The Debate Continues

FreeRepublic ^ | 10/23/2007 | Dave Lone Ranger

[js1138]

Do either of you think the Discovery Institute, after spending millions of dollars and 20 years of time planning and promoting their agenda, would have missed an opportunity to discuss ERVs at the Dover trial if there was any way to turn that line of evidence against Darwinian evolution?

Behe wrote a whole chapter in his latest book devoted to evidence for common descent. He didn’t even mention ERVs, even though they are right smack in the middle of his specialty. That is an extremely odd thing. It’s a bit like a district attorney failing to mention the videotape of a crime at trial.

I can only assume that GGG is smarter than all the PhD biologists AND smarter than all the other evolution critics.

[GodGunsGuts]

If you look at his blog site, not only is he now refusing to answer me, he’s removing my later posts to make it look like he answered me and that I gave up. Talk about being flushed right down the memory hole! Maybe I should start a website entitled “AiGBusted” Busted...LOL

[js1138]

Don’t worry. We know you will never give up.

[GodGunsGuts]

==I can only assume that GGG is smarter than all the PhD biologists AND smarter than all the other evolution critics.

I’m not smarter than they are. I just have more flexibility to reinterpret their data. That’s the best thing about Darwinist scientists. They get paid (mostly by the government) to generate mountains of mostly meaningless data. However, within that data, there are a few gems. Unfortunately for the Darwinists, they are philosophically incapable of distinguishing between the gems and the rest of their rocky data, thus abandoning them to other people who are equipped to recognize their obvious value. Of course, we could save a whole bunch of taxpayer money if we put competent people in charge of science. But I will save that eventuality for another discussion.

[mysterio]

Your racist quip does both you and FR a disservice. I don’t care what it does to your anonymous screen name, but I do care what it does to this site. What is wrong with you?

[GodGunsGuts]

Sorry Valkyryl, I have to agree with Mysterio on this one.

[valkyry1]

All the black people who know me in real life do not think of me as racist. I guess for one I think being that some of them have witnessed gang black on white violence against one or two whites, just as I have. I had to fight my way out of it myself on a few occasions when I was much younger, and found myself in the wrong place. You are essentially fighting for your life just out their pure shear hatred for you. You can see it pass over them almost like a wave of dark energy.

But I will not make such a graphic allegories again, while the evos certainly like to tag team, they are not physically beating someone.

Regards,

[valkyry1]

That is okay, what I said was really unnecessary and contributed nothing, except to an ongoing feud with them, something that I want to get away from.

[GodGunsGuts]

Sometimes we all say things we later regret. Just remember...YOU’RE BETTER THAN THAT.

[valkyry1]

Sorry for the comment. It is just those very sort of veiled attacks these fellows seem compelled to relentlessly engage in, attacks that have nothing to do with any supposed scientific weight of their arguments, which provoked the remark. It seems to be that pretty much these tactics are all that they have. That was how I felt, that does not make my comment civil or productive. But again, sorry for the comment on your thread.

I think this js fellow has alluded a few times that he is a PHD Psychologist. Can you imagine anyone actually seeking out and paying such a person for professional services? I cant.

[js1138]

Appeals to authority are sometimes justified. No one involved in this thread is qualified to judge the correctness of the ERV evidence. We can read about and see if it makes sense at face value, but the data collection and interpretation is beyond your capabilities and mine.

My argument is not a simple appear to SCIENCE. I’m asking why none of the established and technically competent critics of evolution have even tried to make a case against the mainstream interpretation.

Quite frankly, if the ERV interpretation is incorrect, then DNA cannot be used to establish paternity in court cases, and all uses of DNA to establish identity are suspect.

There was quit a long discussion of this on the original debate thread, and GGG spewed out countless self contradictory arguments. He never addressed the main argument at all, which is that ERVs establish the same nested hierarchy of descent as other methods. Nor did he address the fact that ERVs have been observed to have thousands of insertion points, not just one unique point. The points used to establish lineage are unique.

There really isn’t any motivation to “debate” someone who fails to make a self-consistent case.

[GodGunsGuts]

==There really isn’t any motivation to “debate” someone who fails to make a self-consistent case.

My case consists of the evidence that makes it clear that ERVs shared between monkeys and humans are not the “smoking gun” of common descent the Evos would have us believe they are. As with most other "evidence" of common descent, the arguments for ERVs are based on evolutionary assumptions, not observation.

[js1138]

If you have a case, present it in a quantitative form.

It is fundamentally dishonest to snipe at one line of evidence in isolation, asserting it isn't the smoking gun. there are many congruent lines of evidence:

1. The fossil record, showing transitionals between supposed "kinds".
2. The fact that the fossil record show gradations that match the physical/temporal sequence of strata (regardless of how long you think it took to lay down the deposits), rather than heaviest on the lower layers and lighter on top. This sequencing of fossils was noticed more than a hundred years before Darwin.
3. Fifty or more different, independent and overlapping methods of dating organic and inorganic objects.
4. The fact that the physical mechanism required for evolution to work are used every by commercial plant and animal breeders.
5. The fact that evolution requiring multiple adaptive mutations can easily be replicated in the laboratory.
6. The fact that viral insertions occur at any of thousands of locations, not just a single targeted location, as would be required to discredit the ERV line of evidence. This is not conjecture or assumption. It is data.

[GodGunsGuts]

Allmendream, a working scientist, got this whole thing started by claiming that ERV’s were thought of by evolutionists as the “smoking gun” of common descent. Then AiG used ERVs as one of his top evidences of common descent. The rest of your list is old hat, and are more than adequately dealt with by Creationists. But the notion that ERVs shared between humans and apes are evidence of common descent is a rather new argument, and there is no consensus among creationists as to how to answer it. Thus, I will be focusing on ERVs until such time as the matter is fully resolved one way or the other.

[js1138]

Old hat meaning they gave up science years ago.

[js1138]

The rest of your list is old hat, and are more than adequately dealt with by Creationists.

That is a shitfaced lie. None of the items on my list have beeen dealt with at all. If you think they have, then whip out a detailed description of the universe that deals with 200 years of accumulated, congruent evidence from geology physics, chemistry, paleontology, astronomy and biology.

Start with item number one on my list and, in your own word, tell us how you deal with it. Then move on doen the list.