Denial of evolution IV

Discussion in 'Biology & Genetics' started by Hercules Rockefeller, Oct 27, 2009.

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  1. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    Obviously - yes, because all grow with individuals from childhood to adulthood.

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    I have done no such thing.

    The Lazy Designer theory was not born out of incredulity, it was born out of observation.

    Yeah, you've clearly missed the point I was making.

    Yes, you're abusing the term.


    Now you're backpeddling because you've realized just how ridiculous some of what you're suggesting sounds.

    My point was that if your example requires co-evolution of all of these multiple independent factors, than so does the growth of a newborn to adulthood, because that's all we're talking about here - a few individuals whos necks grew for longer than was 'average' (a genetically controled trait) gained a slight advantage, and passed that trait along.

    The point that I was making was that "How did the nerves in the neck, the veins in the neck, the muscles in the neck, and the lymphatic system keep up with the growth of the neck" has the same answer as it does when an individual grows from being a newborn to adulthood.

    You want me to link you up with evidence that proves that a giraffes neck grows between childhood and adulthood?

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    Trolling again?
    I explained what I meant. There was no faith in anything I said, only inference and deduction.

    It is implicit in your assertions, and in your reply, yes.

    NO!
    I infer that it might have been.
    I aknowledge the possibility that it might have been.
    There is a huge difference.

    This is an assumption, it's also a strawman hypothesis.
    For a start off, you're assuming that it appeared in it's current form, I am not.
    You're assuming it appeared able to withstand the forces it currently withstands, I am not.
    You're also assuming that it was capable of withstanding all of the forces it was subjected to in its original form, I am not.


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    Again, this is a misrepresentation of what I said.

    I've already given you a couple.


    Yes you do.
    You presume that it would have led to problematically low bloodflow in the legs, for example.

    No it isn't.


    Yeah, remember the part of the conversation where I suggested it was a pre-existing feature for other purposes that evolution co-opted?


    I suggested it as a p[ossibility, nothing more.

    Context, please.
    We're talking about Giraffes, and girraffes only at this point.
    I wasn't saying that co-evoilution doesn't occur, only that this isn't an example of it.

    Then seek knowledge, not religous tales told around a campfire.

    Deliberatness is irrelevant.

    So go out and measure the neck lengths of a bunch of giraffes.

    Who said it was neccessarily a Hox gene that was responsible for it? I didn't - I simply made the point that mutations in single genes can have wide ranging effects on morphology. The Hox genes are simply one example of that - they're relevant, because they control the segmentation of the spinal colum, but they're not the only factor affecting the growth of the neck.

    Then perhaps you should re-examine the language you use, and avoid phrases like "I don't believe..."

    I'd use a smiley here, but i've reached my limit already.

    Which one do you think?

    And you wonder why people on this forum think you're a creationist troll...

    Yes.

    I also said that I was speculating on the basis of evidence and deductive logic - take a moment to think about it.

    No.

    Good god man. I'm telling you that my speculation produces testable predictions. By definition that makes it falsafiable.

    I have, or at least dmeonstrated methods by which it sould be - you just haven't understood that, either through genuine ignorance, or because you have a hidden agenda, my money is on teh second, compounded by the first.
     
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  3. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

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    Yes sex is very complex now: Male organ must fit insider females to deliver sperm to egg for fetus to grow in protedcted temperature controlled environment etc. but there are known examples of earlier (and still existing) precursor life forms where each of these indivual requirements for human like sex are absent, one at a time. E.g. everthing required except the male organ fitting inside the females, then that another requiremenmt removed yet sexual reproduction occurs, etc.

    To jump many stages in the evolution of sexual reproduction, many male fish just release sperm into the water when female releases eggs into the water. - Of course few survive to become fish so more complex procedures evolved and favored survival, etc.

    See one video illustrating this here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxysZmNsyDk

    I know the first "warning screen" will be frighting to you (and others with closed minds). It states: "WARNING - Science will be presented here."

    Like the complex human eye, all of the lessor stages that were refined to make a human eye, also still exist. For example the Chambered Natulus has a pin hole camera eye with no lense and not even a transparent skin over the hole to keep the sea water out of the inside of its eye. Very crude "eyes" are just light sensitive cells in shallow pits - not even pin hole cameras - just crude indication ot the direction of the light (or IR) source. They in turn were proceeded by light sensitive cells that were distributed all over the skin, as the earth worm has or even the single cell ameobia has - it is repeled away from light falling anywhere on its body.

    That is the way evolution works - some cells develop a special sensitivity or a slight primnative but useful to them function, which thru million of years and zillions of tiny hard to notice steps finally become complex organs that those, ignorgant of the proceeding steps, call "miracles" impossible for evolution to produce.
     
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  5. Zenithar66 Registered Member

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    So by saying EVERTHING accept organs fitting, then that makes it plausible? i think not..and its doestn stop the fact that indeed such complimentary organs evolved, whether or not they "had to".

    this is not "jumping" any stages but simply a self sufficient fully functinal system.

    I can only hope you dont acutally believe thats why they evolved more complex procedures

    i personally thought this, like the eye videos are simply not good enough. All they do is provide exampels of differetn kinds of sexes. NOt anything to do with how it evolve, or the whole coevolution thing.
    He is addressing many differtn types of fully functional systems and somehow making it look like they are "missing" something yet still working?(like ken millers blood clot argument). I personally dont have any problem whether somethng is IC or not, but i do have my opnions on the matter and instead of showing an organisms "missing" somethig others have, they should try taking soemthign OUT of the actual organism claimed to be misssing parts and see what happens.
    all in all it explains actauly nothing about the evolution of sex.

    Infact having rewatched it i would be happy (If you'd like, i wont waste your time doing it here) to argue many of his points in another post.




    [/quote]I know the first "warning screen" will be frighting to you (and others with closed minds). It states: "WARNING - Science will be presented here."
     
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  7. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    LOL.
    This is just... Take a look at the Angler fish some day, and then maybe you can begin to understand how such things might come about.


    As opposed to what? Some aliens left a slab of pitch black material with the dimensional ratios 2:4:9 lying around?

    What's painful is that you fail to recognize those different types of eyes as an evolutionary sequence. One can only presume that this is because when you consider them as an evolutinary sequence it completely destroys the notion that the eye is irreducably complex.

    This is why people dismiss you as a creationist troll, because you use the language of one.

    What co-evolution, precisely, do you think is required in the sexes?
     
  8. Zenithar66 Registered Member

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    Oh i know quite alot about the anler fish and i also happen to know that it poses another coevolutionary problem.



    i was addressing taht fact that he was impliying that becuase so many fish did'nt surive, therfore more complexity evolved for that reason, i may had read it wrong!

     
  9. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    This, right here.

    This is why people label you a creationist crank.

    It's also why I'm done with this conversation.

    I don't need to make you look silly, you do that all by yourself.

    Right, so.... Someone asks you to clarify what you mean and you respond with 'do your own research'?

    Yup. I think Troll sums it up perfectly.
     
  10. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    No. Bees really do see UV. Some women really can see more shades of blue.

    The additional blue receptor is an example showing how a neural network (in this case a brain) can perceive additional spectral range without having to be "designed" or be "coevolved' to do so. DID bees evolve to be able to see their color range exactly the same way we did? We don't know. COULD they have evolved in a similar way? Definitely.

    Darwin once said something to the effect of "if a major evolutionary change could not be broken down into smaller incremental changes, evolution as a theory would be disproved." So far no scientist has found any such evolutionary change. There are plenty of people who do not understand how such changes can happen, of course - but that's due to a lack of understanding rather than any demonstrable lack of evidence.

    Again, cellphones seem like miracles to primitive tribesman. Doesn't mean they really are.
     
  11. Walter L. Wagner Cosmic Truth Seeker Valued Senior Member

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    It appears that Zenithar66 is not interested in reading articles that demonstrate evolution, and instead engaging in trolling argument. Let him try to explain these by creationist agenda. There is lots of interesting information from genetics. There are about a dozen identified retro-virus insertions in the human genome. That is, these are gene sequences of known retroviruses, but also present in the human genome. Retroviruses are known for their ability to insert themselves into the DNA of organisms. What is interesting is that some are modified and now part of the operative 'gear' of humans. In particular, there are one or two that are now used in placental development of mammals, on which we had a thread. Here is a good Wikipedia link:

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

    Here's another one on chromosome fusion that creationists can't explain, but is well explained by evolution:

    http://www.evolutionpages.com/chromosome_2.htm

    Finally, this is an old post of mine from five years ago that has some interesting information.

    "Walter L. Wagner
    Cosmic Truth Seeker (1,422 posts)
    08-07-06, 01:28 PM
    #1

    The August, 2006 Scientific American article entitled The Real Life of Pseudogenes discussed the fact that at least almost half (19,000 and maybe more) of the human genome (21,000 functional genes, 40,000 total) consists of "pseudogenes", non-functional genes that do not produce proteins. Most of those are copies (11,000) of actual functioning genes elsewhere in the genome, the rest (8,000) have no counterpart in the genome. The overall distribution of pseudogenes in the human genome appears to be random, although some local genome regions tend to contain more pseudogenes.

    Interesting tidbits of information are being derived from these pseudogenes.

    For example, in mice and rodents and most other mammals, the gene sequence for making Vitamin C (so the mice don't have to eat citrus or other sources of Vitamin C) is as follows: CHRNA2-EPHX2-GULO-CLU-SCARA3

    In primates, incluidng humans, the gene sequence is as follows: CHRNA2-EPHX2-'P'GULO-CLU-SCARA3 ; where the 'P' indicates GULO is a non-functioning pseudogene, having almost idential encoding as the real gene, but with some errors that make it non-functional.

    As a consequence, primates require an external source of Vitamin C to avoid scurvy.

    Evolutionary theory posits that at some time in the past circa 40 million years ago, primate ancestors lived in an environment rich in Vitamin C, and loss of the ability to make one's own Vitamin C incurred no net detriment to the animals, so random errors on that gene making it a non-functional gene would eventually lead to all progeny having those errors, and the gene being non-functional, without any dire consequences. The same thing happens to fish or other animals that become locked in caves with no light - they lose their ability to see, with no adverse consequence to the organism.

    Pseudogenes are created by several different methods. Insertion of a premature stop codon; a gross deletion of nucleotide (A,C,G,T) bases, or non-synonomous mutation (change in nucleotide)

    So the question for the IDists out there is - WHY would people and the other primates be created with a pseudogene for making Vitamin C, which is currently non-functional, exactly analogous to that for the other non-primate mammals, in which it is functional.

    Personally, I found that article to be one of the most interesting articles in the biological sciences ever published by Scientific American. The study of pseudogenes is apparently in its infancy, and much information about our, and every other living organism's evolutionary past should emerge."
     
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    As I pointed out, you do invoke deity. A designer beyond understanding or criticism, that cannot be found to be in error, is nothing else.
    No, you don't.

    You may have looked up few of its gross anatomical features, or more likely been handed a list by some creationist drivel site, but without some basic comprehension of evolutionary theory you have no context for these bits and pieces of fact. And you have no such basic comprehension.

    Here's another example of you gifting us with evidence of your state of ignorance and confusion:
    All you need is an existing mechanism of development and growth that matches the spinal chord length to the spinal column - which is by far the most likely case, anyway. That's how lots of things grow - they grow to fit something. How did you imaging the nerve in the spinal chord knew how long to be, in any of us?

    In that case, any somewhat longer spinal column would be filled by the growing nerve, for the same reason a shorter one or any other size one would be filled, as the animal grew. So any advantages of a longer neck would be there for the taking, in our little giraffe ancestor - and in every kind of animal, some have longer necks than others.

    So look back at your question there - I picked a short one - and realize something: You are just spamming the forum with nonsense.
     
  13. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    That's what evolution denialism is: pure nonsense. Unfortunately it's so popular that we have to allow discussion of it on this website, but we've compromised by strictly limiting it to a single thread. Point: Don't expect any of these people to make sense.

    I can't decide whether Zenith is a genuine Bible-thumper disguising himself as a scholar, an oxymoronically named "creation scientist"; or simply a precocious teenager showing off what he's learned (including his rhetorical style) and getting in our faces with it. He has attributes of both.

    I doubt the former, because they are wise enough to stay away from the real scientists for whom they are no match, and presumably anyone would expect to encounter at least a few real scientists here. They take their nonsense directly to the public. It's rather easy to convince laymen of anything you want, if you're not hindered by scruples and the truth.
     
    Last edited: Jul 9, 2011
  14. wellwisher Banned Banned

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    If we had two herd of deer with one herd able to thrive better with similar conditions we might point to evolution and selective advantage. If we have two herds of humans and one is doing better we don't call that evolution, because there are also other considerations, beyond genetics, that can explain the difference. With humans we can sort of quantify these other differences, but since we can't do it with animals in quite the same way, we ignore this and assume genetics.
     
  15. AlphaNumeric Fully ionized Registered Senior Member

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    A complete aside from the main discussion point but I thought I'd point this out for future reference to Billy T :
    The net value of that quantity (call it X) will be zero, as it is just as likely to go up as down, so \(\mathbb{E}(X) = 0\). What you're referring to is the fact that the max absolute value X has taken in the time frame \([0,t]\) goes like \(\sqrt{t}\), or more formally \(\max_{t \in [0,T]} |X| = O(\sqrt{T})\).
     
  16. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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    I'm sure I'm not the only one, but I even raised this point with him, on multiple occasions. That all we're really talking about is the equivalent of a mutation that causes our proto-giraffe's neck to grow for a slightly longer period than it ordinarily should have during the giraffe equivalent to puberty.

    But seemingly that reasoning went right over his head.
     
  17. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    From today's "Doonesbury" comic strip.

    Teacher lecturing: "So all the evidence massively supports a theory of evolution that knits together everything we know about biology. However, as high school students in the state of Louisiana, you are entitled to learn an alternative theory supported by no scientific evidence whatsoever. It goes like this. 5,700 years ago a male deity created the heavens and Earth and all life on it in six days. Unfortunately, he didn't like his own handiwork, so God created genocide and drowned everyone on Earth except the family of Noah, a 600 year-old man who was charged with saving animals..."

    Student interrupts: "Mr. Stiller?"

    "Yes?"

    "Please stop. I'd like to get into a good college."

    "Almost done. So Noah took two of everything including microbes, but forgot the dinosaurs..."
     
  18. Trippy ALEA IACTA EST Staff Member

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  19. Pahu Banned Banned

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    Science Disproves Evolution


    The Law of Biogenesis

    Spontaneous generation (the emergence of life from nonliving matter) has never been observed. All observations have shown that life comes only from life. This has been observed so consistently it is called the law of biogenesis. The theory of evolution conflicts with this scientific law when claiming that life came from nonliving matter through natural processes (a).

    Evolutionary scientists reluctantly accept the law of biogenesis (b). However, some say that future studies may show how life could come from lifeless matter, despite the virtually impossible odds. Others say that their theory of evolution doesn’t begin until the first life somehow arose. Still others say the first life was created, then evolution occurred. All evolutionists recognize that, based on scientific observations, life comes only from life.

    a. And yet, leading evolutionists are forced to accept some form of spontaneous generation. For example, a former Harvard University professor and Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine acknowledged the dilemma.

    “The reasonable view [during the two centuries before Louis Pasteur] was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position.” George Wald, “The Origin of Life,” Scientific American, Vol. 190, August 1954, p. 46.

    Wald rejects creation, despite the impossible odds of spontaneous generation.

    “One has only to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are—as a result, I believe, of spontaneous generation.” Ibid.

    Later, Wald appeals to huge amounts of time to accomplish what seemed to be the impossibility of spontaneous generation.

    “Time is in fact the hero of the plot. ... Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.” Ibid., p. 48.

    What Wald did not appreciate in 1954 (before, as just one example, the genetic code was discovered) was how the complexity in life is vastly greater than anyone at that time could have imagined. So, today, the impossibility of spontaneous generation is even more firmly established, regardless of the time available. But unfortunately, several generations of professors and textbooks with Wald’s perspective have so impacted our universities that it is difficult for evolutionists to change direction.

    Evolutionists also do not recognize:

    that with increasing time (their “miracle maker”) comes increasing degradation of the fragile environment on which life depends, and

    that creationists have much better explanations (such as the flood) for the scientific observations that evolutionists thought showed increasing time.

    Readers will later see this.

    b. “The beginning of the evolutionary process raises a question which is as yet unanswerable. What was the origin of life on this planet? Until fairly recent times there was a pretty general belief in the occurrence of ‘spontaneous generation.’ It was supposed that lowly forms of life developed spontaneously from, for example, putrefying meat. But careful experiments, notably those of Pasteur, showed that this conclusion was due to imperfect observation, and it became an accepted doctrine [the law of biogenesis] that life never arises except from life. So far as actual evidence goes, this is still the only possible conclusion. But since it is a conclusion that seems to lead back to some supernatural creative act, it is a conclusion that scientific men find very difficult of acceptance. It carries with it what are felt to be, in the present mental climate, undesirable philosophic implications, and it is opposed to the scientific desire for continuity. It introduces an unaccountable break in the chain of causation, and therefore cannot be admitted as part of science unless it is quite impossible to reject it. For that reason most scientific men prefer to believe that life arose, in some way not yet understood, from inorganic matter in accordance with the laws of physics and chemistry.” J. W. N. Sullivan, The Limitations of Science (New York: The Viking Press, Inc., 1933), p. 94.

    [From “In the Beginning” by Walt Brown]
     
  20. Rhaedas Valued Senior Member

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    There's a difference between spontaneous generation and abiogenesis.
     
  21. billvon Valued Senior Member

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    Agreed. But we have seen pseudolife arise. Computer viruses are at least as alive as biological viruses; they have no life on their own, but in an appropriate host can reproduce and even evolve.

    Likewise, we have seen RNA molecules - nothing more than chemicals - that can reproduce themselves indefinitely in the correct environment. Is that life? It strains the definition, but it's surely close.

    And there's the key - that word "virtually."

    There are, by even conservative estimates, half a trillion planets in the galaxy. On each one there have been at _least_ billions of years to evolve life, for that one chance reaction to take place that created that first self-replicating molecule. With half a trillion planets, each with trillions of square meters of potentially reactive surface, each square meter with billions of years for that chance event to occur - just about every chance reaction that can happen, will happen.

    Ah, but not impossible - NEARLY impossible. And that word is the key.

    Agreed. But what you may not realize is how very simple early life could be. A single molecule could have started it all.

    What you call 'degradation' (increase in complex molecules due to atmospheric thickening, volcanic discharges, electrical discharges etc) is actually one of the things that made early life possible.
     
  22. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    There's a "denial of evolution" thread, and this bs belongs in it.

    Or the cesspool. This from the OP, for example, is dishonest enough to disqualify it even from the "denial" thread:
     
  23. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

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    Why does the title of the thread have nothing to do with the OP?

    1. Lets assume that life started spontaneously - this has nothing to do with evolution
    2. Lets assume that Yaweh started life by fiat - this has nothing to do with evolution
    3. Lets assume that Aliens implanted life on earth - this has nothing to do with evolution

    How life first arose does not relate to evolution. Evolution cannot occur with out preexisting life by definition, so please try to understand that the concepts of abiogenesis and evolution are separate.

    Edited to add:
    The reason science does not recognize this is because it is not true.
     
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