally, now that cladistics seems to be taking over, how important is the whole "phylum-class-order" etc. distinction?

it is a nice tool for communication, but once you get to the roots of the 'classes' - well, forget it. They can only be useful if they are monophyletic taxa, and then, well, the term 'taxon' refers to any 'level' because there are no 'levels' after all.

Either something is a species, or it is a taxon higher than species, period.

 

[carlosMM]

http://www.icr.org/research/index/researchp_aguconference/
Here are three examples of how "traditional" dating methods do not quite add up.

hm, seems I remember someone posting them before here, and them being quite easily refuted. maybe someone remembers which thread that was in?

 

[carlosMM]

Probably because they make their case then move on. .

see, isn't it exactly the point of a debate to HEAR THE OTHER SIDE and WEIGH THE MERITS?

A drive-by poster will only post, never read, never answer. He is not debating, he is jabbering to - well, basically, himself.
So the question remains - WHY?



And the answer is fairly easy to give: he who does not read or listen, is clueless

 

[carlosMM]

Here is the third thread by Perfection and he still hasn't OK creationism,...

uh-hu! now this statmeents shows you ARE one of those drive-by posters who do not read

Once I have some time on my hands I'll look for the many questions you never answered.

 

[classical_hero]

And here are three very good rebuttals for (CH):

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/helium/zircons.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/c14.html (not direct, but refutes the claims made)
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/po-halos/gentry.html (actually refutes a different experiment that makes the same flaws)

If you have any dissagrements to the contents of my links please make them known!

The main problem with C14 dating is that it can only give ages of less than 100,000 years because it it decays very rapidly, so thus any dating of fosils would come back with next to no C14, but when you look at many fossils, none of them even get close to the detection limit of the new AMS machines, which is an extremely small 0.0001% and yet no fossil has been found to even be close to that limin and most are way higher than that.
Carbon Dating Undercuts Evolution's Long Ages

Let us consider what the AMS measurements imply from a quantitative standpoint. The ratio of 14C atoms to 12C atoms decreases by a factor of 2 every 5730 years. After 20 half-lives or 114,700 years (assuming hypothetically that earth history goes back that far), the 14C/12C ratio is decreased by a factor of 220, or about 1,000,000. After 1.5 million years, the ratio is diminished by a factor of 21500000/5730, or about 1079. This means that if one started with an amount of pure 14C equal to the mass of the entire observable universe, after 1.5 million years there should not be a single atom of 14C remaining! Routinely finding 14C/12C ratios on the order of 0.1-0.5% of the modern value—a hundred times or more above the AMS detection threshold—in samples supposedly tens to hundreds of millions of years old is therefore a huge anomaly for the uniformitarian framework.

This earnest effort to understand this "contamination problem" therefore generated scores of peer-reviewed papers in the standard radiocarbon literature during the last 20 years.2 Most of these papers acknowledge that most of the 14C in the samples studied appear to be intrinsic to the samples themselves, and they usually offer no explanation for its origin. The reality of significant levels of 14C in a wide variety of fossil sources from throughout the geological record has thus been established in the secular scientific literature by scientists who assume the standard geological time scale is valid and have no special desire for this result!

The article abbout he Helium seems to be the worst of the lot because it says just so much but just by looking at the first bit of evidence that he gives about the data in the picture just near the start. The fact that he assumes that there are defects in the first place is not a good place to start since we are talking about one of the hardest materials and thus they are very good for measurement because they will not have much room for error in them. Also I want you to give me a brief summary of that article, because it is massive to say the least. This is to show what you understand about the issue.
http://www.trueorigin.org/helium02.asp

Back in 1996, when I first began to think about the helium-in-zircon data we had then, I considered Henke’s scenario: the possibility that the pressures deep underground might account for the extraordinary amounts of helium retained in the zircons. However, I gave up on that idea when I found that for hard materials, pressure has very little effect on diffusion rates. Hardness relates to incompressibility, which hinders pressure from diminishing the space between atoms and thereby slowing diffusion.

The pressure at 3 kilometers, the mid-range depth of our samples, is about 1 kilobar (about 1000 times atmospheric pressure). I found a paper[4] showing that even in a relatively soft material like lead, one kilobar of pressure would reduce self-diffusion (lead atoms moving through lead) by less than 20%. On the geologists' Mohs scale, lead has a hardness of only 1.5. If you put it in a vise, it is not difficult to compress.
Large zircon crystal.

Zircon, on the other hand, is among the hardest of minerals, 7.5 on the Mohs scale. That is harder than the best steel (6.5), and even harder than quartz (7.0). That's why crushing granite to extract zircons is not a worry to researchers. If you put a ball bearing of the finest steel into a large vise and squeeze it as tightly as you can (producing kilobar pressures), the ball bearing will suffer little damage and little compression.

Zircon, being harder than steel, would be much less compressible than lead.[5] So pressure should affect diffusion rates much less than in lead, which for kilobar pressures had a reduction of only 20% in the rates, according to the paper above. In 1996, those considerations made me think that the pressure effect on hard minerals is negligible. Below are even more reasons to think so.

As far as I know, nobody has measured the effect of pressure on helium diffusion in zircon. However I have at hand a paper[6] that gives, among other data, the pressure effect on argon diffusion in glasses, such as rhyolite obsidian. At the highest temperature to which our helium-in-zircon experiment went, 500 degrees C, the pressure effect on the glasses was almost imperceptible, a few percent per kilobar. A few hundred degrees higher than our experiment, 600 to 700°C, the pressure effect was up to only a few dozen percent per kilobar.

Several factors combine to say that the pressure effect on helium diffusion in our zircon experiments was much less than the above few percent per kilobar:

1. The cooler the mineral, the less the effect, and the critical part of our data was much cooler than the above, only 100 to 300 °C.
2. Glasses should be more compressible than crystals of the same composition; glasses are generally not as hard because of weaker chemical bonds between parts. So our crystals of very hard zircon should suffer less from pressure than glasses that are softer than quartz.
3. In a given mineral, helium diffusion is less affected by pressure than argon, because a helium atom is smaller than an argon atom. The smaller the atom, the less the effect on its diffusion for a given amount of pressure-induced reduction of the space between atoms.

All these factors strongly suggest that the diffusion rates in our zircons were influenced far less than one percent by removing them from underground pressures to a vacuum chamber.

The evidence does not fits the model that it should for an Evolutionary POV, but they do fit exactly to the Creationary model, or very close to it. The diffusion rates of helium would have to be slowed down dramatically for it to fit the Evoluntion model and the only wy that could be done is under. The effect of pressure does not effect zircons that much, so it is basically a non factor.

The problem with Polonium Halos is the fact that they have such a short half life that the amount needed would be great for such halos to form. The problem is that right now we see very little Polonium and thus we should not have any Polonium at todays rate of decy, but there must have been sources of Polonium great enough to cause these halos.
http://www.icr.org/article/301/10/
http://www.icr.org/article/2467/10/

 

[brennan]

uniformitarian assumptions are inappropriate when one considers that the Genesis Flood removed vast amounts of living biomass from exchange with the atmosphere—organic material that now forms the earth's vast coal, oil, and oil shale deposits. A conservative estimate for the pre-Flood biomass is 100 times that of today.

And this is possible how, exactly?

Edit: I may as well address the C14 issue: The higher than expected presence of Carbon-14 in samples is known to be caused by the decay of Uranium series elements in the surrounding rocks: The proof? C-14 levels in very old rocks is proportional to Uranium series levels.

 

[ironduck]

classical hero, I see you didn't reply to my last post. Did you read the mission statement of ICS and do you agree with it? If so, please explain.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

And it is not a problem that C14 can only go back about 100K years - they only use it for things roughly that age, and other methods for older things. It is like saying that the earth can only be three feet across, because using a yardstick on greater distances is impossible.

@ironduck: I get that species is taxonomically useful - interbreeding with fertile offspring - and I have heard that phylum is, because it refers to basic body plan. But apparently the rest are somewhat arbitrary, used for convenience.